Norwegian artist Edvard Munch wrote these unsettling words in his diary: “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.”
Each of the four versions of “The Scream,” which depict a figure with a skull-shaped head standing on a bridge, is Halloween-creepy, but art historians have long debated over the “shrieking color.”
Was the sky really blood red the the night Munch walked over the bridge? Perhaps the artist was remembering the blood-red sunsets resulting from the eruption of the Krakatoa volcano some ten years earlier, maybe he experienced nacreous clouds colorful glowing clouds seen at twilight in the Far North.
But even here, the sky can can be blood-red. Think of sunsets last summer when the smoke of Canadian forest fires drifted into our region.
And in autumn, now that sunlight is hitting Earth at a lower angle, we experience more atmospheric scattering of light, which favors the red end of the spectrum.
But, as Munch himself suggested, maybe he had a mental health disorder and was suffering from extreme anxiety. Maybe the shrieking colors were in his mind.
We will never know, but I’m wishing you a safe and anxiety-free Halloween and may all your Screams be happy.
