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拍品专文
One of Edvard Munch’s earliest lithographs, The Alley (1895) depicts a disturbing scene: a nude young woman flanked by two rows of men who gaze intently upon her exposed, slight body. Presented in the foreground of this triangular composition, the pale form of the woman is softly rendered in light strokes of lithographic crayon, sharply contrasted with the dark, velvety evening-wear of the leering, bourgeois men that surround her. This stark tonal opposition – produced through the artist's gestural application of ink to the chosen support of thin laid Japan paper – invokes a sense of encroachment and power imbalance, intensified by the work's tightly cropped composition.
Created amid widespread social transformation in late 19th-century Europe, The Alley reflects shifting gender dynamics, which would become a recurring theme throughout Munch’s practice. Despite the outward conservatism of Kristiania, a regulated sex trade functioned within the religious state, establishing a deep hypocrisy within the ostensibly moral society, which this image seems to expose. The present work has also been occasionally titled Carmen, linking the image to Georges Bizet’s famous opera, which premiered in Paris in 1875. Recounting the story of a defiant woman who seduces both a torero and a soldier, who ultimately kills her out of jealousy, the musical play scandalised its contemporary audiences. Whether or not the artist himself thought of the opera when he created this print, it is an association which introduces a more complex reading of female agency and objectification within Munch's equivocal print. Executed in a loose, gestural combination of tusche and crayon, the print’s suggestive graphic language mirrors the ambiguity of its subject matter and exemplifies Munch’s ability to create concise and highly emotive images, which however resist any simple or fixed interpretation.
Created amid widespread social transformation in late 19th-century Europe, The Alley reflects shifting gender dynamics, which would become a recurring theme throughout Munch’s practice. Despite the outward conservatism of Kristiania, a regulated sex trade functioned within the religious state, establishing a deep hypocrisy within the ostensibly moral society, which this image seems to expose. The present work has also been occasionally titled Carmen, linking the image to Georges Bizet’s famous opera, which premiered in Paris in 1875. Recounting the story of a defiant woman who seduces both a torero and a soldier, who ultimately kills her out of jealousy, the musical play scandalised its contemporary audiences. Whether or not the artist himself thought of the opera when he created this print, it is an association which introduces a more complex reading of female agency and objectification within Munch's equivocal print. Executed in a loose, gestural combination of tusche and crayon, the print’s suggestive graphic language mirrors the ambiguity of its subject matter and exemplifies Munch’s ability to create concise and highly emotive images, which however resist any simple or fixed interpretation.