The Kiss is a lesser-known painting by Edvard Munch. It depicts a couple kissing each other, and their faces are fused into one. According to art scholars, this symbolizes a loss of individuality in love.
Kisses are fairly well represented in art. Antonio Canova had Cupid reviving Psyche with a kiss. Courbet and Banksy showed us a different love. “The Kiss” is when Gustav Klimt’s style reached its zenith. And I think James Cameron may have shot a kiss scene on a ship's bow as well. And then there's the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch‘s oil-on-canvas, “The Kiss.”
It's one of the most passionate kisses you'll ever see—but don't expect to see lips locked. Because Munch, being a symbolist, paints not what he sees, but what he “saw.”
Each of his paintings are half-rubbed-out sketches drawn from memory. They are filled with raw emotions. Munch called them his children. And “The Kiss” which is part of “The Frieze of Life” is when Munch's signature style was about to reach its peak.
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| “The Kiss” is a part of his “Frieze of Life,” an art series consisting of 22 works and spanning 30 years of Munch's career. |
Details of The Kiss painting
Just like “The Scream,” there's not one but 5 versions of this work; plus more lithographs. Each of them depicts a couple kissing so passionately that their faces have fused into the shape of a gigantic ear. They are “deaf in the ecstasy of the blood,” as the author Stanisław Przybyszewski said.
Here are some more details about the masterpiece:
- Title: The Kiss
- Year: 1897
- Type: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 39 in × 32 in
- Painting Style: Proto-expressionism
Analysis of The Kiss by Edvard Munch
Before Munch painted The Kiss, he had an earlier variation of the work titled “Kiss by the Window.”
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The window takes half the canvas, and the two are on the corner. It's as if they're hiding from the outside world. Also, there's a certain coldness in this picture. The heat of the moment is not there.
Well, why fear? They're committing adultery of course. It's a sin. Munch’s religious father told him that. Oh, and did I not tell you that this is Munch and his cousin's wife?
Munch finished painting a second version of this painting 5 years later in 1897. Here the window is fully covered; except a small portion from where the outside world is allowed to peek. Their clothes are darker. And those hands!
Without them the two look rigid and artificial in the first version. “There must be a battle between men and women to call it love,” Munch wrote (paraphrased).
In the first work, you can also see a few impressionistic elements. Presence of the window, for example. He admired both Monet and Manet.
But a Munch is incomplete without a hint of death. Their fused faces are not just to represent love. Art historian Reinhold Heller suggests it represents death from the “loss of one's own existence and identity.”