Edvard Munch: The Scream

Much has been written and said about this masterpiece. Critics discuss themes of societal alienation, emotional extremes, such as of loneliness and despair, and so on and so forth — I won’t recapitulate these ideas, but rather will try to examine the painting on a more technical and formal level, in an endeavor to trace what exactly enables the expression of these notions. The main artistic device in this sketchy, almost primitive composition is the line: Munch fully exploits the possibilities of this basic tool, and, which is even more interesting, discovers new possibilities, by inaugurating a genre where it would play such an important role. Color plays a no less important, but subordinate role (the black and white lithograph exemplifies how the painting retains its punch even after being discolored). Finally, the painter employed his trademark method of introducing emotional immediacy by confronting the beholder with the protagonist, challenging the discontinuity of the medium by allowing him to “walk off” the canvas towards the viewer.

The Scream

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There are two kinds of lines, the wavy serpentine ones that constitute the landscape and delineate the protagonist, and the straight ones that form the bridge. I think it is possible to envisage the lines as visual metaphors of madness and sanity, respectively. The artist juxtaposes them, and thus produces immense tension, in turn channelled into the crying person as the closest and most natural receptacle (the vertex of a the compositional triangle — the sky, the beach and the bridge). Basically, the bridge represents an island island of sanity to which the screamer escaped from below, carrying in him the characteristics of that particular ambiance. It would seem that the physical transition failed to “straighten” things out, and the madness literally linearly continues on the bridge, embodied by the screaming man. The coat’s color also links him to the lower scenery. In a way, color not only reaffirms the tension but further enhances it, to the point of rendering the viewing experience uneasy. Yellows and reds battle with the blues and the greens; the skyline becomes the front line.

Scream

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There is something theatrical about the whole set-up: the beach is the pit and the bridge is the gallery; the play itself is insignificant — it’s someone from the audience who steals the show, by running from the original spectacle. The sky becomes the curtain that hangs from above and threatens to cover and consume the scene on the stage (the lake), which by now may be viewed only as a farce. By evoking the allegory of “life as a stage,” the artist offers a social commentary. But it is also a personal commentary — it is just so difficult to resist the urge to generalize. Everyone is the protagonist in their own play, and the painting addresses the individual actor more poignantly than the mass of other participants. To sum up, though the allegory of theater provides a context which may encourage to establish a positive empathizing link between the viewers and the main figure, it may interfere with the purity of expressionistic concept, breaching its innate mystery. In other words, don’t read this review…

The Scream (detail)

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Edvard Munch: The Scream

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