Analysis Of The Scream

Emotions are inborn feelings that derive from one’s temper and relationships with other people. Anger, love, sadness, happiness, and fear are all emotions that everyone feels. In the past, many people experienced difficulty expressing their emotions physically and so they developed their own ways to do so. Art was one of the ways that people sought after to express their emotions. Numerous artists found art to be an easy gateway for them to convey their emotions through it rather than conveying them physically. These artists would either show their own emotions and ideas through their works or they would try to spark specific emotions in the viewer’s mind. Some of the famous artists who were known for communicating emotions through art were

It was an expressionist painting and one of Munch’s best recognizable works. The theme of the painting was anxiety, and Munch created it to express his nervousness and loneliness that were caused by the death of his mother and sister. The figure in the painting is believed to be Munch as he created this painting after creating Despair in 1892. Both paintings looked very similar but The Scream looked more emotional as Munch showed his emotions more through this painting. Munch changed himself in the painting to a figure that looked scared of a certain thing. He made the figure appears to be holding its ears trying to block a noise it heard and was afraid of. The figure looks very lonely, sad, and far away from reality as the two men who were supposedly his friends in Despair left him behind. The figure looks very scared from the inside as described in the book “Edvard Munch” by Thomas M. Messer, “Totally alienated from reality, the victim is overcome by the realization of an unspeakable terror from within.” (Messer, 72). Munch named this painting “The Scream” because as he described, he heard a scream that passed by him. He may have heard the scream due to him missing his mother and sister after many years of being lonely. The gloomy touch of colors that Munch created in this painting give the anxious feeling of the painting. Munch described his extreme feeling of anxiety and isolation by saying “I painted this picture- painted the clouds as real blood.-- The colors were screaming.” He intended to use vivid and extensive colors to express his feelings. The painting looks very dreamy-like because of the elongated figures and swirling background. Messer also talks about the composition of the painting and related the swirling motion of the painting to “visualizations of sound waves” hence the name of the painting, The Scream. He says that Munch was able to achieve an incomparable emotional pitch by his use of imagery to create the