How illness and insanity inspired ‘The Scream’
The work was more than merely iconic; a ‘Mona Lisa for our time’
Edvard Munch lived a somewhat joyless life. Death and sickness shrouded much of his childhood; in 1868, when he was five, his mother died from tuberculosis, leaving Edvard, his three sisters and younger brother in the care of his religiously doctrinaire and overbearing father.
Munch’s deepest ties were to his older sister Sophie, who also suffered from tuberculosis and died nine years later, when she was just 15. He would never recover from this loss. Another of Edvard’s sisters was institutionalised for mental illness and spent the greater part of her life in confinement. His only brother died while young of pneumonia.
Munch’s father was a Norwegian physician who was consumed by thoughts of the hereafter. Death was therefore always imminent and whispering its way into Munch’s subconscious. In a journal he wrote: “I inherited two of mankind’s most frightful enemies – the heritage of tuberculosis and insanity – illness and madness and death were the black angels that stood at my cradle.”
Understandably perhaps, Munch had little interest in his father’s belief in a protective, omnipresent god. He turned to life within the Bohemian circles of Oslo, and descended into bouts of alcoholism, always deeply ridden with guilt.
Munch was 21 when he had his first sexual experience with Millie Thaulow, the wife of a distant cousin. They would meet in secrecy in the woods near a fishing village in Åsgårdstrand.
Munch was consumed by his desire for her, and profoundly depressed when she abandoned him and ended their relationship after two years.
His father’s sudden death in 1889 from a stroke spurred one of the greatest stages of Munch’s artistic development. Living between Paris and Germany, he embarked on a series of paintings he called The Frieze
of Life. Suggestive of his state of mind, the paintings bore such melodramatic titles as
Melancholy, Jealousy, Despair, Anxiety, Death in the Sickroom
and The Scream. Shown in Berlin in 1902, the exhibition was a critical and commercial success. Munch created four versions of
The Scream in various mediums; the finest example, shown here, was created using oil, tempera, pastel and crayon on cardboard. Many would agree with the critical assessment that the work was more than merely iconic; a “Mona Lisa for our time”.
Munch depicts a turbulent sky that arches towards the sea as it swells and ripples. Melancholic figures in the background of the pier stand in shadow. The railings rush into the distance; a single figure is seen in front of the others, or perhaps has been left behind. His hands cover his ears, his mouth open wide, the sound almost palpable. The figure is looking outwards at something unfathomable; his dark body is lost, curving into formlessness.
In a diary entry headed “Nice, 22 January 1892”, Munch described his inspiration for The Scream:
“One evening I was walking along a road – with the fjord and the town below on the other side. I was sick, and weary – I stood for some time looking across the fjord. The sun was setting – the clouds were turning red – like blood. I felt as if a scream was going through nature – I thought I heard a scream. I painted the picture – painted the clouds like real blood. The colours were screaming.”
In 1898, Munch took a trip back to Oslo, and there met Tulla Larsen – the woman who would bring him much sadness. Larsen was born into wealth – her father was a leading wine merchant – but at 29 years old she was still unmarried. Munch was introduced to Tulla at his studio, when an artist he shared the space with took her there. She was transfixed by Munch, but he was uninterested. He tried every means to elude her, but she persisted in attempting to seduce him. He even fled to Europe, where he travelled for a year, but she followed him relentlessly. At first, he denied her requests to visit him, but later he gave in.
Tulla was ever hopeful that Munch would marry her, even giving him an antique wedding chest, made for a bride’s trousseau. Munch proposed to her begrudgingly. “In my misery I think you would be happier if we were married,” he wrote in a letter to her, but always found reasons to put off the wedding.
Munch hid away in his cottage in Åsgårdstrand in order to find some peace and tranquillity, but he soon began drinking excessively again. Fearful of Tulla’s mental state, her friends contacted Munch and told him she was depressed, suicidal and taking large quantities of morphine. He reluctantly returned to see her. There was a ferocious argument during which Munch apparently shot himself with a revolver, losing a finger on his left hand.
Munch was later enraged to discover that shortly after his accidental shooting, Tulla had married another artist. “I sacrificed myself needlessly for a whore,” he wrote.
Over the next few years Munch’s alcoholism became so severe that in 1908 he collapsed in Copenhagen. By now he was hearing hallucinatory voices, and suffering from paralysis on his left side. Concerned friends persuaded him to enter a private sanatorium.
Once recovered, he spent the last 27 years of his life in isolation, though he was widely revered as the national artist of the newly independent Norway.
He never married, and referred to his paintings as his children; they were his conceptions and he disliked being separated from them.
When he died, aged 80, authorities discovered 1,008 paintings, 4,443 drawings and 15,391 woodcuts, etchings, and lithographs, hidden away behind locked doors on the second floor of his house.
His painting The Scream, for which Munch is most generally remembered, in many ways overshadowed his entire lifetime’s work and pioneering influence. On one key level this is understandable. The Scream represents a life of trauma Munch never wanted, or was ever able to overcome. But his intensely troubled existence became the cornerstone of his greatest art.
© Charles Saatchi