Yesterday one of four versions of The Scream sold for a record $119,922,500 at Sotheby’s. The previous auction record is held by Picasso’s Nude, Green Leaves, and Bust, which sold for $106.5 million in 2010. In this version of The Scream, Munch’s handpainted frame includes poems that describe him “shivering with anxiety” and feeling “the great scream in nature.”
If any reader would like to create a version of The Scream in response to the auction (or anything else–like, for instance, the way Sotheby’s has locked out the art handlers), please send a jpeg by June 1, 2012, and I’ll post an exhibition.
Edvard Munch, The Scream, 1895, pastel on board.
Related article:
Jerry Saltz’s response. “We will likely never see this work of art again in our lifetimes. The Scream
is a part of art history and should hang in a public collection,
probably in Norway, and not just decorate a California den or a dacha in
the Ukraine, waiting to be fodder for the next auction. (Needless to
say, no museum was in a position to spend that kind of money.)”
is a part of art history and should hang in a public collection,
probably in Norway, and not just decorate a California den or a dacha in
the Ukraine, waiting to be fodder for the next auction. (Needless to
say, no museum was in a position to spend that kind of money.)”
——-
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I like this version very much with the little guy looking over the edge of the railing. The screamer's eyes are a little different from each other, really bringing home the warping of the inner trauma that must be affecting him.
I am most used to the popular green-faced screamer, but though he is more ill-looking, the lost-ness of this one is more striking. ArtFinder's art of the day has another Scream, that I find even less disturbing because I feel the background somehow has become more important than the actual screamer.
Interesting that three paintings that are essentially the same can give three very different feelings.
how do we send you our screams?
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