Comments on The Scream and Edvard Munch.

Comments

• 1. At 09:30am on 18 Mar 2010, karinhere wrote:

  Good morning Melvyn,
  
  The Scream is an accurate depiction of someone having an anxiety attack; in view of mr. M.'s background I think we may safely assume that that is what it is : Anxiety Attack captured very accurately.
  Not a very good painting however, a pretty bad one actually and I wonder why such a fuss is made over it.
  A bad painting by a neurotic man.
  
  love your show.
  
  karin de groot
  
  

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• 2. At 09:47am on 18 Mar 2010, SarahW wrote:

  I've always loved this painting and found the programme fascinating.
  You may also be interested in the works of a punk artist called Squeeley Neeley (I may have misspelt his name), who was responsible for album covers by such bands as Rudimentary Peni. His work is incredibly dark and intricate and, I suspect, was much influenced by Munch. Having read his book, I believe that he himself drifted in and out of madness. I'm not sure if hes still around.

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• 3. At 09:53am on 18 Mar 2010, Minteddy wrote:

  Three points.
  (1) When I saw Masaccio's expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise in the Brancacci Chapel in Florence I immediately thought of "The Scream". Is there any evidence of Munch being aware of Masaccio's work in the Branacci Chapel?
  (2) A minor quibble - the fact that a painting of a woman kissing the back of a man's neck becomes re-labelled and known as "The Vampire" fits in with Munch's idea of the painting fending for itself. The name becomes irrelevant really.
  (3) The fact I can make any comment at all is a reflection of the wonderful education IOT provides. Cannot wait for next week's subject on development of cities.

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• 4. At 09:55am on 18 Mar 2010, SarahW wrote:

  Sorry, should have looked it up first, the artist mentioned in my comment above is Nick Blinko.

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• 5. At 11:34am on 18 Mar 2010, John Thompson wrote:

  "I was out walking with two friends - the sun began to set - suddenly the sky turned blood-red - I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on a fence - there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city - my friends walked on, and there I still stood, trembling with fear - and I sensed an endless scream passing through nature”.
  Munch was in reaction to the bourgeois,rigid,hypocritical morality of Christiana as was Knut Hamsun,giving himself over to the subjectivism,moods,feelings,images of one’s innerself, in the absence(qua Neitschze) of God.Through art there was a belief in cultural and spiritual renewal.The distinction between the urban and nature have broken down.Anguish,anxiety is projected into nature or nature’s dread is being blocked out by a skeletal figure,itself based on a mummy Munch had seen in an exhibition.Munch experienced extreme poverty and ridicule and utilised cheap board to paint on,even letting nature take it’s course(and chance) by leaving works hanging on a tree.I suspect the spirit of Munch even had a
  hand in the many robberies of the work,decrying the restorers attempts to clean it up!He saw the skull beneath the skin like Webster.Munch seems to have developed a dread of sexuality
  thinking women would absorb all his semen-fuelled creativity.Hence his darker,later depictions as opposed to his earlier depictions of women in the sick room or in nature.Munch in the present was affected badly by his earlier loss of mother and sister to T.B. and his father’s fanatical fundamentalism.Social and political events all influenced his work.His fame took off in Germany and Europe.His circle of friends in the Bohemians like Strindberg all flirted with insanity and trauma in their lives and works.Although the Scream is fundamentally expressionistic work,it’s part of a greater whole(The Frieze of Life) that opposed Lessing’s contrast between art and literature.In itself it expresses an unstoppable moment with the
  diagonal bridge path cutting across the painting as if the Cry had passed through and out again the other side.This is not Caspar Freidrick’s nature but Schopenhauer’s.The artist is not concerned with reality as it appears but with its inner nature and with the emotions aroused by the subject.To achieve this,the subject is exaggerated,distorted or altered to stress the emotional experience in its most intense and concentrated form.Also the use of
  solid blocks of powerful colour.We get an attack of existential angst in Northern Europe with Expressionism as its main development.You feel what the artist feels.
  
  

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• 6. At 3:28pm on 18 Mar 2010, Jane wrote:

  Oh for a fifth chair at the table with Munch's buttocks pressed into it. Only he could really tell the story - anything else is bound to be relatively simplistic, generalized and, to an extent, imagined. Interesting programme none the less thank you. Best wishes... Jane.

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• 7. At 8:02pm on 19 Mar 2010, Traicee wrote:

  In 1994 I attended the trial of a Twyford Down cutting protester in Winchester Crown Court. It was shortly after the theft of a 'Scream' from I'm not sure which gallery. The young man in the dock happened to be wearing a t-shirt with Munch's image emblazoned upon it . The judge looked at the defendant over the rim of his specs and said 'That wasn't you too, was it?'.

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• 8. At 10:27pm on 20 Mar 2010, IrishHumanist wrote:

  Hi Melvin, a brilliant programme. I hadn't understood the significance of "The Scream" before but am truly enlightened by this ,and all your wonderful programmes. Maybe not the place to mention this: but I wonder if you are aware that a great number of your archived programmes which are tagged as: "Available to listen" are sadly not available at all. I imagine many of your fans are wasting quite a bit of time, as I have done over recent weeks, being led up a lot of 'blind alleys' in the archive. I wonder could they tag the programmes accurately as: "not available to listen" if this indeed is the case? Kindest regards, please keep up the wonderful elucidation. Vincent B

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• 9. At 5:07pm on 23 Mar 2010, Professor Ranjan Banerjee wrote:

  This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.

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