What is Anxiety?
Anxiety is what we feel when we are worried, tense or afraid - particularly about things that are about to happen or which we think could happen in the future.
Occasional Anxiety is a normal human experience. But if your feelings of anxiety are very strong or last for a long time , they can be overwhelming. You might also experience physical symptoms such as sleep problems or panic attacks.
Anxiety in Art
Anxiety is now the dominant emotional experience of our time, precisely for this reason: anything and everything is on show, for sale and attainable, but (for too many people) perpetually withheld, out of reach. Whereas historically people were condemned to misery or boredom, anxiety becomes pervasive in conditions where free choice is unfettered, and yet at some level illusory.
Anxiety is linked to the very process of self-creation. It arises not from constraint in the first instance, but the simultaneously exhilarating and horrifying realisation that destiny is, to a greater or lesser extent, in one’s own hands.
Edvard Munch
Edvard Munch, an outstanding Norwegian painter and graphic artist, has created many artworks that still evoke a lively emotional response from the audience. The painter created his most famous image, The Scream, after it came to him when he was out for a walk at sunset on a fjord overlooking Oslo. He wrote that as the sun began to set, it suddenly turned the sky a blood red.
The Scream was a picture he painted to represent his soul. Rather than adhering to the art style of the time — that is, painting pictures meticulously to realistically represent the subjects in them — he chose to use an unrealistic style to paint his emotions, rather than focus on realism and perfectionism in his art. Munch explained that he painted a moment of existential crisis. The artist's life was full of losses, fears and contradictions; he struggled with himself and with his mental illness for most of his life. Munch was known to suffer from anxiety and hallucinations. |