The Scream

The Norwegian artist Edvard Munch’s painting “The Scream” was painted in 1893 during a unique transitional period in art history. “The Scream” was painted after the end of the photographic Realist era, when artists wanted to show off their technical skills. Moreover, the painting present location was Oslo, Norway. According to Munch’s personal diaries, the idea for the modern art painting “The Scream” came to him while looking down over the Norwegian landscape from an elevation. While a mountaintop or a scenic view from a summit might sound like a beautiful natural landscape to paint, Munch’s personal interpretation of “nature” below was very different than you might imagine.
The drastic use of color has been used to depict the mood of the subject, with greens and intense reds contributing to a sense of chaos and disorder, which helps to reinforce the expression of the figure. The lone emaciated figure stands on a bridge clutching his ears, his eyes and mouth open in a wide scream of fear, anguish and confusion. The green hue of the character’s face and his grey clothing is symbolic of sickness and death in regards to his psychotic mental state. The red sky creates a sense of alarm, and highlights the intensity of the character’s experience
Munch employs wavy brushstrokes to emphasize the situation that the character is feeling. Bold, curved strokes in the sky and river, make the viewer experience a sense of nausea. The bridge represents an island of sanity to which the screamer escaped from below, carrying in him the characteristics of that particular ambiance (insanity). It would seem that the physical transition failed to “straighten” things out for him, and he is out of place on that bridge, unlike the two receding figures. For the victim (let’s call him that), madness continues on the bridge; he demonstrates this literally, with undulating lines of his head, torso and hands. Moreover, it gives the impression that the character is experiencing emotional