Edvard Munch nature." He later described the personal anguish behind the painting, "for several years I was almost mad… You know my picture, 'The Scream?' I was stretched to the limit—nature was screaming in my blood… After that I gave up hope ever of being able to love again." In summing up the painting's effects, author Martha Tedeschi has stated: "Whistler's Mother", Wood's "American Gothic", Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa" and Edvard Munch's "The Scream" have all achieved something that most paintings—regardless of their art historical importance, beauty, or monetary value—have not: they communicate a specific meaning almost immediately to almost every
The Kiss (Munch painting) was part of a series Munch called the "Frieze of Life", on which he spent more than 30 years of his career. The cycle depicts stages of a relationship between men and women and is part of what Munch called "the battle between men and women that is called love". It includes portrayals of attraction, courtship, realization, and disappointment. According to the Museum of Modern Art, the dark ambiance of "The Kiss" is representative of Munch's ambivalence regarding romance. In the 1897 painting, art historian Reinhold Heller finds it "virtually impossible" to separate the two figures, particularly where their faces