The Price of a Scream
03/05/12 05:26
The news reports are all filled with the price. It seems to be the thing about the painting that is the most important part of today’s news. So let’s get it out at the beginning of the blog. $119,922,500 is a lot of money. I have no idea what that much money is like. My budget doesn’t allow for the purchase of things that are that expensive. We don’t know who the buyer is. It was a telephone bidder at the Sotherby’s auction yesterday. The seller is businessman Petter Olsen, whose father was a friend of Norwegian expressionist Edvard Munch, who created the pastel-on-board work of art.
It is one of four in a series, and the only one in private ownership. It will remain in private ownership for now, it appears. The other three are held by museums. This version is the only one to include a poem by Munch on the frame that speaks of the inspiration behind the series.
“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.”
It is the highest price ever brought by a work of art at auction. It isn’t the highest price ever paid for artwork. Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I sold for $2135m. Willem de Kooning’s Woman III went for 137.5m. No. 5, 1948, by Jackson Pollock fetched $140m. The Card Players by Paul Cezanne sold for $250m. As I said before, I don’t understand the prices. At least the money from yesterday’s sale will be invested in something tangible. The seller reports proceeds from the sale will go toward the establishment of a new museum, art center and hotel in Hvitsten, Norway. “I have lived with this work all my life, and its power and energy have only increased with time,” Olsen said. He felt “the moment has come to offer the rest of the world the chance to own and appreciate this remarkable work.”
The rest of the world didn’t ever stand a chance. Only a few very wealthy individuals participated in the bidding that lasted only 12 minutes.
Mental illness was a constant fear for Edvard Munch. His sister had just been committed to a madhouse. At 30 and an unsuccessful artist, Munch feared that he, too, was going mad. That is the way they talked about mental illness in those days. If you went mad, they locked you up. Mental illness wasn’t understood. Treatment was thought to be impossible. Restraint was the only option people could see. The lives of those suffering from mental illness were unbearably sad. Munch lived near the asylum where his sister was living. He heard screams coming from that place.
He turned his fear into a drawing. Under a swirling red sky a lone figure on a bridge clasps its head in its hands and cries out in despair. We don’t know if it is male or female. We don’t know anything about the figure except for its terror. It has come to be a symbol of hopelessness and anxiety.
That much I get. I don’t understand why it has turned up on coffee mugs and t-shirts and calendars and posters and Halloween masks. What started as a deeply personal work of art channeling the tormented psyche of a fearful artist has turned out to be an icon – a symbol recognized everywhere. Do we really want to adorn our homes with misery and desperation? Is that the decoration we seek? Why would anyone think that he or she would want to possess such a thing?
We like to look at things that trouble us. We like to listen to sad songs. Humans are drawn to the things that frighten and stir our emotions, even when those emotions are negative. I think that part of the attraction is the simple fact that fear and loneliness are universal. We have been to the edge of the scream in our own lives.
Munch’s art has inspired other artists. Francis Bacon did a Screaming Pope series. Picasso’s Guernica is strangely reminiscent of The Scream. Andy Warhol did silk prints of Munch’s work. Wes Craven made a series of movies about the scream. The aliens in Doctor Who look like the figure in Munch’s art.
I confess I don’t understand it. I am not one of the people whose iPod is filled with sad songs. I prefer my music to be light and joyful. I am drawn to artwork that expresses these emotions as well. I see no reason to pay money to watch a movie that leaves me trembling with fear.
Rachel Campbell-Johnson, chief art critic at the New York Times suggests that such direct emotion in art is somehow adolescent and that people may grow into other preferences as they mature. “It appeals to an immature taste. As you get older you want something different – art that transforms the everyday rather than goes to the extremes of human emotion.” If she is right, and I am not sure she is, the work reflects the time in which it was produced. There was an adolescent-like quality to the end of the 19th century. The world had seen an industrial revolution and the rise of modern democracies that gave a hopefulness and expectation to society. The horrors of the wars of the 20th century were not yet revealed. The unlimited destruction of nuclear warfare had not yet been imagined. Perhaps Munch’s personal anxiety reflected a deeper fear that was a part of the world. It was a fear of the unknown. Looking back from the perspective of the 21st Century, we have witnessed World Wars, a Holocaust and other genocides, nuclear bombs and terrorism. There was much to fear when the scream was created.
I am sad that the work will not be going to a museum. Part of me wanted to see the four versions displayed side by side. I think things like The Scream cannot be possessed by an individual but rather belong to the whole world. But who am I to say what should happen. I wouldn’t want the paining hanging in my home.
And I certainly could not afford to buy it if I did want it.