A Website intended to mock and lampoon

the pretensions of Art History

Roy: Ed, you obviously have a lot of explaining to do. How can you possibly be Edvard Munch?

Munch: Look, this is a story I had to tell. I know it sounds far fetched, but I have had the most specific, intense dreams full of details that only Edvard Munch could know. I have been working with the curators of the Munch Museum in Oslo, and they admit that I know some uncanny things.

R: Can you tell me some specifics?

M: Sure, My name is Edvard Munch, and I was originally born in Norway in 1863. In my past life I was known for my violent, expressionistic paintings. In this life, I was born Eddie Zelanski Junior. My father is a Dentist in Jersey, and my mother is an Elementary School Teacher. My life was pretty normal until college.

While taking an Art History class at Columbia my junior year, I first saw slides of my early paintings, and immediately knew that I had painted them. It was a very wierd feeling, but I those were MY fjords, bridges and sickrooms. I even recognized the yellow bowl that my sister Inger used to vomit in.

R: And you were a Studio Art Major at Columbia. right?

M: Yes, I was getting ready to apply for an MFA program. I knew that I wanted to be a painter, and getting an MFA is essential for artists these days. I don't think any such degree existed in Norway at the end of the 19th century, and we were the worse off for it. At any rate, I was painting, but also going through violent bouts of depression.

I don't know whether the depression was organic or situational, but I drank Starbucks until noon, then smoked pot through the evening: anything to change my mood. Once at a gallery opening I was so wasted that I peed on the wall. Another time I turned over a table in a restaurant when a friend made fun of my work, which at the time was Minimal/Conceptual. I think I knew I was going nowhere.

R: When did you begin to tell people about your dreams?

M: God, it was awful, I kept it all bottled up. I was dating this girl that I really liked but I knew she would freak out and leave me if I did. In the end we broke up anyway because she turned out to be a real vampire, but thats another story.

Finally, a few years ago I just got so scared and sick that I got into counseling, and thats when the turnaround started. My first shrink was a Jungian, and all he did was have me draw while he earned $150.00 an hour. That was useless, but then a friend of my Dad's put me on Paxil, and that started to help.

R: What were the changes?

M: Interestingly enough, the changes showed up in my artwork almost immediately. I saw how my work was totally lacking in technique, and that I had no real skills built up. Everything I had done was just a jumble of incoherent isms. When I made the switch from Paxil to Prozac I really began to blossom as a traditional oil painter, and it felt great. I calmed down a lot.

R: So you give a lot of credit to Prozac?

M: Well, I think the artistic skills were always there, waiting for my mind to clear up. What Prozac did was let me approach my artmaking with the sense that things were just not so bad. I started saying "hello" to strangers in the street, and I apologized to my parents for all the trouble I had caused them. I got my tatoos lasered off, dumped the earrings and my angry attitude at the world. Yes, it really made a big difference.

R: Any other changes?

M: Well, Jesus and I talk more often, if you know what I mean.

R: What do you think of the current art scene in New York?

M: Well its a big joke, a lot of pseudo crap being sold to pretentious billionaires. Of course thats to be expected in a city where even the Museums show trash. I can't believe that all that all those old Nordic Virgins and haunted coves that I did are still around. I was positively demented when I did them.

R: Any artists that you particularly dislike?

M: The worst of them is that Norwegian Odd Nerdrum. Gosh, whats with all the bathing caps and erections? HE must have been August Strindberg last time around. (Laughter follows). Wow, its so great that I can have a good laugh now and then. And that whole "Sensation" thing at the Guggenheim: that was a big joke. Anybody can saw a cow in half!

R: What are your plans now.

M: Well, I am selling my work on ebay, and I have a lot of resumes out. Disney has shown some interest in my portfolio, but they were a little put off by the past life stuff. I think I just need to settle down and paint.

R: Can you show me some of your work?

M: Not a problem...