The Scream
A figure on a bridge covers its ears while the sky blazes blood-red. Munch described the experience as a scream passing through nature. The picture became an icon of modern anxiety.
The lines of the landscape undulate through the figure – inner and outer worlds merge.
Edvard Munch painted The Scream in 1893, while he was working in Berlin. The subject goes back to an experience he had had a few years earlier at Ekeberg above Kristiania, present-day Oslo. He described it in a text: he was walking along a road with two friends, the sun was setting, the sky turned blood-red and he felt a great, infinite scream passing through nature. The picture became part of his large series on love, anxiety and death, later called The Frieze of Life.
In the foreground stands a figure with its hands to its head and its mouth wide open. The face is simplified almost to a skull, without hair and without a clear gender. Behind the figure a railing runs diagonally into the picture, and further off two figures in dark clothes are walking. On the left the Oslofjord opens out, with a boat and a dark landscape. The sky is filled with undulating bands of red, orange and yellow.
The composition is built on a strong contrast. The bridge and railing are straight diagonals that pull the eye rapidly into the depth of the picture. The landscape and sky, by contrast, are soft, curving lines. The same rhythmic lines run through the figure’s body, so that human being and nature seem to sway on the same wave. The colours are not naturalistic but express a state of mind.
The version in the Nasjonalmuseet in Oslo is painted in tempera and crayon on cardboard. Munch often worked quickly and let the support show through. He made several versions of the subject. There is a crayon drawing and a later painting at the Munch Museum, a pastel of 1895 in private ownership and a lithograph of 1895 that spread the image in many impressions. Up in the sky of the Nasjonalmuseet version is a small pencil inscription saying that the picture could only have been painted by a madman. For a long time it was unclear who had written it, but studies of the handwriting have pointed to Munch himself.
The picture has been read as an expression of the anxiety and isolation of modern life. Some scholars have looked for explanations of the red sky in real phenomena, such as the dust from the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 or unusual cloud formations. Others have suggested that the figure was inspired by a Peruvian mummy displayed in Paris. Such explanations are disputed, and Munch himself spoke of an inner experience.
The work has had a dramatic history. The Nasjonalmuseet version was stolen in February 1994, on the day the Winter Olympics opened in Lillehammer. The thieves got in through a window using a ladder. The painting was recovered a few months later without serious damage. In 2004 the Munch Museum’s version was stolen together with Madonna in an armed robbery. Both paintings were recovered in 2006, but with damage that had to be restored. The pastel version was sold at auction in 2012 for one of the highest prices paid for a work of art up to that time.
The Scream is today one of the most famous images in the world. It has been parodied, printed on posters and mugs and has inspired an emoji. At the same time it is a key work of Expressionism, since it shows how colour and form can carry a feeling rather than depict reality.