Aging & Wisdom Quote by Edvard Munch

Youth is supposed to be the disruptive engine of art, but Munch’s line twists that expectation into a dry complaint: the kids are “very talented” and still somehow missing the point. The praise lands first, then the knife. “Must go ahead and prosper” sounds like benevolent encouragement, the sort of civic-minded toast you’d give at a graduation. Then he narrows the aperture to something almost petty - “they all paint frescoes” - and suddenly the sentence becomes a diagnosis of a scene that’s thriving in technique while stalling in imagination.

Fresco, as a form, carries institutional baggage: public walls, sanctioned spaces, durable narratives, the kind of work that often flatters stability. For a modernist like Munch, whose project was interior weather - anxiety, desire, dread rendered as atmosphere - the fresco can read as a retreat into craft and decorum. He’s not attacking their ability; he’s mocking their unanimity. The real target is trend conformity, the way “youth” can become a brand while reproducing safe aesthetics.

Context matters: Munch came of age fighting academic taste and moral propriety, taking heat for making paintings that looked like emotions rather than objects. From that vantage, a cohort of talented young artists all making the same kind of respectable, wall-friendly work feels like a betrayal of the generational job description. The joke is that they’re prospering - just not advancing.