Featured Image Credit: Oli Scarff/Getty/AFP/Stringer/Getty
Topics: Art, Reddit, Social Media, World News, History, Viral
Poppy Bilderbeck
Topics: Art, Reddit, Social Media, World News, History, Viral
We've all seen the painting but do we all really know why The Scream is screaming?
If you went to school, chances are you've more than likely come across Norwegian artist Edvard Munch's The Scream. Either tasked with re-creating it yourself, analysing it or having spotted a version of it in a museum on a school art trip, it's become known as one of Munch's most iconic works and is a relatable one at that - channeling most of our faces as we wake up on a Monday morning realizing it's the start of another week, yet again, in the rat race which is life.
However, while you may've identified with feeling like screaming, your mouth pulled into an 'o' and your hands flying to the sides of your face when your alarm goes off at 6:00am each morning, it turns out, your interpretation of the image has probably been wrong all along.
The first version of The Scream was shared by Munch in 1893 in the form of a painting.
The image then went on to be made into a lithograph and multiple other versions were printed, resulting in the plethora of different variations we see today - some in black and white, others in color.
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The image depicts a bridge against a backdrop of water, greenery and a sunset with two figures visible on the left at the far end of the bridge before it peters out into the horizon.
And just off center in the middle of the image is the figure who gives the artwork its title - a wavy figure of a person, their arms raised and hands clutching the side of their face, their mouth in the shape of an 'O'.
Simply looking at the image and the fact it's called The Scream, it's fair enough so many have presumed the figure to be screaming however, it turns out that's not actually what Munch is depicting.
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At the bottom of his 1895 piece, Munch printed: "I felt a large scream pass through nature."
So ultimately, the figure is not actually screaming themselves, but is reacting to a scream they heard, their expression one of shock opposed to them making a sound themselves.
Indeed, Munch's original name for the painting was meant to be The Scream of Nature.
And it's not taken long for people to flood to social media to weigh in.
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One Reddit user said: "Somebody said it looked like a king Charles spaniel and now that's all I see."
"His facial expression don’t look like the ones of someone screaming, and looks rather shocked," another added.
A third commented: "Anyone who saw Home Alone would think it's a scream."
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"I thought it was a young boy, left alone at home, putting aftershave on his face," a fourth said.
And a fifth resolved: "It's deliberately ambiguous, designed to provoke thought, to make you consider that maybe there are multiple ways to interpret something, to make you think twice about your initial reaction. something people on the Internet are bad at doing!"