Edvard Munch

Edvard Munch is looked upon as one of the most significant influences on the development of expressionism. Edvard Munch was quoted as saying "We want more than a mere photograph of nature. We do not want to paint pretty pictures to be hung on drawing-room walls. We want to create, or at least lay the foundations of, an art that gives something to humanity. An art that arrests and engages. An art created of one's innermost heart." I believe in The Scream Munch did just as he said.

The expressionism period was a movement to invoke emotions through art work. In The Scream Munch stirs up emotions through his heavy brush work and the use of unnatural colors. The use of red orange or warm colors in the sunset seems to make them advance or stand out. The thick swirling lines of the sunset and the river create the sanitation of movement. Munch relies on atmospheric perspective to create the illusion of depth. The warm colors in the sunset stand out while the cool colors of the river seem to go backwards. The shapes in The Scream are organic, object found in nature, but Munch has distorted this objects to echos causes by the sunken head.

I selected this painting for the fact that it disturbs me and at the same time intrigues me. In an interview about the painting Munch said " I was walking along the road with two friends- watching the sunset- the sky suddenly turned red as blood- I stopped, leant against the fence, deadly tired- my friends walked on and I was left, trembling with fear- and I could feel an infinite scream passing through the landscape."

Edvard Munch's emotional unbalance is a great credit to his work. In 1908, Munch had a nervous breakdown, a culmination of his anxiety and fears going all the way back to his childhood. During the years pervious to this he had experienced some of the most extreme emotions humans can. At age 5, his mother died and at 14 , his favorite sister, Sophie dies as well. Tuberculosis entered his childhood bring him horrid visions of death, pain, paranoia, and despair.

It was with these emotions Munch eventually, in 1893, brought to the canvas of The Scream. He tried to create the all encompassing emotion of total complete undeniable despair. When all hope is gone; when death is eventual; when the world seems to be completely against

you and there is nothing you can do about any of it. The Scream displays the despair of life as he had experienced one day while walking with his friends. As he has written himself "I was walking along the road with two friends. The sun set. I felt a tinge of melancholy. Suddenly the sky became a bloody red. I stopped, leaned against

the railing, dead tired, and I looked at the flaming clouds that hung like blood and a sword over the blue-black fjord and the city. My friends walked on. I stood there, trembling with fright. And I felt a loud, unending scream piercing nature."

How did Munch achieve sunch an enormously disturbing effect? Looking at it we see a deformed screaming figure in the foreground standing on a long straight bridge receding into the distance. Two tall erect men in the distance walk away from the figure. The background is a distortrf view of a fjord. Long swirling, curved lines form the coast. The water is a murky yellow, while the land, a deep blue. The sky, with its streaks of red and orange speak of