Edvard Munch's 'To the Forest': Nature as medium and metaphor

Edvard Munch, in his many paintings and prints, frequently applies biological concepts and botanical imagery, as explanatory metaphors for human problems. Munch's biological and natural motifs seem heavily indebted to nineteenth-century scientific and philosophical thinking, particularly Vitalism, and the ideas of Nietzsche. Munch's woodcuts include some of his most interesting visualizations of the themes of biology; the woodcut To the Forest (Mot Skogen) is one such work in which biological concepts are central to its meaning. References to the natural world occur in both the representation of a forest, while its very medium is wood. The woodcut is thus a nexus where, in its medium and its message, nineteenth-century ideas about nature, science, love and the human soul, coexist in a struggle for coherence.