Some of Munch's own detailed descriptions of how he could himself be gripped with paralysing angst we find in his literary sketches dating back to his restless wanderings on Karl Johan Street in Christiania in search of "Mrs Heiberg". The descriptions often move directly into angst-ridden childhood memories of his sickly, dying mother. This intimate connection between love and angst is also emphasised by the fact that, early in the 1890s, Munch concluded the series of pictures he called Love with the angst motif par excellence - Scream. Not until the exhibition of The Frieze of Life at the Berlin Secession in 1902 did the angst and death motifs constitute a separate group in The Frieze of Life. Late on in life Munch toyed with the idea of exhibiting The Frieze of Life in two large rooms, one with love motifs, the other with death motifs, the entrance to the latter being encircled with angst motifs; the universal Angst is thus viewed as a transition.

In a way angst is an underlying tone in all Munch's classic works, a point noted by Munch's contemporaries. For example Eduard Gérard wrote a review of Munch's pictures at the Indépendant in Paris in 1897, which Munch had translated into Norwegian and printed in the catalogue of an exhibition at Blomqvist's in Christiania the same year and again in 1918 in the booklet The Frieze of Life, where for instance it is stated that:

The suffering which runs like a fever through his works reveals the great empathy he feels for the pain of life. One of his pictures is called "Angst". But this special title was not really necessary, it suggested itself, and not just for this picture. For angst is everywhere in his work, in everything produced by his hand, angst for what lies in store for us, the universal feeling of angst, which has never been stronger or more alive in the world than at this moment. It is this angst that we find in Munch's pictures, in the uncertain eyes, which question, which look up at us in expectation of an answer.

Existential angst, perhaps coloured by Munch's Protestant, pious background, is the hallmark of Munch the artist. It is from the perspective of a Nordic existential tradition, with the poet-philosopher Søren Kierkegaard as foremost representative, that we most clearly see what is special about Munch's view, in a note dating from as early as 1888-1889, in other words, from long before the typical angst motifs were painted. The note contains ideas which go some way towards explaining how Munch abstracts the visual starting-point for a kind of subjective expression which traditional art scarcely had any inkling of, let alone accepted; an artistic programme in line with Kierkegaard's religious and existential problem of communication:

In general, art results from one person's desire
to communicate with another -
All means are equally good -

In painting as in literature, the means is often mistaken for the end - Nature is the means not the end - if one can achieve something by changing nature - one must do so - When one is deeply moved a landscape will have a certain effect on one - by portraying this landscape one will produce a picture of one's own mood - it is this mood which is the essential thing - nature is just the means - how far the picture then resembles nature is irrelevant - To explain a picture is impossible - it is precisely because one cannot explain it in any other way that it is painted - One can merely give a little hint as to the lines one had been thinking along
I do not believe in art which has not thrust itself into being by a person's desire to open his heart
All art, literature and music must be produced with the heart's blood.
Art is the heart's blood.

Read the introductions to LOVE og DEATH.