Critical Analysis of Edvard Munchs The Scream Essay -- Visual Arts Pa

Critical Analysis of Edvard Munch's The Scream "The Scream", sometimes known as "The Cry" was painted by Edvard Munch in 1893. Some say Munch played a role in the development of German Expressionism, though the Norwegian painter turned down two offers to join the group, and preferred not to be classified, or 'put' into a category. This painting was part of Munch's "The Frieze of Life", a series of paintings each portraying a phase of life - as defined by Munch: Birth of Love, Blossoming and Dissolution of Love, Anguish of Life, and Death. The eleven paintings - "The Kiss", "Madonna", "Ashes", "Dance of Life", "Melancholy", "Red Virginia Creeper", "The Scream", "Death in the Sick-Room", "Puberty", "Moonlight", and "The Sick Child" - are as moving today as they were a hundred years ago when the motifs were first conceived. Munch finished "The Scream" in 1893. It was a work of great personal meaning to him. The painting was like the culmination of all the tragic and harrowing events in his life. When Munch was aged only five years old, his Mother died from Tuberculosis. Nine years later, his favourite sister Sophie dies from tuberculosis also, at the age of 15. Frequent illnesses prevent him from attending Technical college in Christiania (Oslo). In 1889, he is hit with perhaps the biggest blow so far: his beloved father dies. Munch wrote: "And I live with the dead ones; my mother, my sister, my grandfather, my father- he, especially. Every memory, every little thing, they all come back to me in flocks. I can see him again as I saw him for the last time four months ago, when he told me goodbye on the bench; we were a little bit shy, we didn't want to betray the pain that this separation was causing to us. How much we loved each other in spite of everything, how much he worried at night for me, for my life - because I couldn't share his faith" Therefore, it is not surprising that the mood of the painting is so haunting. Munch painted it surrounded by morbidity. The point in the painting where we see the figures, was a road on top of a hill looking over Christiania and the harbour. On one side of the hill was a psychiatric hospital where one of his sisters had been sent, and on the other side, an abattoir. Munch described the feeling he experienced in a diary entry in his literary diary in Nice, on the 22nd January 18... ...e influenced two German expressionist groups, Die Brà ¼ke and Die Blaue Reiter. He had two offers from Die Blaue Reiter to join them, but he turned both down. Painting was for Munch a personal experience, and he did not like to share it, or put his works into any grouping. The painting itself looks quite 'slapdash', as though it was rushed. The thick streaks of oil paint give the effect of a movement blur, like the world was swirling around the figure. It is hard to distinguish between the water and the land, difficult to recognize where the hills in the background stop and the sunset begins. "The Scream" is a painting full of emotion, full of character not understood at the time of its birth. It reflects Munch's life at that time, all the Death and anxiety that makes the painting so mysterious and haunting, whilst also lively. When I look at it, I feel I can hear the scream echoing from it. The screaming figure draws the attention of the onlooker, but other aspects of the painting are just as interesting. Whilst we cannot know what was going through Munch's mind when he painted"The Scream", we can guess that the painting evokes all the pain he was feeling.