This underlines my position that the role of arttalk/artwriting is to lasso the art experience rather than replace it with text:
"Edvard Munch's famous painting The Scream, depicting a gape-mouthed skeletal figure clutching his hands to his ears against the backdrop of a fiery sky, was inspired by the lurid sunsets visible in Norway in 1883. These unusual sunsets, which could be seen everywhere from Europe to North America, were caused by the eruption of a volcano on the Indonesian island of Krakatoa, hundreds of thousands of miles away.
Well, I'm glad we've got that little mystery cleared up. Here I was thinking that The Scream was fuelled by Munch's extraordinary talent for rendering emotion in paint, and represented both the apogee of expressionist painting and the quintessential statement of human alienation in the industrial age. I am relieved to discover it's just a picture of a geological event."
Posted by Dennis at December 15, 2003 1:54 AM
Leave a comment