Question Home

Position:Home>Visual Arts> Edvard Munch's painting, 'The Scream'?


Question: Edvard Munch's painting, 'The Scream'!?
Does the use of line in the backround have anything to do with the screaming figure!?
Is the shape of the mans head significant in any way, if yes, how!?
Why has Edvard Munch chosen to use these particular colours!?
Is he really screaming!?Www@QuestionHome@Com


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:
The line and color of the surroundings reflects the inner storm inside the subject, indeed represented by the explosion of the volcano!.

The Screamer screams the silent scream of one going mad!. Rather than the howl of a broken mind expressed as sound, the howl is transformed into the madness and cacophony of colours all around him as The Screamer stumbles along!.

The distortion of the head shows that his mind is now bent!. The wide haunted eyes show the desperation of agony that now serves as The Screamer's universe!.

This piece is perhaps the best psychoanalytical painting ever done by the pre-surrealists!. Edvard Munch really managed to capture the desperate horror of one going mad at the moment their mind finally breaks!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

I believe the background was inspired from the eruption of the volcano, Krakatoa, which cause the sky to turn unusual colors!. Approximately 1000 people were killed during this geological event!. It was quite an explosion!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

Sounds like someone is having trouble with a paper!.!.!.ha ha

"The Scream," although not the focus of the show, is not neglected!. Two 1895 lithographs of the image, one with watercolor, are on view!. An ectoplasmic being stands on a bridge against a lurid setting sun, hands to ears, mouth open to emit a horrendous howl!. Its genesis, Munch wrote, was during a walk across a bridge in Kristiania (now Oslo) with two friends!. He felt a "tinge of melancholy" as the sun set!. He stopped, leaned against the railing while his friends walked on, and saw "the flaming clouds that hung like blood and a sword" over the water and the city!. Shivering with fright, he "felt a loud, unending scream piercing nature!."

It took several false starts before this became the trenchant visual expression of Munch's feeling, the product of his own anxiety and depression at the time!. When he finally made the image we know today, he noted faintly on the probable first version (1893) that "it could only have been painted by a madman!." But it strikes such a universal chord that it has become something of a conduit between the artist's soul-searching work and pop culture, evolving over the years into a symbol that these days appears even on refrigerator magnets and inflatable dolls!.

And yet, for all its roots in Symbolism, the turn-of-the-century European movement that sought to replace naturalism with the imagery of fantasy, dream and psychic experience, "The Scream" apparently had little to do with what Munch saw as the real thrust of his art!.Www@QuestionHome@Com