Daily Inspiration Quote by Edvard Munch

Munch’s jab lands because it treats “tradition” the way an engineer treats obsolete hardware: impressive in its time, pointlessly worshipped now. Oil painting, in his phrasing, isn’t a sacred language handed down from the masters; it’s a technique, a tool that evolved to solve particular problems of representation. Once you call it that, the romance drains out of academic reverence. The sting is in the follow-up: “Why go backwards?” It’s not just impatience with conservatism, it’s a refusal to confuse difficulty with progress.

The context matters. Munch comes up in a Europe where painting is splitting into factions: academies defending polished illusion, modernists insisting that art’s job isn’t to flatter the eye but to expose the nerves. For Munch, the point isn’t to demonstrate technical control so much as to transmit anxiety, desire, grief - states that don’t arrive neatly varnished. Oil can do that, but the prestige surrounding it can also become a leash, pushing artists toward finish, depth, and “proper” handling when what they need is abrasion, speed, or bluntness.

The subtext is a warning about nostalgia as an aesthetic. When a medium becomes a badge of seriousness, artists start performing seriousness instead of making work that feels necessary. Munch frames modern art’s core demand: choose the method that serves the feeling and the moment, not the method that reassures the gatekeepers. Progress, here, isn’t newness for its own sake; it’s refusing to pretend the past is the only standard worth meeting.