The Kiss Analysis

1. Edvard Munch, The Kiss, 1897, oil on canvas, 99 cm × 81 cm, Munch Museum

2. Rene Magritte, The Lovers II, 1928, Paris, oil on canvas, 54 x 73.4 cm, Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA

The Kissing in Western art history

There were numerous of Kisses thought out the western art history. Rather it can represent intimacy, tenderness, sadness and betrayal in different attempts. Like the sculptures The Kiss by Auguste Rodin in the thirteen century, the oil painting The Kiss by Gustav Klimt and Painting The Kiss by Pablo Picasso in 1967. Every kiss has its own story, and sends a message given and received with different levels of meaning. In this essay, we will concentrate on the compression and contract on the two oil paintings which are The

Style

The two artworks are both base on a loveable act kissing but they are totally different in style. As we can see The Kiss by Munch, a couple kissing in a dark room. There are no sign of any realistic pictorial depicting.

The space, the couple, the certain and the window are not realistic at all. Even without any facial features on the couple’s faces, they melted together and formed a new space. The brushstrokes are rough so as Munch expressed his feeling toward love and human. Munch once said:“No longer shall I interiors with men reading and women knitting. I will paint living people who breathe and feel and suffer and love.” He intended to paint want he felt and suffer. The Kiss by Munch is expressionism in style. While The Lovers II

By Rene Magritte is surrealism in style. As we can see a man kissing a woman with “realistic” bodies and background, they seemed realistic but in fact they are surreal, for example, there are no space shown between the man and woman and the wall and

Red, White, Blue and Black but in The Kiss, the color key is lower which mean the overall color use is darker and had very little depiction of light and dark. In The Lovers, the expression of light and dark contact are strong and prominently with cold tone of colors. The color blue is associated with calm or water which is associated with life. The color red is associated with anger, lust and love while white is associated with purity which also happens to be the least shown. Black is commonly associated with death which the man may be representative of. The woman is dressed in red which may mean love or passion. The veils are of a whitish or grayish color and depending upon how you see it could mean purity or could mean the purity is fading or