'What do I know about art? Nothing! I know nothing! I have no idea what's good and what's bad!' It was a little like reading Dostoyevsky for the first time: emotions taking hold of you directly, no indirection.' I understood these paintings were on a higher level. 'It was as if the paintings wanted something from me, that they contained a power of expression that was so much stronger than anything I had ever seen before,' Knausgaard said of the gallery in which Munch classics such as The Scream (1893), The Dance of Life (1899), and Melancholy (1892) are part of the permanent exhibition.

'Being the only Norwegian artist recognized worldwide, Munch was kind of everywhere and nowhere when I grew up.' He knew the iconic images, but at 17, he visited the National Gallery in Oslo on a school trip, and that's when he really saw Munch. Knausgaard describes his early relationship to Munch as that of a typical Norwegian. But even that is better than the usual rounds of hallelujahs and awe.' 'There is an obvious risk all people will see are just bad Munch paintings-there is probably a reason why many of them have never been exhibited. Now he is curious to see how others will respond to Towards the Forest, as the exhibition is called. With the exhibition comes a new book by Knausgaard, entitled So Much Longing on Such a Small Surface, an ambitious personal essay in which Knausgaard relates to Munch as one artist investigating the methods, goals, and intentions of another.

A few of the paintings have never even been shown in public before. Met with an onslaught of press coverage and a packed reception party, Knausgaard's show consists of lesser-known and often-overlooked works from the collection.

The museum's collection houses more than 1,700 paintings left by Edvard Munch, creator of that deeply recognizable icon of existential angst, The Scream, to the city of Oslo after his death in 1944. Karl Ove Knausgaard is talking about his initial response when asked to curate an exhibition of Edvard Munch's paintings.įor a couple of years now, the famed Norwegian novelist who gained international recognition with My Struggle, his six-volume autobiographical novel (an excerpt of which appeared on ), has been delving into the storage rooms in the basement of Oslo's Munch Museum.

'My only thought was, Yes! What an amazing assignment.'

Knausgaard munch