"'Whatever the painting communicates, it does so silently and worldessly, and what I understand it with is similarly silent and wordless. Can one then speak of "understanding" at all?... To write about painting deepens the same problem. A painting addresses itself directly to the emotions, and when the emotions are explained and words assigned to what is wordless, it becomes something else.' —Karl Ove Knausgaard
Of the 2,000 pages I've read of Knausgaard's work in English (hardly a fraction, mind you), these pages on the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch emerge as some of my favorite. So Much Longing in So Little Space is Knausgaard's 'something else,' a profound book on one of the writer's first and deepest loves: art."
Publisher Penguin Books
Publication Date 2019-03-26
Section New Titles - Paperback / Art / All Staff Suggestions / Nonfiction Suggestions / Spencer R.
Format Paperback
ISBN 9780143133131
Literary giant Karl Ove Knausgaard offers a brilliant and personal assessment of the famous expressionist painter, his Norwegian compatriot, Edvard Munch Karl Ove Knausgaard's renowned sui generis autobiographical works, both the My Struggle and Four Seasons series, have been celebrated for their passionate and original engagement with art and their insightful critical excursions. But never before in English has Knausgaard published a true work of nonfiction. With this daring sweeping study, in characteristic style, Knausgaard combines piercing artistic insight with freewheeling historical, biographical, and autobiographical digressions, bringing to life Munch's emotionally and psychologically intense work with extraordinary and fitting feeling and urgency. Munch has long been most famous for his iconic work The Scream, but a series of important and comprehensive exhibitions with major galleries in both London and New York have promoted a recent surge of interest. A singular and exceptionally stylish work of art criticism, and a perfect match of subject and author, So Much Longing in So Little Space, which will include reproductions of a number of Munch's most significant paintings, will be an essential and fascinating volume for both Knausgaard's legion of loyal readers and devotees of the visual arts alike.
