Chelsea Tse talks on Edvard Munch: The Scream (1883)

Firstly, I will introduce the details of the Scream. The Scream is Edvard Munch’s best known painting, its paint in 1893. It’s a oil, pastel and casein on cardboard. Its dimension is 36 X 28.9 in.

Expressionism was a cultural movement, initially in poetry and painting, its start from Germany in the 20th century. Expressionism was tried to present the world in a completely subjective perspective, radically distorting it for emotional effect, to evoke moods or ideas. Expressionist artists sought to express the meaning of "being alive and emotional experience rather than physical reality.

How The Scream fit in the style of Expressionism? With the painting, Munch met his stated goal of “the study of the soul, that is to say the study of my own self”. It’s obviously reflected that Munch though use nonlocal color to depict the nature, liked the reds, oranges and yellows to intensive the sunset. We could see that, he is not to tell us what is the physical reality are. He just wants to release his own anguish.
In the painting, we could also found that Munch had observed an effect of the powerful volcanic eruption of Krakatoa in 1883: the ash was ejected from the volcano left the sky tinted red in much of US, Europe and Asia. This explanation has been disputed by scholars who note that Munch was an expressive, rather than descriptive painter. Therefore in my own opinion, The Scream is belonging to the expressionism as Munch try to use color and swirl to evoke his emotion.

Munch represents his sense of disintegration in a figure crossing the bridge over Oslo’s Christianfjord. Munch used the non-local color, liked the reds, oranges and yellows intensively to depict the sunset and with that blues, pinks defining the water. Both sky and water seem caught up in an endless swirl echoes the artist’s anguish. In contrast to the pedestrians at the far end of the bridge, Munch stop to face the picture plan, he screaming and holding his ears at the same time. The action of blocking out the sound pushes in the sides of his face so that his head liked a skull and repeats the landscape curves. He described the experience in the painting,’I felt as though a scream went through the nature. I thought heard a scream. I painted this picture, painted the clouds like real blood. The colors were screaming.’’ Thus, he joins the scream of nature as his form echoes the waving motion of the landscape.

It’s a key quote of The Scream It's interesting how everyone has a different perception and interpretation of this piece of artwork. Many believe the person in the image is projecting a silent scream that cannot be heard; others can recognize that the action of the person's ears being covered suggests that it's not the person who is screaming but, as mentioned, the scream comes from nature's anxieties of life which distressingly is heard by the one person, while the others are deafened and not aware of it. It would probably create a little anxiety to you, the audience, looking at this artwork... what's amazing about it is the fact that it creates such multiple meanings, yet conveys a universal emotion that is recognized and experienced by all

Question:
Do you think others can hear the scream?