Emin/Munch: Between the Clock and the Bed

First broadcast in 2020, this documentary charts the affinities between the art of Edvard Munch and that of Tracey Emin, exploring the many unexpected ways that the godfather of expressionism resonates with one of Britain’s pre-eminent artists.

Munch’s work has long inspired Emin, from her early video piece Homage to Edvard Munch and All My Dead Children to her monumental nine-metre high bronze sculpture, The Mother, set to be installed outside Oslo’s new Munch Museum in spring 2021.

Alongside Emin’s voice, which runs like a thread throughout the documentary, we hear from art historians and curators in Norway, showing the innovations in printmaking and sculpture that Munch pioneered in his lifetime alongside his more well-known painting work.

We see inside the homes where he created his work, still perfectly preserved today. We also find out more about Munch’s photographic and film work, media not normally associated with the artist but within which can be found clear correspondences with Emin’s work. These scenes are complemented by footage of one of Emin’s new monumental bronze sculptures being forged in a foundry in Stoke-on-Trent, and the works of Emin and Munch shown together at the Royal Academy.