The Scream is the collective name of a series of Expressionist paintings by the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch.

Painted in 1893, it represents a humanoid figure with a horrified expression, staring at the spectator from a bridge overhanging greywater, a large orange sky spreading around him. The character is bald and wears black clothes, his face distorted and disfigured. In contrast, the other characters that can be seen on the bridge seems to be more or less normal.

Scream by Warhol
This work is one of the most recognizable paintings in the world and has been reproduced several times, has infiltrated popular culture and has even been parodied by several artists like Andy Warhol. Similarly, popular cartoons, movies, TV shows and other modern media have parodied the picture many times over the years. For example, the movie poster Home Alone, is certainly inspired by the painting of Munch, as the mask of the killer in Scream, series of horror movies.

Scream, the movie

INSPIRATION OF THIS PAINTING

Edvard Munch probably drew his inspiration for this painting from various sources in his life. At the time he was working on the board, he lived close enough to both a slaughterhouse and a psychiatric asylum where his sister resided and it seems that the anxiety of the main character as the sadness of the apocalyptic orange sky is a reference to his bipolar disorder or to mental illnesses in general.

Peru's Mummies inspirated Munch ?
The physical features of the strange humanoid creature in the painting may also have been inspired by Peru's mummies, which Munch may have observed during an exhibition in Paris. The appearance of apparent shock and dejection, with hands placed on either side of the face, can sometimes be found on these mummies. This theory could nevertheless prove to be false since it seems that Munch visited the exhibition only after painting the Scream.
Munch himself said that he had found inspiration in his painting one day as he was painfully walking along a path near a fjord and he felt a scream pass through nature, a kind of howl primal, and he almost seemed to have heard him with his ears. The sky, he writes, was similar to the day represented in the painting. This reinforces the theory that the painting wants to show basic human anxiety, a feeling of primitive detachment and the dread that comes with primordial fear.

HISTORY OF THIS PAINTING

Several versions of the Scream were stolen multiple times during the existence of these painting, especially in 1994 and 2004. During these two occurrences, the paintings were damaged but they remain in relatively good condition. The Scream is one of the most expensive paintings to have been sold and was purchased in 2012 for 119,922,500 US dollars, by Leon Black founder of Apollo Global Management.

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@siavach, Art Lover, Salsa Dancer, Photographer and Happy Steemian