Saturday, May 01, 2010

This case has been screaming for attention for years!

Posted by at 12:32 PM

3 comments:

My Daily Struggles said...

The Scream (Norwegian: Skrik; created 1893-1910) is the title of expressionist paintings and prints in a series by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, depicting an agonized figure against a blood red sky. The landscape in the background is Oslofjord, viewed from the hill of Ekeberg, in Oslo (then Kristiania), Norway.

Edvard Munch created several versions of The Scream in various media. The Munch Museum holds one of two painted versions and one pastel. The National Gallery of Norway holds the other painted version. A fourth version, in pastel, is owned by Norwegian businessman Petter Olsen. Munch also created a lithograph of the image in 1895.

The Scream has been the target of several high-profile art thefts. In 1994, the version in the National Gallery was stolen. It was recovered several months later. In 2004, The Scream and Madonna were stolen from the Munch Museum. Both paintings were recovered in 2006. They had sustained some damage and went back on display in May 2008, after undergoing restoration.

The original German title given to the work by Munch was Der Schrei der Natur (The Scream of Nature). The Norwegian word skrik is usually translated as scream, but is cognate with the English shriek. Occasionally, the painting has been called The Cry.

In a page in his diary headed Nice 22.01.1892, Munch described his inspiration for the image thus:
"I was walking along a path with two friends — the sun was setting — suddenly the sky turned blood red — I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on 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."

One theory advanced to account for the reddish sky in the background is that Munch had observed an effect of the powerful volcanic eruption of Krakatoa in 1883: the ash that was ejected from the volcano left the sky tinted red in much of eastern United States and most of Europe and Asia from the end of November 1883 to mid February 1884. This explanation has been disputed by scholars who note that Munch was an expressive, rather than descriptive painter, and was therefore not primarily responsive to literal rendering. Alternatively, it has been suggested that the proximity to the site of the painting of both a slaughterhouse and a madhouse may have offered inspiration.

The scene was identified as being the view from a road overlooking Oslo, the Oslofjord and Hovedøya, from the hill of Ekeberg. At the time of painting the work, Munch's manic depressive sister Laura Catherine was interned in the mental hospital at the foot of Ekeberg.

In 1978, the Munch scholar Robert Rosenblum suggested that the strange, sexless creature in the foreground of the painting was probably inspired by a Peruvian mummy, which Munch could have seen at the 1889 Exposition Universelle in Paris. This mummy, which was crouching in a fetal position with its hands alongside its face, also struck the imagination of Munch's friend Paul Gauguin: it stood model for the central figure in his painting Human misery (Grape harvest at Arles) and for the old woman at the left in his painting Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?. More recently, an Italian anthropologist speculated that Munch might have seen a mummy in Florence's Museum of Natural History which bears an even more striking resemblance to the painting.

Depersonalization disorder
The environment of The Scream is often compared to that of which an individual suffering from Depersonalization disorder experiences, such a feeling of distortion of the environment and one's self. The image may represent the pain and agony experienced in organic diseases such as trigeminal neuralgia, a paralysing all encompassing pain.

Saturday, May 01, 2010
My Daily Struggles said...

For the life of me I don't see how on earth the word "screaming" raises law enforcement concerns.

That's your Justice Department at work! You have to wonder, the whole time they were reading my blog, how many criminals were planning or committing real crimes.

(I only commit "fake" crimes. That's because I have a fake mental disorder. In my case, only the government checks are real -- thank God! Everything else is fake. Fake, fake, fake.)

Saturday, May 01, 2010
My Daily Struggles said...

Notice the sense of right and wrong: "This case has been screaming for attention for years!"

Monday, May 03, 2010

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