An undulating sky melds
into the landscape,
two silhouettes move
along a balustraded walkway,
and a ghostly figure’s features
extend in agony.
Since Norwegian artist Edvard Munch
created “The Scream” in 1893,
it’s become one of the world’s
most famous artworks.
But why has its cry traveled so far
and endured so long?
Munch was born in 1863,
one of five children.
Tuberculosis devastated Europe
throughout the 1800s,
killing almost a quarter of all adults.
It took Munch’s mother’s life,
then his elder sister’s.
Soon after, Munch had his own bout
of the disease.
Another of his sisters experienced
mental illness
and lived much of her life
in an institution.
Meanwhile, Munch flitted in and out
of school due to illness,
often spending days at home,
drawing and listening to the ominous
stories his father read aloud.
A devout Lutheran, his father considered
Munch’s artistic ambitions unholy.
“I inherited the seeds of madness,”
Munch wrote.
“The angels of fear, sorrow, and death
stood by my side
since the day I was born.”
Eventually, Munch moved to Berlin,
where he frequented creative circles
committed to breaking
with academic tradition
and instead developing
their crafts organically.
While Munch had trained classically,
he began immersing himself
in what he called “soul painting”—
compositions that prized raw, subjective
affect over realistic rendering.
“It’s not the chair that should
be painted,” he wrote,
“but what a person has felt
at the sight of it.”
Many of Munch’s works dealt
with personal suffering.
This may have also led to what
certain critics observed
as unsympathetic portrayals of women
in works where Munch represented them as
cruel predators victimizing hapless men.
And death often haunted
Munch’s compositions—
from a skeleton helming a boat
to a morbid self-portrait
and his sister's final moments
to a mother on her deathbed,
her child assuming
a now-familiar expression.
Munch’s art generated controversy—
some critics characterizing him
as “absolutely demented”—
but it also drew acclaim.
And what would become his most famous work
was just around the corner.
“The Scream” was inspired by a moment
that overwhelmed Munch
with an acute sense of anguish.
In a diary entry marked
January 22nd, 1892,
Munch described walking with
two friends along a fjord
overlooking what’s now Oslo at sunset.
He leaned against a fence, exhausted,
as he saw the sky change suddenly.
He described “blood and tongues of fire
above the blue-black fjord and the city.”
As his friends walked on, Munch wrote,
“I stood there trembling with anxiety—
and I sensed an infinite scream
passing through nature.”
As with other painful experiences,
Munch revisited the scene repeatedly.
First, he depicted it with a more
recognizably human subject.
But the following year, he surrendered
it to dramatic, abstracted symbolism,
the haunting expression
on the figure’s skull-like face
meeting the viewer’s gaze directly.
On this first version,
he added a subtle, wry inscription:
“Could only have been painted
by a madman!”
Based on Munch’s account, many think
the figure isn’t emitting the shriek
but reacting to it.
Munch eventually made four versions
of “The Scream”—
all on cardboard, two with pastel,
two with paint—
and he created numerous prints
and lithographs.
The year following the first “Scream,”
he depicted the same setting
but featured a collection
of despairing faces.
In late 1893, Munch premiered “The Scream”
at a solo exhibit in Berlin.
The artwork’s bold composition helped
fuel the Expressionist movement,
which likewise emphasized
stark psychological states,
mapping the emotional contours
of World War I and beyond.
“The Scream” continued its crescendo.
When it entered the public domain
in the mid-1900s,
new renditions and reproductions
bolstered its fame.
It featured in popular films
during the 1990s,
and both painted versions of “The Scream”
were stolen and recovered
in separate heists in 1994 and 2004.
Soon enough, it was a widely accepted
archetypal symbol for horror and angst.
A “Scream”-inspired emoji was
eventually implemented.
And, considering how to mark hazardous
sites so far-off future generations
could know to avoid them,
the US government has considered
using “The Scream” expression.
While its myriad cultural influences
may not always reflect
the personal agony
Munch initially rendered,
“The Scream” has certainly found
a near universal echo.
