Can Artistic Expression co-exist with Economic Promise?

Edvard Munch, a Norwegian expressionist painter, was born in 1863. His works are described to best represent Expressionism, Fauvism and Surrealism. Munch uses exaggerated and controversial subjects, powerful experimentation of colors, and clear distinctions between art and nature as being opposite to bring his art alive. This distinction helped him create paintings to criticize the role of industrialization on nature through his art. In order to keep art alive in a society that threatened this substitution, Munch used a range of colors, swirling effects, designated infrastructure placement, and unique characters in two of his paintings, Anxiety and Scream, to help paint the dismal and hellish portrait of a rapidly urbanizing and industrializing early 1900’s European society. People and occupations threatened to substitute the creative with the mechanical and artificial. This resulted in Expressionism becoming the medium to show the tough choices faced by both artists and society.

The uniqueness of the characters in both paintings attempts to highlight the two conflicting sides Munch observed: the artists and an occupationally-driven society. He used distinct features and subtle differences to position both characters in the same situation, hence leading me to conclude they exist in the same realm, the artist and society are literally facing off one another. The sole character in Scream almost looks sexless to show his potential in being anybody. However, this generic human characterization is juxtaposed with surrealist anatomy that makes him alienish and unrealistic. He carries an unusually oblong face outstretched by an open mouth with exaggeratedly large hands which are non-adhering to the hand-to-face size ratio. He is uniquely dressed in a black robe. The expression on his face is one of shock and agony, and having read of Munch, one could argue that he has attempted to portray the inside of his mind (as seen in the figure representing possibly the skull and the internal body) to show his exasperation to an increasingly industrialized world failing to appreciate art. This is evidenced in in the exaggerated expressions and huge mouth cavity, to reflect the sound of an unearthly, internal scream that haunted Munch’s own mind in his attempt to find a place for art. The Scream character has a flowing nature (his robes fade into the background) like those of creative minds letting ideas flow, as opposed to the rigidness of the Anxiety characters. In Anxiety, they appear to be wearing formal, occupational clothes which represent a Victorian wardrobe indistinguishable from one another (black hats and black shirts). This serves in causing a loss of unique identity (unlike Scream who blends in easily). They all share the same fatigued and miserably angry look, and the irony is that these recognizable clearly defined humans (with appropriate body structures) seem mechanically robotic and almost soulless in their expressionless eyes. In comparison, the alien like scream character, who in spite of not being human, conveys more emotions and soul.

The people at the back have been painted to be so irrelevant that Munch just decided to make them faceless, like a sea of monotonous people. These are meant to represent the general society (a non-unique mob of lookalikes with no distinct features). Looking at the Scream

character is funnier because his magnified emotions and abnormal hand gestures relate to a pantomime artist who uses physical movements to communicate and make people laugh (so this character looks like an entertainer in a circus). The mob in Anxiety are simply tragic because their emotions and mechanically inhuman movements show a soulless walk towards an unhappy destination like death and suffering. This coupled with the use of black for garments symbolically brings out a “funeral element” from Anxiety, like an inevitably time for mourning and loss of something important (happiness is dead, not a person). Also, placement of character implies subliminal ideas. The Scream character, devoid of other people around him, can come to represent artist freedom and movement (walking down his own path). This is contrasted with the tightly packed hordes of people in Anxiety represents rigidity, social criticism (hence less freedom), and more uninspired-like robots down an assembly line. These expressions and characteristics can be held parallel to how each of these conflicting sides view one another in criticism. The artist sees this new industrialized society as dead ghosts who are marching in unison with nothing setting them apart and lack creativity and inspiration. Looking at their eyes, one can see they appear merely as dots to show the fatigued nature of society that’s miserable in its own existence. Society, meanwhile, looks at artists as these frustrated, mad-men aliens and isolated freaks who fail to fit into their regimen. Although the characters are fascinating, they truly appear striking owing to Munch’s erudite use of colors to convey agony, pain and other emotions implicitly.

Munch’s decided to use red and orange shades of color to create absolute hell as a critique for the depressing and polluted environment with clouds that cause an absence of the sun. This is meant to highlight the impact of industrial productions on the living circumstance for people, and the lack of a familiar sun signals descendent into darkness of a long night. True to both paintings, we can see that the sky is predominantly red and orange which are allegorically represent biblical hell. It is nearly 30-40% of the canvas area. There is an ominous tone to the alarming sensation in the form of an intrinsic unease in all the characters as felt in Anxiety and Scream. The blatant use of red is really harsh for viewers to look at the painting for longer times. This is related to one of the quotes made by Munch which said the “sky turned red as blood”, and that he heard the “infinite scream of nature”. This interestingly brings to Munch’s genius of knowing that paintings can’t produce sound so how does one do justice to a painting called Scream. Munch used the red to tell his viewers that the screaming sound of agony is not just coming from the Scream character (artist) but nature itself. Munch believed that “art is not nature”, and that art came from inside of the human mind, while nature resided outside. The red is the pollution and destruction of nature caused by human’s industrial activities, and the Earth is actually the one screaming, not just the Scream character. The use of red is meant to evoke the pains of seeing blood, or the sunset that ends the day, leaving a pessimistic feeling. Knowing from the timeline of the painting, Munch understood that art and nature are two distinctly separate things. But this industrialization has affected both the inside and the outside (one in tormenting the artist’s sanity in making them irrelevant and the other in destroying nature). It signals a pessimistic attitude to change in nature of both man and external nature, for neither

was safe, and that this could in the early 1900s led to an all-out war (World War 1) for man had become part of a soulless mob. The only things familiar and too positively powerful to destroy was the sun, but the sooty clouds and smoke have covered the sky in faint red glow and the sun is no longer visible, making everyone disoriented and pursue bad decisions.

The sun is meant to represent goodness, warmth and positivity in an eternal cycle. Unlike a good warmth, the tone of the painting holds an unkind, distant warmth because the glow of the sky is crimson red as opposed to blue or yellow. In Kandinsky’s theory, blue and yellow are more positive colors with blue representing calmness and clarity while yellow represents a lively color whose excessive usage could be harsh. The predominant red color scheme mimics the end stage of a dying star that went from being the yellow main sequence (like our Sun currently), to a red-giant about to explode. This expected explosion allegorically shows the explosion of conflict between the artist and society, that could lead to death of either or both. This death like atmosphere sets up a depressing mood and the abandonment of man by nature, causing pessimists at the time to turn to art (as a means to replace the beauty of nature being destroyed) to gain some optimism, or at least document how things were. This is one of the important reasons why Munch could have decided to try and create Expressionism as an answer to this pessimism. It appears the world is entering a period of darkness and long night. The Sun is meant to represent a refuge of hope, faith and a purity symbol. However, its apparent absence takes both these things away from the audience. Allegorically, this lack of warmth radiating from the sun shows a lack of cordial warmth that fellow humans hold for one another as they become steely cold. While the sun is absent, what is uniquely present in the sky is actually swirling effects like the wind that appear to move.

The swirling motions in the sky and water tend to portray the dynamisms and fluidity of life that does not stop for anyone in an increasing industrializing world. This fluidity represents the role of water in maritime trade and colonial power expansion in the industrial era. These swirling effects create a sense of motion in still-paintings (as if the background is constantly shifting). This is meant to represent the rapid changes in technology causing time to pass really fast while making days longer and lives shorter. This flow could possibly represent the flow of time, and also alternatively and more simply just the fluid nature of water. Water has a sense of dynamism about it as seen in the smooth, parabolic curves for water that create a motion effect in a still painting (as juxtaposed to the rigidity of characters in Anxiety). The flowing nature is meant to evoke calmness in viewers and the blue scheme used is meant to juxtapose the harsh reds of the sky. Munch wanted to represent water in both his paintings to parallel ships and trade commercialization. In the middle top of both paintings behind the characters, one can see the outline of these ships that were the main source of European globalization at the time of the formation of changing cultural and economic capitals. These ships are also surrounded by water that is unmissably red and yellow (light from a hidden sun), and this symbolism relates to that of a spotlight on the most important performer on the metaphorical global trade stage (in this case

the ships). As seen in many history books, most cities were formed close to water bodies, and this could tell us that all these characters on the bridge are trapped in a smoky, polluted metropolitan, with complete detachment from nature and the natural. Their only escape is to leave on one of those boats, for the water seems more inviting then either the bridge or the sky. While the water is free flowing, the bridge is static and has no clear ends, and yet it is uniquely the place where characters find themselves in both paintings to represent the choice of punishment and rewards as faced.

The positioning of the bridge is allegorical to how people can change their circumstances in an era where social status could easily be changed (technology acting as a bridge) from poverty to wealth and pain. The idea of a bridge restricts subjects to a defined geographical region, thereby limiting their options. It makes it more compact and creates a sense of urgency and powerlessness for the Scream. While the sky is predominantly red and the water is mostly blue, the bridge has a mix of these two colors to show its shifting nature and creating moving effects, substituting alternating colors for swirling motions to achieve this effect. This bridge is basically hidden in Anxiety, showing the resistance the masses possess to not only appreciate the flow of art but also to show the inequality and competition for space, money and power societies faced in the industrial age (there is not enough space for everyone on the bridge). As much as the bridge connects the artist and the society, it is also the object that is separating them. For Munch, this bridge could allegorically represent “flow”, and indicates the transition period from Realism and Impressionism to Expressionism in a mad, mad world of shifting status of art and people due to jobs and technology. Munch, who loved art, is shocked to see that this bridge (representing industrial technology) that has allowed for the pursuit of wealth and improvements in status quo, has also taken intangible things from people like the safety (job security), sanity of the artist and the happiness of the masses. This is seen in never-ending length of the bridge, like something going on forever which to cross would drive someone insane and that happiness and wealth on the other end are hence an unachievable goal. And while in Anxiety it is apparent that the crowd is marching onwards, in Scream the character’s decision still stands to be made, and this could parallel Munch’s own life in deciding whether to continue pursuing art or becoming faceless yes-man, nothing more than a unit in society just like the zombie-like horde about to engulf the Scream. This is evidenced in the similarity of backgrounds, light tones and color schemes that makes it appear as if the two sets of characters are facing off one another. The presence of faceless people in Scream can show that they exist in the same realm, and the fact that Munch painted these paintings merely a year apart not only brings an artistic but also a temporal connection. In addition, all the major features form the basis of both paintings, and all this information leads me to believe that Scream and Anxiety are not two separate works but when placed side by side, represent the same bridge, and the choice on either end of that bridge that the Scream character has to make. The paintings are the two distinct outcomes or responses of Munch to the same situation involving the inevitable technological domination of society’s life and culture. He can either choose to react as the Scream character (the conventional artist) does, which is to resist society cracking down on artists that lead to him

being driven insane, and as a rebellious act can continue pursuing art and introduce Expressionism. His other option is to assimilate himself with society and join their soulless ghost army in an emotionless and painful journey along the bridge in pursuit of painful wealth that is not guaranteed, resulting in him becoming a part of a cold, cruel world.

Munch used his paintings to display his frustrations about the changing times he found himself trapped in deciding to choose between his true passion for art and becoming a part of society. Coming from a poor family, one could understand why he viewed wealth as being important, but he also realized that it could not lead to happiness. His work inspired him, and if this meant to oppose society, he would have gladly done that. His self-reflections prompted him to change from society norms of impressionist art, to taking risks and popularizing expressionist art along with Van Gogh and a few others who share similar art-styles. He wanted to walk down his own path, and so he continued painting what he loved, and allowed money to come, if at all, only as a consequence for he believed that the industrialized society could have led to the death of art had this transition in styles not occurred lead by Munch. And so, art continued to transform into new future styles and survive these dark periods of economic and geo-political turmoil, adapting to the times just like the water and sky moving.