Focus on this artwork and analyze the Composition.
The artist is surrounded by a dark shadow as he holds a smoking cigarette. John Ravenal compares the painting's dramatic lighting to that of a stage.: 88  Sue Prideaux writes that "Munch appears from the cigarette smoke like a genie from a bottle".: 157  The cigarette, which the art historian Patricia Berman calls "a nexus for marginal social identities in the 1890s", was a symbol for "deviancy" and the "social dissolution" between class and gender boundaries. Thus, its inclusion in the self-portrait rejects traditional values and associates Munch with bohemianism and decadence. Berman also believes that the artist's depiction of himself with a "thin, dissolving body" and "sallow skin" employs physical decay to challenge social and health norms.: 627, 644
genie bohemianism John Ravenal Sue Prideaux decadence