Call Munch’s Amor and Psyche a representation of myth without the myth. Amor, more commonly known as Cupid, lacks any sense of godliness. He has no wings, no bow, and no arrow. Munch has also taken Psyche’s astounding beauty that gave her the ability to seduce a god. She merely looks tired and deformed.

Munch attacks his subject matter in an entirely different way than all other painters our class has examined this year. His post-impressionism seeks to represent more abstract ideas than the Renaissance styles. These painters focused on literal representation and their symbolism extended only so far as to include halos and chimeras. Now, you may say I am overlooking very important and big exceptions, but guess what? This is my blog post, and I am tired of looking at angels, saints, and Jesus. Now, you know your class has looked at way too many religious paintings when the Catholic kid says something like this. So buckle up and ride along with my gross, untruthful generalization. I miss my Munch, and I want him back for a day.

Metamorphoses describes the tale of Psyche and Cupid as thus. A princess named Psyche possesses such beauty that the goddess Venus becomes jealous. So she sends her son Cupid down to take care of the problem. Cupid’s mission is simple: make Psyche fall in love with the ugliest dude he can find. There’s only one problem. Cupid has kind of a soft spot for beautiful princesses. So instead he secretly marries Psyche, but does not allow her to know his true identity. Henceforth, Cupid only visits her in the dead of night. Finally, she gets fed up with this arrangement and lights a lamp. She then discovers Cupid’s godhood. Needless to say this causes some complications for their relationship, but it all works out in the end.

I’d call this a rather peachy story, but Munch rejects that interpretation. Instead he plays with the idea of darkness and the fragile structure of the mind within these godlike figures. Notice the heavy, black brush strokes over Amor. These are prison bars. They are on Psyche’s face as well. The background has similar brush strokes, but they are white. I imagine the whiteness represents Psyche’s turning on of the light. The light then begins to illuminate the two figures. It has reached all of Psyche’s body and Amor’s shoulders. In the myth, Psyche discovers Cupid’s godliness. In Munch’s painting, she discovers a lonely, naked man. Also, the beauty Psyche supposedly possesses does not seem apparent. She looks blurred and delicate. These two bigger than life figures are really fleeting ideas that can be repressed. Amor, or love, and Psyche, the mind, are illogical. Munch did not want these things in his life, along with God. I believe I have already written a blog post talking about Munch’s atheism, but to reiterate Munch thought the world too ugly of a place to be created by a perfect all-knowing entity. There are only people, and they create myths in order to explain the things they cannot understand, such as the mind and emotions. However in Munch’s time, Freud had dissected the mind. Myths were no longer needed and to Munch, neither was love or rationality.