WTAWT: Edvard Munch's "The Scream"

WTAWT (What the Artist Wants to Tell) is meant to be fun, to take a few exuberant leaps of thought about famous works of art around the world, in order to encourage the reader to further leaps of thought – free art , free art appreciation and free art interpretation, for all people.

So Edvard Munch's "The Scream" doesn't really fit into this category at all; after all, the "Scream," along with Picasso's war drama "Guernica ," Damien Hirst's diamond-encrusted skull "For the Love of God," and other well-known horrors, is among the works that can at least make the viewer shudder.

But horror and death are a ratings hit, as entire evenings of television prove, in which nothing else is shown but crime dramas or reality documentaries of a quality that is even more hopeless than death and horror.

And the art exhibitors are of course fully in line with the mainstream, as the exhibition “Lust am Schrecken – Ausdrucksformen des Grauens” in 2015 proved, featuring 70 particularly gruesome paintings, prints and sculptures, which was on display in the Picture Gallery of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (some of the collection highlights can still be viewed during the current renovations, in case Munch’s “The Scream” is not enough for you).

At the same time, "The Scream" absolutely deserves a place in this category, because it is, after all, one of the most famous images in the world. A person today cannot escape "The Scream" when communicating with people on a "Big Brother" level ; it intrudes from many sides, as with the people who are thinking about WTAWT here:

Free art appreciation

After careful consideration, Mia decided to study Fine Arts. Engineers and IT specialists are currently in high demand and will likely continue to have good prospects; her parents were pushing her in this direction, as she had always achieved good grades in STEM subjects.

Unfortunately, her busy parents completely overlooked the fact that, with few exceptions, STEM subjects at her high school were taught by men who, even after the turn of the millennium, still believed that girls had no natural talent for STEM subjects. While this isn't true, these men at least ensured that Mia didn't develop the passion for either of these two future-defining subjects that she needed for choosing a career.

Never mind, Mia now has a faint inkling that art can express itself in engineering and IT art just as much as in oil paints and watercolors, clay or bronze. She also has a faint inkling that she tends more towards broad interests than narrowly specialized passions. Her path will probably be to collaborate with specialists and learn enough from each field to admire and benefit from the knowledge of a passionate specialist.

She also has an inkling that properly used internet can always help her acquire knowledge when a particular subject area was treated in a way that discouraged her interest at school.

After abandoning the idea of ​​"engineering or IT," her parents suggested business administration and law, subjects that were currently impossible, even "immoral," for the politically engaged Mia. Mia chose art because, after thoroughly researching numerous degree programs, she hadn't found many others that offered a free and independent course of study, allowing her to explore her own talents. Hence, Fine Arts, "free" also in the sense of her motto: "If I have to expect to spend a good portion of my professional life in unpaid internships or poorly paid part-time jobs anyway, I might as well study something I truly enjoy." But at least Fine Arts also opens doors to careers in crafts or teaching, and these professions are currently experiencing a resurgence in popularity.

Mia enjoys her studies, but she has just been given a tough assignment in the seminar “Free Art Appreciation” : an analysis of one of the world’s most famous paintings, Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”, with explicit instructions to use only factual sources; working with evaluative and descriptive secondary literature is prohibited.

Together with fellow students Leon, Finn and Noah, they initially divided the consideration into “pure perception” (Noah) and “pure sensation” (Mia), “perception against the background of the determined facts” (Finn) and “sensation against the background of the determined facts” (Leon).

In the first round, Noah and Mia developed the templates, while Finn and Leon compiled the facts. In the first meeting, facts, feelings, and perceptions were exchanged. Noah and Mia then supplemented their pure perceptions and feelings with the impressions gained from the facts. Finn and Leon, based on their background work, recorded their perceptions and feelings, so that facts, perceptions, and feelings were reflected four times. After another exchange, everything was brought together in a final discussion.

Noah was initially quite confused by his "pure perception" because he found several different "screams." In each one, a figure is screaming, some more distinct than others, but in "Scream 1," the two people in the background are walking towards the screamer; in "Scream 2," they are looking into the water; in "Scream 3," the two people in the background are acting differently; and in "Scream 4," the two people are moving away from the screamer. Then he found another "scream," a lithograph, which looked slightly different again, except that the two people in the background were also moving away from the screamer.

Mia noticed this too, of course, but couldn't discern any major differences in terms of sensation between the various "screams".

Rather, it's the fact that Edvard Munch's "The Scream" isn't just one "scream," but that he painted four of them. Since Mia, true to her assignment, initially wanted to collect pure sensations, she doesn't yet know that Edvard Munch's thoughts revolved around painting screams for a full 17 years... But four "screams" are enough for her; this painter, even without any knowledge of his life circumstances (which Mia, of course, already possesses), wouldn't let anyone suspect that he knows the kinder side of this world.

Certainly, for all people who dare to take a close look at the world, then as now, there is plenty to complain about – but the average person will eventually become cheerful again and take care of the more pleasant things in life.

Mia writes a long sequence of emotional keywords revolving around illness, death, a tendency towards consumption, hyper-nervousness, insane pietistic piety, guilt, suicidal thoughts, hallucinations, melancholy, jealousy, unrequited love, rheumatic fever, crisis, love triangle, bad reviews, shock, persecution, nervous breakdown, getting worse, alcoholism, industrialization, moral degeneration, violence, painted deliriums, criminals, shame, scorned, outsiders, political radicalism, dangerous, grief, isolation, loneliness, a sense of being lost, depressive mood, melancholy, tension between illusion and reality, problem area, threats, oppression, inner turmoil, mysterious figures, lovesickness, blood, tongues of fire, skull, fear of life, depression, anxiety, mask-like faces, feline and vampire-like characteristics, skeletal arm, loss, longing, fear, huge, cavernous eyes, foreign bodies, unfathomable, unpredictable. Suffering, blood flower, confinement, threat, decay, torment, pain, sin, dark threat, despair, murderess, stiff, frozen, greedy, disappointed, embittered, Passion of Christ, mockery, demonic, distorted face, genderless, distance, persecution anxiety, hell, emotional disorder, blows of fate, gloomy, cry for help, dark inner life, all just from an essay on “symbolism” in Munch’s work and – has no desire to continue.

She compiles a list of all known phobias, from the very fitting achluophobia, fear of the dark, to nomophobia (to cheer you up, that's the fear of being without mobile phone contact) to zoophobia, the fear of animals; after that, she has to insert a phase with consistently cheerful to silly feelings so as not to become grumpy for the rest of her life.

Finn presents the facts, thus initially putting the “screams” in order (which Noah, for unknown reasons, has put in the correct order, which everyone considers a good sign for the success of the art appreciation ):

1. “The Scream” , Edvard Munch, 1893, pastel on wood, 74 × 56 cm, now hangs in the Munch Museum in Oslo. In this scream, the eyes are only suggested, the mouth is slightly tilted to the left, and the two people in the background are walking towards the screamer.

2. “The Scream” , Edvard Munch, 1893, tempera on cardboard, 91 × 73.5 cm, now hangs in the Norwegian National Gallery in Oslo. In this scream, the eyes are round and empty, yet gaze-filled; the mouth is tilted to the left; the two figures in the background look to the right at the water.

3. “The Scream” , Edvard Munch, 1895, pastel on wood, 79 × 59 cm, is now in a private collection. In this scream, the eyes show a clear gaze, the mouth is slightly tilted to the left, the two people in the background are performing separate actions, one is gazing around, the other has collapsed over the railing.

This pastel version was probably commissioned in 1895 by Arthur von Franquet, the avid art collector and Munch-admiring great-nephew of a Brunswick chicory coffee manufacturer. Even back then, it was apparently possible to become filthy rich with a cheap substitute for a coveted foodstuff, much like today with "milk" slices instead of a proper sandwich for a break.

This pastel version was auctioned on May 2, 2012 by Petter Olsen (Fred. Olsen & Co. shipping company) via Sotheby's New York for the interesting sum of 119,922,500 US dollars, making the joyless picture the sixth most expensive painting in the world.

However, the buyer, Leon Black – Apollo Global Management, Investment and Holdings – seems to be one of the art collectors with a sense of responsibility for society; he already exhibited the painting to the public again from October 24, 2012 to April 29, 2013 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

4. “The Scream” , Edvard Munch, 1910, tempera on cardboard, 83 × 66 cm, now hangs in the Munch Museum in Oslo. In this scream, the eyes are large and empty, the mouth is small and slightly tilted to the left, and the two people in the background are moving away from the screamer.

These are the four known variations of The Scream in painting form, just four pictures from Munch's so-called Frieze of Life, a whole series of paintings with the themes of fear, love and death.

The lithographed scream dates from 1895 and is quite small (49.4 × 37.3 cm); it now hangs in the Gundersen Collection in Oslo. In this scream, the eyes are wide open with a clear gaze, the mouth is narrow, straight, and wide open, and the two people in the background are moving away from the screamer.

However, there are several lithographs of The Scream; for example, a lithograph of the pastel version from 1895 hangs in the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart and in the Hamburger Kunsthalle.

The “series” or “frieze” comprises a total of 22 works in four sections:

• Seeds of Love: Starry Night, Red and White, Eye to Eye, Dance on the Beach, The Kiss, Madonna
• The blossoming and passing of love: Ashes, Vampire, Dance of Life, Jealousy, The Woman in Three Stages, Melancholy
• Anxiety about life: Fear, Evening on Karl Johans Gate, Red Wine, Golgotha, The Scream
• Death: At the deathbed, death in the hospital room, the smell of corpses, metabolism, the child and death

The titles themselves hint at it: Edvard Munch is one of those ancestors you can be glad are ancestors and not contemporaries. Having gathered these initial facts, Finn has had enough, and his fellow students decide on a week-long break from work, with plenty of partying.

Grief work

Christine has lost her husband, the man she had met and fallen in love with after more than 40 years of searching for a true partner, and with whom she had lived and worked for a good decade. They lived in close quarters, with relatively little time spent apart, not without conflicts, but without problems.

Since then, she has been grieving, in a desperate, angry, and simultaneously lost way, a grief that doesn't adhere at all to the four prescribed stages of grief. Because this grief lasts too long, well-meaning friends urge her to start therapy, arguing that grief sometimes requires help. She eventually gives in, if only to have some peace; well-meaning friends can be very persistent when they think they've found the right path.

The first therapist is giving a kind of lesson. She's teaching Christine the four phases of grief – which Christine already knows – in great detail and without interruption. In phase 1, denial is the typical first reaction to the devastating news:

"That can't be right, it must be a mistake.".

We don't want to accept that the inevitable has truly happened. The initial shock puts us into a kind of trance. We're protecting ourselves this way. And it takes a while until we realize that reality is stronger than denial.

The fact that Christine, due to her work with real-world applications, is unable to deny it – although she would prefer to consciously and actively suppress it for a while, which her differently trained and therefore actually differently structured brain unfortunately does not allow – does not interest her.

Christine is in professional contact with Barbara Fredrickson, a psychologist at the Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Laboratory of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

She had already written several articles about their work on “Discovering the best in people” (a whole field of experiments and studies about positive emotions and optimistic attitudes) before even thinking about any grief work, and – of course – she hasn't stopped since.

The therapist isn't interested in that either; all she manages to say is a mocking, "Oh, so German psychologists aren't enough, are they?" Listening is difficult for Christine under these circumstances. She's already experienced the full force of her emotions (Phase 2), as well as acceptance; she just needs some help with reorientation (Phase 3), a little support in experiencing joy and calming the sometimes overwhelming pain.

The second therapist advocates for exercise and refuses to accept that Christine's emotional pain has caused psychosomatic symptoms, which mean her body can't tolerate anything more than long walks at the moment. She believes that only proper running will help in the long run, something Christine can see for herself in the film "Run Against Grief".

In the film, a once-legendary marathon runner, in his old age and lacking other ideas, embarks on frantic training, aiming for the Berlin Marathon, and, when his wife dies, also as a way to run away from his grief. Christine is unconcerned that she considers competition between individuals a useful activity in youth, but neither physically, mentally, nor socially beneficial in old age.

The fact that Christine isn't wallowing in her grief, but has started many new projects – just not jogging – doesn't interest her. She's the expert, and running helps, and she doesn't have any other ideas until Christine gratefully declines her support.

The third therapist speaks with her at length and with interest; she is highly interested in her work and encourages Christine to do all sorts of things. Sometimes it's just about small shifts in thought, a step in the right direction, which Christine may have already considered herself.

With the support of someone who takes others seriously, such a thought process becomes possible, and the therapist also has ideas for entirely different steps. Christine has been planning for some time to finally start painting again, to truly relax and concentrate at the easel, but so far it has remained limited to small color studies, a regular ring-shaped pad and crayons; black and red scribbles also help relieve some stress. When the therapist hears this, she makes Christine a suggestion that is “lacking in reverence for Munch”:

She should take on Edvard Munch's accursed "The Scream" and, by recreating this image herself, understand how positive thinking gradually reshapes the brain, new nerve pathways, little by little "friendlier alliances", out of grief.

That the human brain can be changed through such exercises has now been scientifically proven, and to repeatedly change the “scream” from darkly threatening to a gentle landscape with people in whatever good mood is certainly an incredibly exciting task.

Christine has already studied Munch quite extensively and replies that she will gladly set about giving this poor man more happiness in life, so to speak, posthumously.

While following the therapist's suggestion and already reveling in a wealth of friendly colors after just a few pictures, she also reads more about Munch, searching for (and finding, a little, the positive aspects:

The first German title that Munch himself gave to his work was “Schrei der Natur” (Cry of Nature) ; on a graphic version he even wrote in German: “Ich fühlen das große Geschrei, wie es durch die Natur geht.” (I felt the great cry, as it goes through nature.)

There's a lot you can do with it; of course, nature is a cacophony, but also a diverse and wonderful cacophony – Christine starts planning flower vines or pots on the bridge for the next version.

She also finds two truly cheerful Munch paintings: “The Seine at Saint-Cloud” from 1890, now in the Munch Museum Oslo, and “Spring on Karl Johans gate” from 1890, now in the Bergen Picture Gallery – well, there you go!

The department

Annika chose advanced art courses because she realized long ago that she currently has enough to do with the intricacies of biology (second advanced course), and the NC for her target subject bionics at the time of her high school graduation could require a high school GPA well above 2.0.

Physics (with technical projects) and chemistry as her third and fourth exam subjects are going smoothly, biology is getting better and better since she stopped posting silly status updates during waiting times and started practicing mnemonics.

But the advanced art class, of all things, is now acting as a real obstacle, with the presentation topic 'Edvard Munch's "The Scream" – a description of the painting with background information' . When she gets home, she's furious: "I'm supposed to describe the painting that's probably the most horrific in the world, and the ugliest to boot!" "You were just trying to abbreviate with 'advanced art class' ," her mother replies, turning away unmoved.

Annika sits down to examine the image, first studying its description: In the center, a person is shown frontally with their mouth wide open, arms pressed to their head, staring blankly into space – and screaming. And so on and so forth, it says on a bridge, further back two figures, a few ships, water and sky in wildly moving shapes and colors… Expression, compositional means, lines, evaluation: grotesque, a visualized inner hell.

Annika is also interested in Edvard Munch's life : born on December 12, 1863, in Norway and died on January 23, 1944, at the age of 81. She grew up in Oslo with a religiously fanatical father who nevertheless married a woman twenty years younger than her, who then soon died of tuberculosis.

Munch was five and had five siblings; his older sister died of consumption, his younger sister suffered from depression, his only brother who married died shortly after the wedding, Munch himself was manic-depressive (no wonder given the family history) and, to make matters worse, had also inherited the tendency towards consumption from his young mother who died.

Munch studied painting at the Royal School of Art and Design in Kristiania. In 1885 (at the age of 22), he began his first romantic relationship. In 1886, his first painting in his self-invented "Art of Memory , "The Sick Child," a complete failure at the autumn exhibition in Kristiania. In 1887, his girlfriend left him for another man. This was followed by thoughts of death, hallucinations, and melancholy, and resulted in a series of paintings with the absurd aura of "The Scream." If only his girlfriend had stayed with him!

Annika is now exploring the origin of "The Scream" and its history: There are many legends about the origin of the Scream; the background color, which changes from light orange to dark red-orange over the years of the four paintings' creation, is said to be due to the eruption of Krakatoa (volcano in Indonesia) in 1883; the Scream motif was inspired by Inca mummies at an exhibition Munch visited in Paris in 1889; or by the suicide of the Norwegian painter Kalle Løchen.

Munch is said to have completed the first three versions during his stay in Berlin from 1892 to 1896, but Annika doesn't find Berlin that terrible, so that's unlikely to be the reason; nobody knows for sure anyway, Munch probably said very little about his scream motifs.

At least the Screams have been highly sought after for quite some time; the first theft occurred in 1994, and on February 12th, the tempera version from 1893 disappeared from the Norwegian National Gallery. Three months later, the police (unfortunately, according to Annika) found the painting, and the perpetrators were imprisoned for several years (instead of receiving a commendation).

The second theft followed on August 22, 2004: an armed robbery by masked perpetrators at the Munch Museum in Oslo. The tempera version from 1910 and a "Madonna" by Munch, reminiscent of Christiane F. in its most pitiable state, were stolen. Unfortunately, six of the seven perpetrators were apprehended in 2006 for a robbery at a cash depot in Stavanger. Screams and broken Madonnas apparently didn't sell as well back then as they would just a few years later at Sotheby's .

But at least one of the criminals was able to use the paintings, presumably in exchange for a pardon; they were seized by the Norwegian police on August 31, 2006, and presented to the waiting public for a few days starting on September 27, 2006, still in a battered state; surprisingly, 5500 visitors had missed their Munch paintings.

When Annika has gotten about this far and is thinking with very, very little joy about the work ahead of her of formulating and supplementing, she comes across an entry in Munch's diary entitled "Nice, January 22, 1892" , containing the prose poem "Scream" :

I walked down the street with two friends. The sun was setting – the sky turned blood red, and I felt a touch of melancholy. I stood still, dead tired – blood and tongues of fire lay over the blue-black fjord and the city. My friends continued on – I stayed behind – trembling with fear – I felt the great scream in nature… I painted this picture – painted the clouds like real blood – the colors screamed

Annika laughs and wonders: Does she have the nerve to turn the whole presentation on its head and claim that only the colors of the sky in beautiful Nice were screaming? She leaves that open for now; dealing with the person and paintings of Edvard Munch has already pretty much ruined her mood.

She thus concludes the preliminary work for the presentation, noting that it is quite understandable why the mask of the killer “Ghostface” in the film Scream and the Silences from the television series “Doctor Who” were modeled after Munch’s screaming person.

And finally, a contribution from the know-it-all on the 150th anniversary of the artist's birth: