What a Scream!
Press Action
Sunday, August 22, 2004
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/oxman08222004/
By Richard Oxman
The two masked robbers who ran into Oslo’s Munch Museum, and threatened the staff with a handgun, forcing people to lie down as they secured Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” and “Madonna” may have done us all a favor.
Their taking the 1893 icon of existentialist angst, “The Scream,” gives me a chance to address all that is diseased and terrifying about modern life before my personal plans to transform into a hermetic Emily Dickinson materialize. Before I actually travel the route of Rimbaud’s...to The Ogadeen. And perhaps, now, worldwide newscasters will encourage us to put “The End of Civilization” on the table for discussion...as a legitimate option for one and all.
Scream‘s waif-like figure (gender-free), placed against a blood-red sky, moves blinded by its own perceived horror...proceeding along a bridge that cannot end, that offers no relief. It shakily sways toward us with what Brown University’s Arnold Weinstein has called “terrible tidings.” Nightmarish notions, inklings of what we experience today, have ghouled-out its eyes, feverishly fixing its sweat-dripping palms over its eardrums, trying to drown out painful pulsations within its own skull.
The disconnected other life and disappearing boundaries surrounding the primary figure offer no solace.
“I felt as though Nature were convulsed by a great unending scream,” are Munch’s own words. He was only in his thirties when he created the icon, but he had seen enough of what civilization had wrought by the time the nineteenth century came to a close. The work is truly a shimmering sight of sickness without an antidote.
“Shimmering,” but with no more of a touch of soft tremulous light than what’s allowed in the closed coffin of an art collector...who may very well—according to some experts—have set up the robbery so as to carry some of Munch’s genius into the solitary grave for companionship, the potential for public display playing no part in the mastermind’s plans.
What a metaphor for the times! Sharing. Nah. Securing the artwork better after its ‘94 theft? Nah. And they couldn’t have taken the unhinged, Ritchie real Madonna, could they? There’s so much more to comment on, but regarding the middle point: The thing that absolutely jumps out at us in hearing rundown of what came down is the fact that the precious piece of art was only hanging by a wire! No precautions had been taken...to...what?...wire the artwork to an alarm system.
Does that or does that not remind you of the 9-11 Hearings? Robbery in broad daylight and all.
What a scream, this civilization! (1)
(1) Anyone who doubts that Munch was inspired to cry out against civilization in creating “The Scream”—as opposed to attributing it all to his personal trauma vis-a-vis sick family members—need only study the artist’s “Evening on the Karl Johan” (1892) and “Anxiety” (1894). The soulless zombies parading off their plank of barren earth or floating in defiance of gravity (totally out of touch with Nature), too grave to be aware of their own condition, make a statement that is unquestionably about what has become of Humanity.
O’Xman (Richard Oxman) is an art critic and underground activist living in Los Gatos, California. He can be reached at rmoxman@yahoo.com.