Norway is in shock. And for good reason: firstly, we had already stolen a Cri (the version of the National Gallery in Oslo) in 1994, during the Lillehammer Olympics. The thieves had left an embarrassing post-it note: “Thanks for the lack of surveillance“. The paint was recovered a few months later, but that’s still a lot of mess.
Especially since if The Scream is a work of the heart for the Norwegians, who see in it the Scandinavian modesty in expressing feelings, the work also has a global aura. Who doesn’t think they have this image in their eye (“eh, I don’t know what painting you’re talking about?“) just has to take a closer look at the “fear” emoji on his smartphone, the face of which is borrowed from Edward Munch’s most famous work. Cri, of which he produced five interpretations in total, also inspired the horrified expression of Macaulay Culkin on the poster of Mom, I missed the plane or the frightening madman mask of Scream. And that’s without counting the number of incalculable derivative objects on which we were then able to “contemplate” it, from the mouse pad to the plasticized placemat, through the cushions, socks and skirt, finally the screaming tie – tie whose event of display must be carefully chosen, because the subject depicted is not light.
Painting depression
Edward Munch painted his first version of Cri in 1893, visible at the National Gallery in Oslo, when he was going through a deep depressive episode. The work represents a man with a ghostly face gripped by fear, in an exterior setting made of glowing flat areas. The protagonist seems isolated, despite the figures in the background, on the other side of a bridge. We can also identify the places. This is the Port of Oslo seen from Ekeberg Hill. This image can be compared to an event recounted by the artist himself. “I was walking on a trail with two friends — the sun was setting — suddenly the sky turned blood red. I stopped, tired, and leaned on a fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord of the city – my friends continued, and I remained there, trembling with anxiety — I felt an infinite cry which passed through the universe and which tore nature apart.
Munch wanted to paint his life, the exhibition in Beaubourg
This diary extract allows us to understand something fundamental that is often missing when first reading this work. It is not the artist/protagonist himself who screams, but rather the nature that surrounds him. This is confirmed by the first title of the work which was The cry of Nature. And if the features of the figure of the character seem to have been taken by the artist from a Peruvian mummy that he saw in 1889 during the Universal Expo in Paris, on the other hand, the moment depicted, the power of the colors, the strength of the line, this irradiated sky, could refer to the volcanic eruption of the Indonesian mountain Krakatoa in 1883, the meteorological consequences of which reached as far as the skies of Europe at the time.
But ultimately, The Scream, even in the black and white version of the current exhibition at the Palazzo Reale in Milan, more modest perhaps, expresses the painter’s spasms. This is not insignificant if we consider Edward Munch as one of the precursors of expressionism in painting, close to Van Gogh and Gauguin. This silent howl due to the anguish of an end that is beyond us; This obscure melancholy of humans are the themes that have irrigated the Norwegian’s work since, at the age of 16, he decided that he would be a painter. His project that he initiated very early on, Frieze of life, aims to show the moods of his existence.
Coming from an excessively puritanical family – his father, a very religious military doctor, had gone almost mad with bigotry, he said – Munch experienced illness and its corollary, death, at a very young age. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was only five years old. Eight years later, his sister, Sophie, died of the same illness, which gave rise to the painting The sick child, painted in 1885.
Very early on, therefore, Munch intended to portray the feelings that gripped him, in order to share, with the viewer, the difficulties of being. An avant-garde style for his time, which initially creates distrust, even disgust, with regard to his work. When the table the Scream was first shown to the public in 1895, there was still no talk of mental health. Munch’s vision is disturbing, to the point that a medical student suggests that the painter must have had a psychological problem. Moreover, if we look at the canvas, we find this mention: “Can only have been painted by a madman”, added by Munch himself, a posteriori of the reception of his work.
The Norwegian police, not so crazy, managed to get their hands on the stolen Munches in August 2006. More fear than harm.
⇒”Munch, the inner cry”, at the Palazzo Reale, in Milan, until January 26. Info: https://www.palazzorealemilano.it
⇒”Munch Portraits”, at the National Gallery, London, from March 13. Info: https://www.npg.org.uk
The Scream costs money!
In 2012, an American multimillionaire acquired $119 million (91 million euros) a version of Cri in pastels on cardboard. Barely 12 minutes to reach this sales record at Sodeby’s. The fact that the three other versions of the Scream are in the museum, therefore inaccessible to collectors. explains such an exceptional purchase price. The collector could not let the matter pass.
Still in Milan: Eva Jospin at Max Mara
The artist Eva Jospin (Paris, 1975), who had already seduced the artistic director of the luxury house Dior who had commissioned the decor for a haute couture fashion show, will have once again performed well in a competition at the initiative of the Maramotti collection. This is his work entitled Microclimate which now sits in the heights of Piazza del Liberty in Milan, under the glass roof of the Max Mara boutique.
The French sculptor, who made cardboard her favorite material, imagined, for these places, a whole lush vegetation which seems to flourish in the shelter of a greenhouse. Curious plants, lianas, huge leaves under which we shelter, and whose cardboard appearance we quickly forget.
Be careful though, the title of the work tickles us: Microclimate Does it remind us of the fragility of human constructions, in this case, a greenhouse which believes it surrounds nature? While nature does not agree to allow itself to be enclosed by walls. There is no aesthetic angelism in this proposal which, however, does not fail to challenge with the sensation of immersion in another world that it creates. It must also be said that Eva Jospin worked with the perfumer Julien Rasquinet who sought to restore the olfactory trace of a tropical greenhouse, to perfect this sensation of entering a singular universe, between memories and mental projections. Eva Jospin explains: “At a certain point, it was as if these natural architectures, these “rock gates”, these entrances to unknown worlds, had become an obsession. And in this obsession, nature becomes a mystery which envelops man in an astonishing spatiality. It was the idea of crossing the threshold of another dimension“. (AV, in Milan)
