A showcase of eighteen masterworks by one of the world’s greatest modern artists.

This important publication accompanies a major exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery, London, of paintings by Edvard Munch (1863–1944). The catalog and accompanying exhibition showcase eighteen major works from the collection of KODE Art Museums in Bergen, one of the most important collections of Munch paintings in the world. The works span the most significant part of Munch’s artistic development and have never before been shown as a group outside of Scandinavia.

This book explores this group of remarkable works in detail and considers the important role of its collector, Rasmus Meyer. The exhibition and publication include seminal paintings from Munch’s early “realist” phase of the 1880s, such as Morning and Summer Night, pivotal works that show the artist’s move towards the expressive and psychologically charged work for which he became famous. These paintings launched Munch’s career and set the stage for his renowned, highly expressive paintings of the 1890s. Such works are a major feature of the exhibition that includes remarkable canvases from Munch’s famous Frieze of Life series, which address profound themes of human existence, from love to death. Munch’s powerful use of color and form marked him as one of the most radical painters at the turn of the twentieth century.

This fully illustrated publication includes a catalog of the works, with contributions by leading experts in their field from KODE and the Courtauld. 

In Masterpieces of Metonymy, Gregory Nagy analyzes metonymy as a mental process that complements metaphor. If metaphor is a substitution of something unfamilar for something familiar, then metonymy can be seen as a connecting of something familiar with something else that is already familiar. Applying this formulation, Nagy offers close readings of over one hundred examples of metonymy as it comes to life in the verbal and the visual arts of Greek culture, as well as in the arts of other cultures. Though it is debatable whether all the selected examples really qualify as masterpieces, what they all have in common is their potential for artistic greatness. A close reading of the verbal and the visual evidence, Nagy argues, leads to a fuller appreciation of this greatness.

This unpretentious catalog, issued for the Peabody's "masterpieces" exhibit of 1978, presents some of the best-known artifacts of the museum, along with brief explanations of each piece's significance, heritage, and meaning. Contributors include Marie Jeanne Adams, Jeffrey P. Brain, J. O. Brew, Wilburt K. Carter, Kwang-chih Chang, Clemency C. Coggins, Carleton S. Coon, Ian Graham, Tatiana Proskouriakoff, Peter Wells, and others.