How should we interpret Munch's especial liking for self-portraits? Generally, it can be understood by the correspondence between subjective character of the selfportrait and that of his art itself. The very self-recognition in his self-portraits is one of the main sources of his art, which used to transfer his own experiences to pictorial media. Therefore his continual making of self-portraits can be thought to come from the essential character of his art. In fact, various forms of his self-portraits, including two series of them, eigentlich und latent, correspond orderly to the periods of his art. And when we examine his works in detail, it is evident that his art and also his self-portraits will to transform his own private images into more generalized ones. So the motive which developed his self-portraits accurately corresponds to that which changed his styles of his art. As he himself suggests, the best way to make clear the latter motive is to analyse Zwei Menschen od. Metabolismus (1899). This symbolical work tells the eternal renewal of life through the destruction of his own life. This is the manifestation of his idea of art as crystallization (according to him, death is the beginning for new life, for new crystallization). Thus his self-portraits also reveal his desire for the rebirth from his demoniac past.
