"...I felt the great cry throughout nature..."
- Edvard Munch, 1892-
Of the versions "in colour", four copies exist: two in tempera, a drawn version in coloured pencil and a pastel. Of the black-and-white lithographic version, Munch printed 30 copies, of which only 15 are on display in museum collections around the world, including at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Washington National Gallery and at the Munch Museet in Oslo.
The main figure
The way Munch depicts this experience, with a central figure on a bridge and two figures in the background, is familiar to us all. However, when we take a look at other works prior to 'The Scream', we find that he had been toying with this idea for much longer. The perspective used, the red sky, the diagonal bridge, the characters in the distance, are a recurring feature and prove a persistent search for the perfect composition.
Andy Warhol was also inspired...
In 1984-85, Andy Warhol also produced a series of 15 silkscreen prints entirely in his own style, reworking 'The Scream'. It is partly thanks to Warhol that 'The Scream' has since been reproduced, reworked countless times and the image has spread worldwide as an icon. 'The Scream' appears in countless cartoons, TV series and films and will undoubtedly remain a fixture in our collective visual culture for decades to come.
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The Scream in popular culture
So we can all empathise with the expression of anguish and despair that 'The Scream' depicts, but it is undoubtedly the almost cartoonish main figure that has given the work its universal fame and made it part of our collective memory. As early as 1898, the work was first reproduced as an illustration to a newspaper article, and since then it really seems to be popping up everywhere in our popular culture.
