Date of Award

5-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in Art History and Visual Culture

Department

Art

First Advisor

Ana Schnellmann

Second Advisor

Nadia McDonald

Third Advisor

Trenton Olsen

Abstract

This paper explores the theory of the sublime in relation to Edvard Munch’s depictions of women. Departing from the common view that Munch was simply anxious about the “New Woman” that emerged in the late nineteenth-century, I argue that Munch’s conflicting emotions regarding women were sublime in nature, rooted in his childhood relationship with his mother. A formal analysis is conducted on three of Munch’s works: Inheritance (1897), Three Stages of Woman or Sphinx (1894), and Madonna (1895). These analyses link Munch’s representations of women to a maternal sublime.

Research Highlights

  • The Problem: Traditional art history scholarship attributes Edvard Munch's anxiety-ridden depictions of women to late-nineteenth-century cultural antagonism toward the "New Woman," neglecting the deeper maternal and psychological roots of these conflicting emotions.

  • The Method: The researcher conducted a formal qualitative analysis utilizing new historicism, psychological theory, infant research, and attachment theory to evaluate Edvard Munch’s childhood relationship with his mother alongside his private journals and letters.

  • The Method: The formal visual framework was applied specifically to three select artworks: Inheritance (1897), Woman in Three Stages or Sphinx (1894), and Madonna (1895).

  • Qualitative Finding: Edvard Munch developed a disorganized, fearful-avoidant childhood attachment style due to the terminal illness and physical absence of his mother, Laura Cathrine Bjølstad, who died of tuberculosis when Munch was four years old; this maternal trauma manifested in his art as a structural sublime characterized by a dualistic juxtaposition of awe and terror, attraction and repulsion, or pleasure and pain rather than simple misogyny or anxiety.

  •  Quantitative Finding: Edvard Munch's full lifetime artistic output comprised over 1,000 paintings and over 15,000 prints.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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