Edvard Munch

Peter Duggan's Artoons.

...and the original:


The Scream- Edvard Munch.

I read somewhere that the landscape is very similar to a place close to a mental asylum where Munch's sister was.

The Sick Child, 1907- Edvard Munch.

August Strindberg. 1892. Oil on canvas, 120 × 90 cm. Museum of Modern Art, Stockholm, Sweden.

Vampire. 1893-94. Oil on canvas. Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo.

Ashes. 1894. Oil on canvas. 120.5 × 141 cm. Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo.

The Dance of Life. 1899–1900. Oil on canvas, 49½ × 75 in. Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo.

Death of Marat I (1907).

Lady From the Sea (detail). 1896. Oil on canvas. 39½ × 126 in.

Death in the Sickroom. c. 1895. Oil on canvas. 59 × 66 in. Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo.

Madonna. 1894–95. Oil on canvas. 36 × 28 in. Nasjonalgalleriet, Oslo.

^
Clearly a painter born to illustrate Strindberg.

I have this one hanging in my bedroom. (A print not the real thing)

When I was a child I thought the paintings at home were the originals...

Another version of The Scream- EM

Just read in the paper that it's estimated to fetch $80 million at Sotheby's.

I honestly had no idea that Mr Munch ever worked for the London Underground.

Steve Bell on the Greece bailout deal

Scale of cuts required to implement rescue package prompts analysts to raise spectre of another debt crisis later this year

The Guardian, Wednesday 22 February 2012

Steve Bell on the Queen's state opening of parliament:

The Scream: a global cliche with a £50m price tag

The hysteria around the sale of Edvard Munch's masterpiece is almost as powerful as the picture itself

Zoe Williams

guardian.co.uk, Friday 13 April 2012 15.58 BST


Sotheby's employees in London pose with the only original of The Scream that can be seen outside Oslo. Photograph: Carl Court/AFP/Getty Images

A woman of maybe 75 enters the lobby of Sotheby's and says, with some flourish, "I want to see the Scream. Munch's The Scream!" She looks as though she's expecting someone to stop her. But there is just a flight of stairs and 26 security guards between her and this work of art. Nothing will stop her.

There are four copies, two painting and two pastels, and that is not counting the trillions of posters on students' walls, yawning back decades, touching every adolescence in living memory and beyond, which has ever been touched by the thought, "see that picture? That's me, that is".

One painting and one pastel are in the Munch museum in Oslo, and one painting is in Norway's National Gallery, in the same city.

Having had two of them stolen, blessedly recovered, in 1994 and 2004, Norway will never lend them. They'd never get the insurance. But there is also this fourth version, painted third chronologically, which will be sold in New York on 2 May. It is on show in New Bond Street now. This might be the last time in your life that you could see it (unless you go to Norway).

"I've been coming here for donkey's years," said a woman who wished to remain anonymous, "and I've never been through two security gates. I mean, that Matisse is worth £30m – the reserve price is below it, as you know – and there's no security round that." She leans in: "I think there's an element of marketing. Which is a little bit silly, because we all know who's going to buy it anyway." (I can't tell you who – partly because Sotheby's say this is nonsense, it will go to auction in a proper way. And partly because I don't know.)

Approaching the work has the kind of ceremony you'd imagine they'd put on for the pope, or a dictator. You go through the security, the queue control, past the Miró, and there you are, in a totally dark room, this iconic creation glowing from the darkness as if possessed by a mystical force.

Morrissey's voice blasts into my head with "I know the wind-swept mystical air/ it means I'd like to see your underwear". I'm being flooded with teenage cultural reference, that's what's going on here.

Simon Shaw, Sotheby's head of impressionist and modern art, remarks, "It's so well known, so familiar; everybody's seen the pastiches, the parodies, the toys, the cartoons. You might think it would lose its power, but it doesn't. When you look at the Mona Lisa, it looks exactly as you'd expect it to look. This is quite different."

Martha Freud emerged from the darkened room. "I was just trying to think what the artist was thinking when he did it, and that terrified me." She paused. "Whenever I see paintings with which I'm very familiar, I'm always surprised at how small they are." Which is funny, because that's what I was thinking about her.

Masterpieces as important as this one come along very rarely. The auction house has been in contact with the seller for a number of years, waiting for the market to be at its most advantageous point.

In every other avenue of a connoisseur's conversation, the flowery words (I am thinking specifically of "arabesque"), the way they end every sentence "as you know", they are so delicate and sparing. Then they'll say something like, "Over the past three or four years, during this time of real turbulence, the greatest works of art have proved very resilient" and it just sounds so comically hard-arsed, like someone trying to flog a baby.

Shaw tells me that this version is the "most immediate, it has the most visceral impact of the four, those vibrant colours, the blaring reds and yellows". Childishly, I ask him which is his favourite, and he says, "Munch painted that prose poem on this one [the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red … and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature]. And signed it EM on the frame. But in my job, whether I like it or not is neither here nor there. I am simply here to ask, 'who will like this picture, how much will they be willing to pay for it and why?'"

Before I saw it, I couldn't believe that anybody would spend £50m or, for that matter, £5m or £500m on a picture that is such a global cliche. And now I've seen it, it seems strange and sad that it would be sold at all. But I don't know if that's the piece itself casting a spell, or just the enormity of the ritual.

In praise of … The Scream

Is Munch's screamer shrieking at the world, or is he (or is it she?) being screamed at by it

Editorial

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 3 May 2012 22.05 BST


The strange hold of the Mona Lisa smile is said to be due to the way it disappears when eyeballed direct. The second most famous face in art is likewise marked with ambiguity – is Munch's screamer shrieking at the world, or is he (or is it she?) being screamed at by it, until the head is crushed in by the din? The little cribsheet of a poem the artist penned around the frame of the version which just sold for $120m hardly helps, as it can support either reading. But if the meaning's mixed up, then so are we all, which is why this harrowing spectre has marketed everything from M&M's to Macaulay Culkin, as well as being used in therapy. With the sale, primal anguish is twisted once again, this time into a plutocratic plaything. The painting is big enough to survive this reinvention, as it has the previous ones. Proceeds will fund a new museum and hotel in Norway. The next twist in the tale of The Scream could be putting a smile on the face of holidaymakers.

eddie wrote:I honestly had no idea that Mr Munch ever worked for the London Underground.