Painting with Empathy: The Expressionist Art of Edvard Munch with Curator Øystein Ustvedt

Send us Fan MailWhile in Oslo, Norway visiting family, Russell Teagarden went to the National Museum (Nasjonalmuseet) to speak with Øystein Ustvedt, who is a curator and noted expert on the art of Edvard Munch. The interview concentrates on Munch’s work expressing emotional dimensions of anxiety, illness, grief, and suffering. Ustvedt talks about how Munch’s life story explains the sources for his empathy and artistic inclinations, identifies and discusses the paintings particularly effective in expressing emotions illness and suffering generate, and considers how Munch’s work could benefit health professions students and practitioners. Russell’s 5½-year-old granddaughter teaches him how to say, “National Museum” and “goodbye,” in Norwegian, with varying success.Links:Links to paintings discussed:Puberty (1894) The Sick Child (1885) Spring (1891) Sick Girl (Christian Krogh, 1881)Death in the Sickroom (1893) The Spanish Flu (1919)Between the Clock and the Bed (1940-1943)Melancholy (1892) The Scream (1893)Link to Russell Teagarden’s blog piece in According to the Arts on Øystein Ustvedt’s book, Edvard Munch: An Inner Life.Link to National Museum (Nasjonalmuseet), OsloThanks to Benedict Teagarden for the idea of speaking with an expert on Edvard Munch while in Oslo, and to Ingvild for the Norwegian language lessons. Please send us comments, recommendations, and questions to: [email protected] for listening, and please subscribe to The Clinic & The Person wherever you get your podcasts.Executive producer: Anne Bentley