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Silencing The Scream

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In an age where anxiety is rampant, despite all our developments and achievements, Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream almost acts as a society’s emblem. No wonder it sold for $120m at a Sotheby’s auction in New York last year. 

Now I’m wondering: How did we get to the point where such a painting reflects our underlying mood? As I said, despite all our developments and achievements. What is lacking when we seem to have it all?

And although I absolutely adore the painting, I find the price a bit too steep. How is it possible that somebody has so much money (In excess I might add. His/her other living expenses are apparently covered and he/she has a little something lying around to invest somewhere), while millions on the planet do not know where the next meal will come from? If ever. What is wrong with this picture? Pardon the pun!

Edvard Munch was himself a troubled man. Suffering from insomnia, he would often book himself an overnight couchette to Oslo, as he found sleeping on trains easier. With the latest price his painting fetched, he could have bought himself a whole lullaby train as remedy. But somehow I do not think that all the money in the world is a solution for many of our most intimate and devastating demons. 

 
              Photograph by Ken Havard

On a totally different note, but on the same subject: I cannot help but think of an Olive Thrush every time I see The Scream. It is such a hysterical bird. They tend to regularly help themselves to the dog food on the stoep. When I suddenly round the corner and surprise them in the process, it is with shrieks and wings flapped in panic that they fly away. Were they humans their actions would have been something in the vein of: “Help! Help! Murder! Assault with the intent to kill! Rape! Call the police! Call the ambulance! Just call! Help! The end is nigh!” And a posture pretty much the same as that of the figure in the painting. Often I shout after them: “Oh, get a life!” before picking up the scattered pellets.

Is there a moral to my musings? I think I want to say that contemplative spirituality helps me to appreciate the painting or any painting for that matter, discover  its interconnectedness to so many other things in life and to find in this spirituality the deep remedy for that same anxiety that I myself so often struggle with. In contemplative spirituality everything belongs and gets a certain beauty.

Humor as well. It was a cartoon that started this, remember.


George


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