ART MASTERPIECENovember Lesson ~ 5th Grade“The Scream” by Edvard Munch

ARTIST~ EDVARD MUNCH• Born on December 12th, 1863 in Ekely, Norway• Munch became familiar with death and mental anguish at a

young age. He lost his mother and his sister to tuberculosis and another sister was on the verge of mental collapse.

• He was raised by an aunt and his very strict father. • He became a painter, a lithographer, etcher, & wood engraver. • His art is reflective of his own unhappy life as well as the basic

fears & anxieties of mankind.

• Munch died shortly after his 80th birthday. He willed over 20,000 works of art to the city of Oslo (capital of Norway) which built a museum in his honor.

Munch is most famous for “The Scream” and spawning a new type of art called

Expressionism ( When an artist tries to express certain

feelings about something, being more concerned about having their painting

express a feeling rather than making the painting look exactly like something )

ACTIVITY INSTRUCTIONS: 1) Write name and teacher on the back of paper.

2) Discussion of different kinds of emotions that can be used (happy, sad, surprised, mad, etc.) 3) The students will pick an emotion and draw a self-portrait with crayons in a very exaggerated manner – they want to “express the feeling” as in the expressionist style, rather than make their face look real. Make sure they press rather hard with the crayons. The colors they use are not to be realistic, but instead reflective of their emotion.

4) They will “wash” over the entire picture with watered down watercolor – have them choose only one color that will compliment the colors of their crayons. If they used dark crayons, use a light watercolor, etc. so that their portrait will stand out.

• Do you recognize this painting?

• What do you think of this painting? How would you describe it?

• What do you think the artist is trying to convey?

• What colors represent what feelings to you? Happy, Sad, Fear, Excitement, Pain, etc

• Do you like the title? Would you give it another name? (The Scream was originally titled Despair but is also known as “The Cry”).

• It is Munch’s most familiar painting. The scene, and in particular the foreground figure are grotesquely distorted and done in unrealistic colors. There are four versions of the painting.

COOL FACTS ABOUT THE ART…

• At some point while the painting was on display, a vandal wrote on the art, “This was painted by a madman”

• The painting has been stolen twice – in 1994 and 2004. It was found again in August of 2006. The damage was apparently minimal.

• In 2003 Astronomers determined that debris thrown into the atmosphere by the great eruption at the island of Krakatoa, in modern Indonesia, created vivid red twilights in Europe from November 1883 through February 1884. And that is why the sky was red, and seemed to be afire.

• “The Scream” has been used in advertising, cartoons, television and movies.

• In the horror movie, Scream, Ghost face wears a Halloween mask that looks like the central figure in the painting.

• In Home Alone, Macaulay Culkin’s pose in front of the mirror is also of the same figure.

• “The Scream” sold for $119.9 Million dollars at Sotheby’s Auction in 2012