Analysis of Edvard Munch's The Scream

Author: Edvard Munch

Visual Elements and Composition

The protagonist's vital discomfort expresses itself through the sinuous curves that dominate the entire canvas, except for the bridge, the railings, and two characters in the background, which are drawn with straight lines. The predominant use of unnatural shades of red, blue, and black helps highlight the feeling of sorrow.

The Protagonist and Background

In the foreground, an individual cries out with all his energy; the deformed facial features were probably inspired by a Peruvian mummy on display at the Musée de l'Homme in Paris. There are two characters that walk at the other end of the bridge and remain indifferent, appearing to lack solidarity with the protagonist.

The railings of the bridge separate the two spaces, and a fjord in the background is recognizable along with two silhouettes of ships.

Style and Artistic Influence

Munch's style is influenced by Van Gogh, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Goya. He exerted a crucial influence on Germanic art and especially on the representatives of German Expressionism.

Interpretation and Meaning

Munch wanted his works to reflect the deepest corners of the human soul. The Scream (or The Cry) is a reflection of the inner world of the artist, connecting with the loneliness of man in modern culture. His life trajectory was marked by suffering and death, creating a character that is deeply distressed.

The inlet with boats and the bridge suggests that the scene was set in the city of Nordstrand. The function of the work was to express his individual world, full of anguish and suffering.

Historical Context of Expressionism

Expressionism is a broad movement, a collective mood that lasted, with various changes and fluctuations, from the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. Positivism had created a myth of permanent progress: the bourgeois capitalist society was to become the best world possible. However, the crises of the First World War destroyed this utopia.

Literature and philosophy opened the way to criticize the system from a revolutionary perspective. Expressionism, born on this basis of protest and criticism, gave priority to the internal view of the artist. The movement reveals anxiety, terror, and misery, seeking to reflect what is deep inside the human soul, even distorting reality to emphasize visual expressiveness. The first Expressionist group formed in the German city of Dresden in 1905. This movement proposed a stance against the developing world, much like Romanticism had done before.