The Artistic Analysis of Scream

This set of paintings has a wide range of themes, with the basic theme of eulogizing "life, love and death", revealing the worries and fears of human beings at the end of the century by means of symbols and metaphors. 1893 Monk's oil painting "Scream" is the strongest and most wonderful painting in this group, and it is also one of his important representative works. In this painting, Monk depicts a deformed and screaming figure with extremely exaggerated brushstrokes, showing the extreme loneliness and depression of human beings and the fear in front of the infinite universe to the fullest.

In this painting, there is no specific object to imply the horror that caused this scream. The image in the center of the picture is creepy. He seems to walk past us and turn to the railing that stretches out into the distance. Covering his ears, he could hardly hear the footsteps of two pedestrians in the distance, nor could he see two ships and church steeples in the distance; Otherwise, the whole loneliness wrapped tightly around him may be slightly relieved. This lonely man, completely isolated from reality, seems to have been completely conquered by his deep fear. This image is highly exaggerated, and the deformed and twisted screaming face is completely comic. Those big eyes and sunken cheeks are reminiscent of bones related to death. This is a ghost call. "This can only be painted by a madman," Monk wrote in the sketch of the painting.

In this painting, the colors used by Monk are related to nature to some extent. Although blue water, brown land, green trees and red sky are all exaggerated and expressive, they have not lost the general authenticity of their colors. The color of the whole painting is depressing: the thick blood red hangs on the horizon, giving people an ominous premonition. It conflicts with the purple in the darkness of the sea; This purple is getting darker and darker because it extends far away. The same purple, repeated in lonely clothes. His hands and head were pale and dull brown-gray.

There is no place in the painting that is not full of turbulence. The twisted curve of the sky and the current is in sharp contrast with the thick and straight diagonal form of the bridge. The whole composition is full of rough and strong rhythm in the dynamic rotation. All the formal elements seem to convey that shrill scream. Here, the painter can be said to use visual symbols to convey the feeling of hearing, turning the terrible scream into visible vibration. This technique of visualizing sound waves may be related to the visualization of force and energy in Van Gogh's masterpiece Starry Night. Here, Monk transforms the extreme inner anxiety caused by screaming into a convincing abstract image. In this way, he almost pushed his emotional expression on the screen to the extreme.