Oslo opens museum to “The Scream” painter Munch

Oslo Oct 24 (BUS): ‘The Scream’, arguably the most famous image in art, is the centerpiece of a new museum dedicated to its creator Edvard Munch, which will open in Oslo on Friday, but visitors won’t know which one of the many versions they will see until they arrive .

The figure holding its head in a red sunset in a circular motion was inspired by a residence in Berlin in 1892 when the then 28-year-old Norwegian was a leading light of the Symbolist movement.

Between 1893 and 1910, Munch painted “The Scream” several times using different techniques. Stein Olaf Heinriksen, director of the museum, said the Waterfront Museum will have access to three of those paintings, but they will only appear one at a time because they are so fragile.

Since Munch’s death in 1944, the image has been repeated countless times in pop culture, on T-shirts, as an inflatable and finally as an emoji.

“Anyone can see themselves with this character,” Reuters quoted museum curator Trine Ute Buck Nielsen as saying.

“It is not clear if it was a man or a woman, and there is something with such frankness, strong colors and lines, all suggesting that the figure and the landscape merge into a very powerful symbol.”

While Munch’s other well-known motifs, including “Blogger” and “Madonna,” also date from the 1890s, he has worked outside his home in the Oslo suburbs since 1916 and ended up storing two-thirds of his artwork produced there.

Henriksen said he left this legacy to the city, then occupied by German forces, in his will when he died. “He was afraid of what the Nazis might do to him as an artist and to his group,” he told Reuters.

The museum’s remarkable presence in the city has been the subject of debate in Oslo for years.

The gray, metallic facade of the 13-storey building and the towering towers above the opera house, public library and apartment buildings – all built in recent years as part of an urban renewal project to replace a busy container port.

While the museum’s massive Munch collection will be its main attraction, it will feature other exhibitions and activities as well, said curator of contemporary art, Tominga Hope O’Donnell.

“It’s going to be a place for new cutting edge productions where we have performance art and where you can come and see some of the best that the city has to offer,” she said.

HF