Emma & Edvard Looking Sideways: Loneliness and the Cinematic
Two masters come face-to-face when the works of Edvard Munch are juxtaposed against Gustave Flaubert’s groundbreaking novel Madame Bovary. This compelling book explores the filmatic aspect of Munch’s art by combining contemporary art theory with video artist, art theorist and curator Mieke Bal’s idiosyncratic way of looking at art: Directly and closely.
The book challenges the preconception of museum publications by being an honest and direct, almost vulnerable, object. The delicate enveloping jacket is not bound to the book block, revealing the details of the construction and production of the object.
The book accompanies the exhibition Emma & Edvard – Love in the Time of Loneliness.
The cover integrates text and image through two die cut holes. Taking off the cover, two different portraits become visible – Munch’s classic portrait format against Bal’s wide videoformat.
The academic format of the content with it’s distinctive and direct relationship between text and image led to the development of a layout system where the images flow into the text blocks from the right. This creates a natural variation in the book’s 304 text heavy pages.
The chapters are marked by Munch’s works being set against still images from Mieke Bal’s elaborate video installation Madame B (2014), as a direct reflection of the exhibition layout.
