This Painting Is More Intriguing Than It Looks. Here's Why

How can a screaming face of a ghostly figure with fiery clouds become such an influential piece? Everything is in the details. So let's take a closer look at the extraordinary masterpiece that changed the course of western art. Hashtag legacy in pop culture. The scream saw imitation, parody, and copy from all corners by the 20th century. These events helped it gain iconic status in popular culture. Writers and artists even took inspiration from the painting to create their works, later followed by TV and movies. Even movie posters. Did you know that the scream inspired that famous Home Alone movie poster? And it didn't end there. The ghost face mask in the blockbuster Scream franchise also comes from it. So does the protagonist, the silence on BBC's 2011 series Doctor Who. Norwegian comedy duo Ylvis created a musical on the painting's 1994 theft. The craziest part was, pal anger in the cast, one of the 1994 thieves. Talk about legacy. Hashtag four different versions. Did you know there's not just one scream but four? Four original versions were created by Munch. Two in pastel and two in paint. The first version painted was the first one to be exhibited in 1893. It resides at the National Gallery in Oslo. It features the barely visible but now famous inscription of a pencil. The translation means it could only have been painted by a madman. Nobody argued that though. Meanwhile the 1893 pastel version rests in the Munch museum in Oslo. Many speculated this one to be the first one drawn for preliminary study. Another pastel version from 1895 is currently in private hands. The second painted version from 1910 is also in the collection of the Munch museum. Munch even created a lithograph stone of the image in 1895 to produce multiple prints. However, nearly four dozen prints were made before the original stone resurfaced. Hashtag famous scream emoji. And of course those addicted to emoji chatting will recognize the famous emoji resemblance. Yes, many renderings have traced the scheming face as the inspiration for emoji U plus 1F 631. The emoji named face screaming in fear resembles the subject quite well. Hashtag first art artist into human sight. To really get this painting it's helpful to understand what was happening in popular thought. The ideas of Freud and psychoanalysis were on the rise. Society saw new interest in exploring and expressing a person's inner state, their psychological condition. We see that paintings before this time were much more objective. Stories and scenes of the outside world. And here was a radical departure. It's a painting that conveys first an inner state. It features a figure whose very form is changed to express that state. See the unconventional shape of the face and the form. And not to mention the wild almost unearthly colors in the sky. Even in college Munch's friend Hans Jaeger had encouraged Munch to paint his emotional and psychological state. This directly inspired his distinctive style on the canvas. This style came to be known as soul painting. Still his early paintings were lighter in tone. Yet Munch went on to experiment. He combined this interest in psychological experience with the stylistic legacy of the French impressionists. Eventually this style developed a more mature tone in his later paintings done after 1890. And that's how Edvard immortalized himself in our minds with the mind-boggling scream. Hashtag stolen not once but twice. So it's no wonder that this high-valued painting has long been the target of art thieves. And the iconic artwork was subjected to theft not once but twice. The National Museum version was stolen on February 12, 1994 during the 1994 Lillehammer Winter Olympics. Norwegian police with the help of British SO10 recovered the damaged painting on May 7. But in an unbelievable twist all four men arrested and later convicted of the crime were released. The reason? The British SO10 officers entered Norway under false identities. The Munch Museum version was robbed at gunpoint by masked robbers on August 22, 2004. Now I've always known Norway to be a peaceful country. Maybe that's why they didn't think much of security details. Norwegian police did reclaim the slightly damaged artwork on August 31, 2006. They also rescued Munch's long-lost Madonna which suffered several tears. Hashtag nature's scream not his. The scream is considered to be one of the first paintings to capture human anxiety, fear, and agitation. But don't take the ghastly expression too literally. It's thought to be semi-autobiographical based on an actual incident of Munch's while walking with his friends. He wrote in his diary on January 22, 1892, one evening I was walking along a path. The city was on one side and the fjord below. I stopped and looked out over the fjord. The sun was setting and the clouds were 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. This became the scream. He also later described his inspiration. I was walking along the road with two friends. The sun was setting. Suddenly the sky turned blood red. I paused feeling exhausted and leaned onto the fence. There was blood and tongues of fire above the blue black fjord and the city. My friends walked on and I stood there trembling with anxiety and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature. Hashtag fierce debate on every detail. Being a wildly known masterpiece, why the weather took such a turn is also under the microscope. Different speculations have been made to explain every detail in the artwork. It includes the powerful Krakatoa eruption in 1883 whose ash might affect the sky. Others mention the bright colored clouds that appear at high altitudes in the Norwegian region. Even the possibility of seeing a nearby asylum or slaughter house wasn't spared. You know, conspiracy everywhere. What about this facial expression though? Munch scholar Robert Rosenblum suggests it comes from a Peruvian mummy. Both the painting's strange and skeletal foreground body share a striking resemblance. Munch could have seen the fetal position mummy at the 1889 Paris Exposition Universelle. Hashtag pioneering new artistic movements. Let's take a closer look at art before this time. As briefly mentioned, art before the 1880s and 1890s was mostly confined to realism. Realism represents a realistic view of a scene. Speculative, insightful, or supernatural elements were intentionally few, if any. It's like drawing a picture to catch the sight as it appears. Standard subject matter included landscapes, portraits, scenes, and still lives. Then there was impressionism. The impressionists were fascinated by light and color, sought to capture light in its changing qualities. They innovated with loose, colorful brushstrokes and the emphasized everyday scenes from modern life. Though Munch was influenced by the earlier movements, here we see something new. Hashtag record price at auction. Would you want this screaming image in your living room looking down at you? Well, the price tag might not be for most people. You see where this is going. Norwegian businessman Peter Olsen put in 2012 and it sold for just shy of 120 million dollars. The bidding started at 40 million dollars and ended after 12 nerve-wrenching minutes by Leon Black, the current owner. He established the artwork as the fourth highest priced painting sold at auctions in the world. Let's let that sink in for a minute. Maybe he's screaming about the dent to his bank balance. Hashtag troubled mental state. What about Munch himself? Norwegian painter Edvard Munch lived from December 12, 1863 to January 23, 1944. Though he and his artworks may seem successful, he wasn't that lucky in his personal life. Illness, trauma and the dread of inheriting a genetic mental condition troubled his early years. Both his mother and older sister died of tuberculosis before he was 15 and one of his younger sisters was diagnosed with mental illness. His brother also died as a young man. All these tragic events led Edvard to choose painting while staying indoors. However, Munch started living a bohemian life under the influence of Hans Jaeger, his friend from the royal school of art and design. Even after the scream, bad luck wasn't done with him. Munch's father died in 1889 leaving the family completely impoverished. Also, his breakdown in 1908 caused clinical therapy. Wow! Now what about the troubled but fantastic history of the painting itself? The painting's story testifies to its legacy, fame and inspiration as a new wave in western art. What do you think about the screaming painting by Edvard Munch? Don't forget to express your thoughts in the comment section right below.