In my opinion, he's the best of the best.
What carries me away?
Edvard Munch, but not "The Scream" Edvard Munch, my Munch is the master of capturing the human condition, gothic or grandiose but usually gothic. After all, who really remembers the love stories? Instead we remember the bloody stories, when the main character gouges his eyes out. This is the condition that Munch captures so beautifully, and it is for this reason that from now on, all of my journal entries will be accompanied by a Munch painting.
Myth is not simply a creation of literature, to be applied therein and then forgotten in the course of our everyday lives. Myth inhabits everything; it lives and breathes everywhere, and while some might be scrutinizing the text of "Daisy Miller" trying to pick out the details until they get to the myth at the end or until their patience ends, as mine did. I prefer to look at Munch's paintings. Granted, I will scour a text and pick out the important stuff when its required, but for recreational myth finding I really just like the simplicity of paintings. Not that they are all that simple as Guy Davenport's analysis of American Gothic proved. Still I find something inherently mythic in Munch's paintings, no button and pitchfork analysis needed.
To me, the man in this painting is Hazel Motes, or Oedipus (in reality it is a self portrait of Munch.) He is man possessed with passion and strong. He encompasses the greatest meaning of what it means to be human and to me that is what myth is. It is both the basic level upon which we all work, but it is the greatest thing that we can all be. I cannot explain the feeling that most of Munch's paintings give me but it is similar to that. It is similar to that, it is everything that resides within each of us, the myth within each of us brought to life.
Marilyn