Opinion The Third Edit: Edvard Munch was more than an artist of angst

Few artists have been as singularly identified with a piece of existential dread as Edvard Munch and his iterations of Scream. Despite this predilection, Munch was an artist of many parts. An oil-on-canvas portrait, to be unveiled in March in London, of a lawyer friend Thor Lütken, offers a glimpse into a softer side of the Norwegian expressionist. Painted in 1892, a year before Scream, it reveals a painting-within-a-painting. At the bottom of the canvas, one of the sleeves of Lütken opens up into a tender scene of intimacy: A couple in an embrace against a moonlit backdrop.

Are the figures to be taken at face value, as lovers? Or do they depict the contrary threads that run through Munch’s works, life and death, hope and despair? Munch is hardly the first artist to have embedded secondary images. For instance, Leonardo da Vinci’s The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne shows a scene featuring St Anne, Virgin Mary and infant Jesus. In 2008, an analysis revealed several unfinished sketches on its reverse side, now thought to be elements the artist might have considered adding to the scenery. The Arnolfini Portrait by Flemish master Jan van Eyck depicts a wealthy couple but it is complicated by the presence of a mirror that hides other details, including the presence of van Eyck himself and what appears to be a priest solemnising a marriage. The seemingly inconsequential figures become crucial to the painting’s larger narrative of personal and social identity.

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Contemporary artists, too, have used hidden layers to create narrative depth. American graphic artist Robert Rauschenberg, whose work anticipated the Pop Art movement, and, more recently, Banksy have incorporated the concept not just as a stylistic feature, but as a commentary on the transience of visual culture. Munch’s portrait may or may not shed new light on the artist’s process, but it highlights an enduring artistic tradition — one that challenges viewers to look beyond the surface and engage with what lies beneath.