The Scream

The Scream Exhibition Catalogue
2012

Edvard Munch's ‘The Scream’ numbers among the most celebrated images in art history.  It is one of few masterpieces that require no introduction, as it has been analyzed, reproduced, referenced, interpreted, and commercialized more often than perhaps any picture bar Leonardo's Mona Lisa. Since its creation in the 1890s, The Scream has become a cornerstone of our visual culture, burned onto our collective retina as the definitive image of horror at modernity's core. In one image, Munch initiates the Expressionist gesture which will fuel art history through the twentieth century and beyond.

The Scream was singled out as the most powerful composition and quickly transcended its original context. It began, in fact, the previous year as a prose-poem describing Munch's experience at Ekeberg in the hills above Kristiania (now Oslo, fig. 7). Uniquely, he inscribed this text on the frame of the present work in blood-red paint:

I was walking along the road with two friends. The Sun was setting –
The Sky turned a bloody red
And I felt a whiff of Melancholy – I stood
Still, deathly tired – over the blue-black
Fjord and City hung Blood and Tongues of Fire
My Friends walked on – I remained behind
– shivering with Anxiety – I felt the great Scream in Nature
E.M.

Client: Sotheby’s Impressionist Art; Video: Masterworks Rewind: The Scream © 2012 The Munch Museum, © 2012 Sotheby’s; Catalogue Designer: Eri Koizumi; Creative Director: Sandra Burch; Production Manager: Sotheby’s - Spire Stephen Stanger; Printer: Pheonix Lithography Keith Harrington; Sotheby’s Department Chairman: Simon Shaw; Award: Graphis Design Annual (2013) Silver Award