NILE ALRIC N.

ALLADO
HUMANITIES 1

THE SCREAM (SKRIK) by Edvard Munch:

An Art Appreciation

NILE ALRIC N. ALLADO

HUMANITIES 1

Edvard Munch (1863 - 1944) was a Norwegian painter whose name became a topic of
every conversation when he began to discover art as a way to express his inner feelings at
the end of 19th century. During these times, he gradually welcomed people to his internal
world a place full of torment, pain, devastation and melancholy. With the help of his
canvas, brushes and paint, he began painting his emotions and eventually, the art style we
call Expressionism was born.
Throughout his life and until his eventual death, Munch became famous for his work
The Scream. It is one of the world's most recognizable works of art. It depicts a man in a
private moment of anguished despair and anxiety, while the other people in the painting,
perhaps his friends, seem blissfully unaware of the man's situation. This chronicles one of
Munchs experiences in his life which became the inspiration of The Scream. In his diary,
he wrote:
One evening I was walking along a path, the city was on one side and the fjord below. I
felt tired and ill. I stopped and looked out over the fjordthe sun was setting, and the clouds
turning blood red. I sensed a scream passing through nature; it seemed to me that I heard
the scream. I painted this picture, painted the clouds as actual blood. The color shrieked.
This became The Scream.
In essence, the painting itself is autobiographical, an expressionistic construction based
on Munch's actual experience of a scream piercing through nature while on a walk, after his
two companions, seen in the background, had left him. Coincidentally, Munch is
experiencing emotional instability during those times which explains the scream
something that he must have heard only in his mind. Munch has creatively juxtaposed his
emotion of agony with the seemingly happy yet oblivious companions walking away. It
speaks volume of how Munch can create something so expressive, it can destroy human

NILE ALRIC N. ALLADO

HUMANITIES 1
integrity if pushed to the extremes. The curves and distorted figures are elements that can

support such idea. Most paintings are created in manner that it closely resembles the real
life counterparts but Munch, in order to depict a horrible experience in his life, he allowed
the foreground figure to become distorted a symbolism for how despair and agony can
destroy every bit of our humanity.
Munch's The Scream is an icon of modern art and as many critics call it, a Mona Lisa
for our time. It defined how we see our own generation full of uncertainty, anxiety and fear.