An Analysis of Edvard Munch’s The Scream
Edvard Munch masterfully painted The Scream, carefully combining several basic elements of art and using multiple design principles to organize these elements in a way that portrayed his emotions to the viewer. Munch used tempera paint and pastels on cardboard to create The Scream in 1893 (“The Scream”). According to Artsy, “Edvard Munch is renowned for his representations of emotion.” He was a Norwegian painter and printmaker that embedded intense emotional themes into his works (Watson). Munch was part of the Symbolism movement, and his subjects were “drawn from his Scandinavian roots and his own tortured psyche,” (“The Scream”). The Scream is recognized as a “symbol of anxiety and alienation” and it was based on the artist’s own experience (“The Scream”). Khan
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The bloody red sky contains the painting’s most noticeable use of color. The bloody red color combines with the thick, curvy brushstrokes to create an intense amount of emotion for the viewer. The moody sky takes up most of the top half of the painting, showing how Munch felt in his personal experience. He had “felt a vast infinite scream [tear] through nature” and he wrote that “the flaming skies hung like blood and sword over the blue-black fjord and the city” (“Munch, The Scream.”). Munch did an excellent job of putting his own personal experience and the emotions he felt during that experience into The Scream. Several artistic design principles can be seen in The Scream. Two obvious principles that were used in the painting are variety and asymmetrical balance. Munch used wavy lines to depict both the sky and the landscape, but he varied the color throughout. The Scream is asymmetrically balanced. One example of this is how the two dark human figures on the bridge balance with the dark, curving fjord on the other side of the