Paintings are like adolescence. When studying paintings, we find it hard to choose just one adjective that defines them. The same goes for adolescence; it is hard to decide whether it was tragic, dreamlike or daunting. Especially when you have freshly entered your twenties, and your perception of life is more adult, but not completely beyond adolescent velleities. Whenever I look at Puberty by Munch, I remember a story that is just as much mine. It was not the first time I cried looking at a painting, but it still sticks with me.

It was January 2024, a few days after my Cambridge acceptance letter. It was an intense time, something stronger than classic teenage rebellion. It was a time when I didn’t know if I was more eager to be free, to end high school or to leave a city that had always felt suffocating. I was completing a five year journey with a class of 20 people who no longer tolerated each other, forced to show solidarity only when juggling one translation of Latin with another of Ancient Greek.

“This girl is facing her mental motions on a bed that symbolises something much bigger than just puberty”

That day, we were studying Munch’s Puberty, and our art history teacher started describing the canvas: “This is an extremely delicate painting.” In her seriousness, our teacher indulged an empathetic description of the painting: “A young girl still has to get used to the changes in her body, the changes in her life.” I still remember how she stopped to look at us. “The girl’s pale body contrasts with her own shadow, and, without clothes, she feels vulnerable, eternal and confused, external to her own body. The colours on this canvas are dark, they echo the internal motions this girl is facing, slowly discovering new sides of her own mind.” She paused again, as if to reveal something more important: “This girl is facing her mental motions on a bed that symbolises something much bigger than just puberty: it represents a whole life.”

“Suddenly, a simple room portrayed by Munch with thick oil on canvas, reminds me of all the beds I have lived in”

Our class didn’t understand this symbolism. We looked at each other, searching for someone who might have grasped it. How could a bed have all this importance? There are so many visual symbolisms that could have been more fitting metaphors for life: the skulls of the medieval Ars moriendi, the hourglasses in Holbein’s Dance of the Death, the bubbles in Salvator Rosa’s Human Frailty. So why did Munch choose a bed to represent this girl’s life? Our teacher accepted that no accurate interpretation would come from us. She explained: “That bed is the symbol of a whole existence, tracing every phase of our life. In bed, they put us to sleep as babies, cradled by the love of our parents. As adults, it becomes our safe place, where we can rest, dream, and feel comfortable. And when we are old, it becomes our deathbed.”

This was logical and accurate reasoning, which, for many in our class, was just another artistic interpretation. To me, that reasoning was a lump in my throat. I had never thought how much ordinary objects like a bed could tell so much about life. And perhaps only then did I feel the weight of my life being close to a significant change, my friends changing paths, and the awareness that, when starting university, my room’s bed would remain empty. I started crying uncontrollably. She must still think that I was crying because I lost my train ticket. This artwork always reminds me that whatever age, I never forget the fascinating, bittersweet feeling of being 17. Suddenly, a simple room portrayed by Munch with thick oil on canvas, reminds me of all the beds I have lived in, from summer camps I’ll never see again, to houses I’ll never go back to, and College rooms that will never be mine again.