The Scream
An agonized figure wails against a blood red Oslofjord skyline in Edvard Munch's The Scream (1893), National Gallery, Oslo.The Scream (Skrik, 1893) is a seminal expressionist painting by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch. Regarded by many as his most important work, it is said by some to symbolize modern man taken by an attack of existential angst. The landscape in the background is Oslofjord, viewed from the hill of Ekeberg. The Norwegian word skrik is usually translated as "scream", but is cognate with the English shriek. Occasionally, the painting has been called The Cry.
Munch executed four versions of the painting, of which the most famous are a tempera on cardboard version (measuring 83.5 x
Sources of inspiration
Munch wrote, concerning the image:
"I was walking along a path with two friends - the sun was setting - suddenly the sky turned blood red - I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence - there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city - my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety - and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature."
This has led some commentators to propose that the person in the painting is not screaming, but reacting with despair to the scream passing through nature.
The scene is from a road overlooking Oslo, the Oslofjord and Hovedøya, from the hill of Ekeberg. At the time of painting the work Munch's manic depressive sister Laura Cathrine was interned in the mental hospital at the foot of Ekeberg.
In 2003, astronomers claimed to have identified the time that the painting depicted. The eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 caused unusually intense sunsets throughout Europe in the winter of 1883-4, which Munch captured in his picture.
In 1978, the renowned Munch scholar Robert Rosenblum suggested that the strange, sexless creature in the foreground of the painting was probably inspired by a Peruvian mummy which Munch could have seen at the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris. This mummy, which was crouching in fetal position with its hands alongside its face, also struck the imagination of Munch's friend Paul Gauguin: it stood model for the central figure in his painting Human misery (Grape harvest at Arles) and for the old woman at the left in his painting Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?. More recently, an Italian anthropologist speculated that Munch might have seen a mummy in Florence's Museum of Natural History which bears an even more striking resemblance to the painting.
Role in popular culture
Robert Fishbone's inflatable ScreamIn the late 20th century, The Scream acquired iconic status in popular culture. In 1983-1984, pop artist Andy Warhol made a series of silk prints of works by Munch, including The Scream. The idea was to desacralize the painting by devaluating its originality and making it into a mass-reproducible object. However, as remarked above, Munch had already begun that process himself, by making a lithograph of the work for reproduction.
Characteristic of post-modern art is Erró's ironic and irreverent treatment of Munch's masterpiece in his acrylic paintings The Second Scream (1967) and Ding Dong (1979).
Munch translated The Scream into lithograph in 1895 so that it could be reproduced all over the world.The work's reproduction on all kinds of items, from tee shirts to coffee mugs, bears witness to its iconic status as well as to its complete desacralization in the eyes of today's public. In that respect, it is comparable to other iconic works of art, such as Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. The Scream is an emotionally very potent work, and the banalization of the image in popular culture can be interpreted as an attempt to defuse the feeling of unease it inevitabily provokes in the viewer, though some would say that this interpretation is overcomplication, and that the makers of merchandise are simply trying to make money off a well known image.
An American muralist, Robert Fishbone, discovered a gap in the market when in 1991 he started selling inflatable dolls of the central figure in the painting. His St. Louis-based company, On The Wall Productions, has sold hundreds of thousands of them. Critics have observed that by taking the figure out of its context (the landscape), Fishbone has destroyed the unity of Munch's work, thereby neutralizing its expressive force.
As one of very few works of modern art that are instantly recognizable even to people who know very little about art, The Scream has been used in advertising, in cartoons and on television. In one of her talk shows, Dame Edna Everage appeared in a Scream-patterned dress. The work has also fascinated film makers. Ghostface, the psychotic murderer in Wes Craven's Scream horror movies, wears a Halloween mask inspired by the central figure in the painting. Child actor Macaulay Culkin's pose in front of the mirror, in Home Alone by Chris Columbus, also refers ironically to Munch's work.
