Screaming
Norwegian artist Edvard Munch (1863-1944) wasn't a particularly cheerful guy. Grief, anxiety, and relentless despair plagued Munch (pronounced Moonk) for most of his life.
Munch's mother died of tuberculosis when he was 5. His older sister fell victim to the disease when he was 14. His father and brother, too, died when he was still young, and another sister went insane.
Munch wrote, "Sickness, madness, and death are the dark angels that watched over my crib when I was born." By midlife, he had suffered his own nervous breakdown. In later years, he lived as a recluse. All the while, he produced a body of paintings, etchings, prints, and woodcuts that transfixed viewers caught up in the sweeping social changes of a modernizing world.
Cold Realities, Heated Visions
A pioneering Expressionist, Munch rejected the naturalistic representations of most late 19th century French and German art. He turned instead to exaggerated, even distorted, expression of intensely subjective inner emotions.
"Just as in his drawings Leonardo explains anatomy," Munch wrote, "herewith I explain the anatomy of the soul . . . my task is the study of the soul, that is to say the study of my own self . . . in my art I have sought to explain my life and its meaning."
Critics panned his early work, dismissing his paintings as having little to do with art--"the visions of a sick brain." An 1892 exhibition of his paintings in Berlin closed within a week. His unconventional and bold representations of jarring emotions and frank sexuality were simply too shocking.
His work later gained acceptance, but Munch found little comfort in acclaim. "My fame is increasing," he wrote, "but happiness is another thing." He continued to paint, in solitude, until his death. He rarely exhibited or sold his work and kept most of his paintings in his own studio, considering them his "family."
Chilling Scream
The Scream (1893) is Munch's most famous work. Created as part of a series titled Frieze of Life, it portrays a vivid landscape of pain and fear, reflecting the anxiety of a society at the cusp of modernity.
Munch wrote of his piece: "I was tired and ill--I stopped and looked out across the fjord--the sun was setting--the clouds were dyed red like blood. I felt a scream pass through nature; it seemed to me that I could hear the scream. I painted this picture--painted the clouds as real blood.--The colors were screaming."
The Scream's first exhibition was nothing less than scandalous; today the painting is nothing less than a cultural icon, a singular representation of existential anxiety and alienation. The shriek cries out from a dizzying array of mundane objects, including ties, posters, mousepads, nightlights, calendars, and mugs. (One person's horror is another person's morning coffee.)
Hot Scream
On February 12, 1994--the opening day of the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway--thieves seized The Scream from Norway's National Gallery. They perched a ladder outside a window, broke the glass, cut the wire that held the painting to the wall, and made off with it.
A Lutheran minister connected to abortion opponents in Norway relayed the first condition for The Scream's safe return: the national broadcast of an anti-abortion film, "The Silent Scream," on Norwegian television. Later, a similarly connected lawyer called for a ransom of $1 million.
Neither of these conditions was met. In fact, neither "representative" had anything to do with the heist. Norwegian police, with help from Britain's Scotland Yard, recovered the painting in a sting operation just three months after its disappearance. They arrested three members of the Norwegian mob, who had hoped to raise money to buy drugs.
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