My Favorite Tie Today - Edvard Munch The Scream Art Necktie

Edvard Munch "The Scream" art necktie 

"The Scream" by Edvard Munch; what it means may surprise you. He felt something more than a hundred years ago that frightened him about our species and our world's future.     

"The Scream" art tie has always been one of my favorite art neckties, and one of my favorite paintings as well. I had always wondered what Edvard Munch was thinking when he created "The Scream." Was the character screaming because he was a spook or was he spooked because he saw a spook. It was that intriguing question that was the cause of my fondness of the artwork besides its sensational composition, unique impressionist style and a dynamic use of colors.

He was born in 1863 in the village of Adalsbruk Norway later moving to Christiania now called Oslo and the capital  His father was a military doctor which provided a low salary which caused conditions of poverty and stress for the family. Great tragedy struck when he was just five years old; his mother and favorite sister died from Tuberculosis. To cope with his anguish he started to draw and create artwork. As a young teen he began to paint with oils developing his remarkable style.  After one year studying engineering at a technical school he decided that he would be an artist enrolling in the Royal School of Art and Design of Christiania.

Edvard Munch

Early on he mastered portraiture, however some of his works were not fully appreciated being considered as extreme impressionism.  Influenced by Manet and later Vincent Van Gogh his style of painting was Naturalism and Impressionism. Entered as goal in his diary he wrote, "in my art I attempt to explain life and its meaning to myself."  

When he was asked about the Scream Munch remarked that when he was walking along a road in Oslo overlooking the Oslofjord at sunset he heard the scream of nature. He had become disillusioned about politics that he felt was allowing the degradation of the environment by the modernization of civilization and the irreversible harm that nature was being subjected to by man's careless ways of the industrial revolution.  He had become rebellious against the establishment and Neo-Classical-Economics which was considered an insulting description of the Industrial Age and the Industrial Age Banking System that regarded profit above all else especially the conservation of nature.  It is not such a stretch to conclude that "The Scream" was meant as a vanguard of what Munch had become so troubled about. He had become part of the Bohemian Movement at the turn of century.  Like many artists of the era he was disillusioned with his world.

Between 1893 and 1910 he created four versions of the work as both paintings and pastels giving all of them the title in German that was unmistakable "Der Schrei der Natur" ( The Scream of Nature ). Considered by art historians an icon of modern art "The Scream" may also be an icon of a political agenda that even to this day has not fully become understood or acknowledged.  He was not alone in his fear that the very existence of the human species would become endangered and all life of our planet could face extinction due to the revolution of the Industrial Age.

In his diary in an entry headed, Nice 22 January 1892, Munch described his inspiration for the image:  He exclaimed that he heard the scream of nature due to what he felt was the result of the irreversible harm caused by Industrialization.

"One evening I was walking along a path, the city was on one side and the fjord below. I felt tired and ill. I stopped and looked out over the fjord—the sun was setting, and the clouds turning blood red. I sensed a scream passing through nature; it seemed to me that I heard the scream. I painted this picture, painted the clouds as actual blood. The color shrieked. This became The Scream."

The Scream Masterpiece by Edvard Munch

The forth version of "The Scream," a pastel 1895 was sold for $119,922,600 at Sotherby's Impressionist and Modern Art auction on May 2, 2012 to financier Leon Black, the second highest price of an artwork sold at auction ever. For an artist that had been criticized and misunderstood like many other masters of the Impressionist Period his works have defined the era. He hated to part with his art work, calling them his children.

Art historians have said that it was emotion he wanted to depict. "It's not the chair that should be painted," he once wrote, "but what a person has felt at the sight of it." "The Scream" is just that and may become recognized as more than a sensational work of art with great emotion but a warning that a threatened nature's scream unheard and without care would one day become more of a cry.  In Norwegian is "The Skirk" translated as "The Scream" but in English "The Shriek" but has also been known as "The Cry."

Our civilization is facing the sixth Mass Extinction that has been recognized as at least a half a century in progress with a great acceleration taking place at present.   An abrupt climate change is very likely to occur within the next 5 - 25 years caused by run-away global warming, the result of an increase of green house gases like carbon due to the Industrial Revolution and the use of fossil fuels.

The rise in the average temperature has caused the Permafrost to melt in the Arctic which is on the verge of releasing hundreds of giga tons of Methane, a greenhouse gas hundreds of times more threatening then Carbon Dioxide.  The result will be average temperatures rising from 4 to 8 degrees above the period before Industrialization possibly by the middle of this century or sooner.  Sea levels will rise caused by the melting of the Arctic Ice Cap displacing billions of people followed by the loss of Habitat.

When you view Edvard Munch's mater piece "The Scream" consider that the screaming of nature that he felt may be "The Crying" of nature that the human species will hear within 35 years.  The potentially irreversible global climate changes that may cause the extinction of the human species in our life times is being predicted now.  In that case I would venture to say that "The Scream" has a priceless value and should our species survive, or if not; future intelligent life will value Munch's intuitive way of making an emotion of art a dynamic warning of unthinkable catastrophe - the Apocalypse of life, more over intelligent life on Earth most definitely a precious and rare occurrence in our Universe.  

Checkout Edvard Munch Art The Scream Tie at Nice Tie Store

Art History Online, Edvard Munch - The Scream (1893)

Wikipedia.org - Edvard Munch The Scream

Smithsonian.com - Edvard Munch: Beyond The Scream

Extinction Event - Global Warming - A special segment of “Last Hours,” the frightening reality of global climate change, narrated by Thom Hartmann and Leonardo DiCaprio.