The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Edvard Munch · Skrik, the motif shown in Germany as Der Schrei der Natur · tempera and crayon on unprimed cardboard, about 91 by 73.5 cm, the board left bare in places · one upright field: a figure in the foreground with his hands to his head, two walkers behind him on a road with a railing, a fjord, and a sky in bands of red, orange and yellow · 1893, first shown in Berlin in December of that year · the National Museum, Oslo, the gift of Olaf Schou to the National Gallery in 1910 · the unit scored is the one board of 1893, as it stands, whole; the other versions of the motif are context
Mode
Landscape as the record of an inner state; a figure deformed into a sign, and colour freed from local hue to carry sound
Mythos
The soul at the edge of the world, hearing what the world says: Pan’s cry, the noise in nature that gave panic its name; a threshold that the others keep
Phase
One moment at sunset on a road above a fjord, the walk that Munch’s prose poem, dated in his notes to Nice, 22 January 1892, describes; the board painted and first shown in 1893
Presentation
Tempera and crayon on unprimed cardboard, about 91 by 73.5 cm, much of the board left bare or thinly covered; three figures, one in the foreground and two behind
Register
One note, held: dread at full pitch, a hot sky against cold water, and two figures beside it who hear nothing
Scale
One road, one fjord, one sky, three figures, on a board about the width of a man’s shoulders
Governing Proposition
A figure stands at the front of a small board with his hands pressed to the sides of his head and his mouth open. Behind him a road with a railing runs straight into depth, and two people walk away along it, upright, in step. Beyond the railing a fjord and a sky in bands of red, orange and yellow curve in one wave that runs on into the figure’s body. The hands cover the ears: he is not the one screaming but the one who hears, and what he hears is nature’s. The wager of the board is that a landscape can be painted as what was heard rather than seen, in crayon and thin tempera on bare cardboard, so that the meeting of two orders of line at one man says that the world now speaks dread through the self, and that the people a few steps away hear nothing.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The board is upright, about 91 by 73.5 centimetres, small enough to take in at arm’s length. Edvard Munch painted it in 1893 in tempera and crayon on unprimed cardboard, and much of the cardboard he left bare or only thinly covered, so that its brown shows through in the road and in passages of the landscape. He called it Skrik, the scream. It entered the National Gallery in Oslo in 1910, the gift of Olaf Schou, and it hangs in the National Museum, since 2022 in the new building on the harbour.
There are three figures. In the foreground one stands with his hands pressed to the sides of his head and his mouth open, his body bent like a flame. Behind him a road with a railing runs at a steep diagonal into depth, and on it two figures walk away, upright. Beyond the railing lies a fjord in blue-black, drawn in curving lines, then a shore, and above everything a sky laid in bands of red, orange and yellow. The railing is the one straight, made thing in the picture. Everything else curves, and the curves run through the sky, the water and the figure’s body alike.
The board is one of several statements of the motif, and the only one weighed here. Munch made a crayon drawing in the same year and a tempera in 1910, both now in the Munch Museum in Oslo; the second was stolen in 2004 and recovered damaged. A pastel of 1895, in private hands, carries a version of his prose poem on its frame, and the lithograph of the same year is how the image chiefly travelled in his lifetime. The year before, he had painted Despair on the same road. Those are context. The work is the board of 1893, as it stands.
Movement II
In his notes Munch dated to Nice, 22 January 1892, a prose poem of a walk at sunset with two friends: the sky turning to blood, and a cry without end passing through nature. The wording changes from draft to draft and from one translation to another, and it is given here only in substance. The motif went out in Germany under the title Der Schrei der Natur, the scream of nature, and the title says whose scream it is.
The hands decide it. Pressed to the sides of the head, they cover the ears. He is not screaming; he is hearing, and what he hears comes from outside him, from the sky and the water whose lines run on into his body. Take the hands away and he is a man shouting. With them, the cry belongs to nature and the man is its receiver. Inner and outer have become one medium, and the union is not communion but exposure: the world speaks through him, and what it says is dread.
The red bands are not a sunset. They are the sound made visible, laid in long strokes of tempera that keep their colour against the cold of the fjord, and the whole field is at the pitch of the cry at once: sky, water, body and road. There is no quiet passage for the eye, and the receding road pulls it away as fast as the figure pulls it in. The register is one, held without change. The face, a skull with an open mouth, is the device on which the force is concentrated, and more than a century of repetition has worn it without spending it.
Movement III
Two figures walk on along the road, upright, in step, a few metres away. They do not turn. Whatever is happening at the front of the picture happens to one person; the others, in the same light and under the same sky, hear nothing and keep to the road. The two friends of the poem are there, and the picture makes them the world that does not cross. Anxiety is solitary in company, and ordinary life does not see it.
The railing and the walkers belong to one order of line, straight and receding, the order of perspective and good sense. The sky, the water and the figure belong to another, the curve. The picture is built on the meeting of the two at a single point, and the point is the figure: the wave that runs through the sky and along the shore runs on into his body, and the railing cuts behind him. The heat of the sky and the cold of the water meet along the same lines. Nothing in the field escapes one order or the other, and nothing contradicts their meeting.
The figure has been reduced to a sign of the human: sexless, hairless, skull-like, a body bent by the same curves as the fjord. He is anyone, and that is the claim; the place keeps the particular that the man gives up, a road above a fjord at sunset, the walk the notes describe. The motif had stood on this road the year before, in Despair. What remains is the soul at the edge of the world, hearing what the world says, Pan’s cry, the noise in nature that once gave panic its name; and a threshold, which the others keep.
Movement IV
Munch had trained in the naturalism of Kristiania, under Krohg; he had seen Impressionism in Paris, and the Synthetism of Gauguin and of the late van Gogh, which flattened colour and let line carry feeling. Each step taken on this board has a precedent. None had gone so far toward making a picture the direct record of a psychic event: a landscape not of what was seen but of what was heard, colour freed from local hue to carry sound, a figure deformed into a sign.
In November 1892 his exhibition in Berlin was closed after a week amid public scandal. He went on in the same direction, and of the painters of that turn he was the one present in Berlin. In December 1893 this board was shown there, among the pictures he grouped as a study for a series on love; it became the emblem of the cycle he later called the Frieze of Life. At the upper left a line is pencilled on the board, in Norwegian, saying that it could only have been painted by a madman. In 2021 the museum attributed the line to Munch’s own hand. It belongs to the object as it stands: the verdict he faced, written onto the work by the man it judged.
The surface refuses finish as the state refuses composure. Crayon runs over thin tempera, and the board is left bare in the road and the landscape. The roughness is chosen. Where it matters the command is complete: the bands of the sky hold their colour, and one rhythm of line carries from the sky through the shoreline into the body, cut cleanly by the railing. Elsewhere the means are thin. Passages of the fjord and the shore are summary, the walkers are drawn in shorthand, and the materials are worked at the edge of what they will bear.
Movement V
Most of the image’s reach in Munch’s lifetime went through the lithograph of 1895 and the other versions; this board stayed in Norway and entered a Norwegian collection. What moved the field was the motif, and the board is its fullest painted statement and the version first shown in Berlin. With van Gogh’s late canvases it stands at the founding of Expressionism. The Brücke painters took up the turn after 1905, Kirchner and Nolde among them; in Vienna, Schiele and Kokoschka; and through the century the scream became the figure of the modern subject, an image carried far past any gallery.
The board has lasted 133 years, though cardboard, thin tempera and crayon are among the most vulnerable materials a painting can be made of, and sensitive to light. Drips mark its lower surface. On 12 February 1994 it was stolen from the National Gallery, and it was recovered in May of the same year. The image came through. Its form is whole, nothing that carried meaning is lost, and it has been in a national collection and in public view since 1910.
The questions have not closed: who screams, the figure or nature; where the figure comes from; the place and the poem; how the versions stand to one another; whose hand wrote on the board, settled only in 2021. Much of the return is to the history around the object. On the board itself the image is grasped almost at once, and a second look confirms its few relations more than it adds to them: the hands, the walkers, the two orders of line. The colour of the sky, the scrubbed board and the crayon over tempera reward the closer look. The figure still stands on the road with his hands to his head, and the two still walk on.
Act III · The Twelve
Judged subtractively on the configuration. Remove the two walkers and the picture loses its second fact, that this happens to one person while the others, a few steps away, hear nothing; the cry becomes a state of the world rather than an isolation. Remove the railing and the one straight, made thing in the field goes, and with it the argument between the line that recedes in order and the curves that take the figure. Remove the sky and the cry has no source. Remove the hands and he is shouting, not hearing. The scale, small and close, is compelled: larger, the board would become a stage. What gives is at the margin: the shore is a count, not a structure, and passages of the fjord are filler between the bands.
Score: 8.8 / 10
What can be stated: the modern self stands where nature’s meaning used to arrive, and what arrives there now is dread, which it cannot pass on to the people beside it. The figure does not scream at the world; he covers his ears against it, and the world’s lines run through his body, so that inner and outer have become one medium, and the union is exposure, not communion. The two friends walking on in good order give the social half: anxiety is solitary in company, and ordinary life does not see it. The proposition holds. Held close to the gate because the first and strongest gift is a mood at full force, and a mood ranks below a meaning; the meaning is read from the structure, the hands and the walkers, and a viewer can take the mood alone.
Score: 8.6 / 10
The elevation is dreadful, the sublime of terror, and it is not one moment inside a flatter whole: the whole field is at the pitch of the cry at once. The red bands are not a sunset; they are the sound made visible. Sky, water, figure and road all carry it, and the receding road pulls the eye away as fast as the figure pulls it in, so the height is sustained from edge to edge. Held below the top for range: one note, held, where the greatest pictures rise through more than one register. And part of the force is the shock of the face, which repetition has worn; the board still delivers it, but the effect is concentrated in one device.
Score: 8.9 / 10
The archetype is the soul at the edge of the world, hearing what the world says: Pan’s cry, the noise in nature that once gave its name to panic. It is largely built. The figure is reduced to a sign of the human, sexless, hairless, skull-like, its body a vertical flame bent by the same curves as the fjord, so the composition claims that this is any one of us. The road and railing are a threshold, and the walkers who keep to it are the world that does not cross. The particular holds in the place: a road above a fjord at sunset, the walk the poem dates. The cost is that the figure is archetype from the start rather than a particular man who becomes one: the particular survives in the landscape and is given up in the man.
Score: 8.6 / 10
The inheritance: the Kristiania naturalism in which Munch trained, under Krohg; Impressionism, seen in Paris; and the Synthetism of Gauguin and the late van Gogh, which had already flattened colour and let line carry feeling. The departure: a landscape not of what was seen but of what was heard; colour freed from local hue to carry sound; a human figure deformed into a sign; and the surface left rough, crayon over thin tempera, board bare, as if unfinished. Each step had a precedent; none had gone so far toward making a picture the direct record of a psychic event. The stake is documented: in November 1892 his Berlin exhibition was closed after a week amid public scandal, and he went on in the same direction. The line pencilled on this board, calling it the work of a madman, is in his own hand. A turn, and a cost paid.
Score: 9.2 / 10
Substitute a different form and what does the picture stop knowing? Paint the same subject naturalistically, a man at a railing at sunset with his hands to his face, and it knows nothing: he is a man with a headache. The knowledge is in the form. The curves are one wave running through sky, water and body, which is the claim that the inner state and the world are one vibration; the straight railing and the upright walkers are another order, perspective and good sense, and the picture is built on the collision of the two at the figure. The bare board and the visible crayon refuse finish as the state refuses composure, and the close, upright scale puts the viewer on the road. Held below the top because the form makes one claim with one device.
Score: 9.2 / 10
Evidence first. More than a century of looking and writing has not closed the questions: who screams, the figure or nature; where the figure comes from; the place and the poem; how the versions stand to one another; whose hand wrote the line at the upper left, settled only in 2021. But much of the return is to the history around the object rather than to new meaning in it. On the board the image is grasped almost at once, and its depth lies in a few relations, the hands, the walkers, the two orders of line, which a second visit confirms more than extends. Formal return is real: the colour of the sky, the scrubbed board and the play of crayon against tempera reward close looking. Ubiquity makes the evidence hard to read.
Score: 8.6 / 10
Published, so force and reach are scored together. The intrinsic force: with van Gogh’s late canvases, the motif is a founding statement of Expressionism, the picture as the direct record of an inner state, figure and landscape deformed by it; and of the painters of that turn, Munch was the one present in Berlin from 1892. The discount: in his lifetime the image travelled chiefly through the lithograph of 1895 and the other versions, not this board, which stayed in Norway; the field it moved belongs to the motif and to the Frieze of Life, of which this is the emblem. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the Brücke painters after 1905, Kirchner and Nolde among them; in Vienna, Schiele and Kokoschka; and through the century the scream as the figure of the modern subject, whose public fame counts only lightly.
Score: 9.1 / 10
Form first: whole and legible after 133 years, nothing lost that carried meaning. Presence second: continuous and as wide as any painting’s, in a national collection since 1910 and in view for over a century; fame is not proof of permanence, and presence lifts the figure only to the top of the usual band for a work of this age. Fabric last: cardboard, thin tempera and crayon, among the most vulnerable materials a painting can be made of, and sensitive to light; drips mark the lower surface, and the board was stolen in February 1994 and recovered that May. The image came through. That charge is the smallest, and it is the one that keeps the figure from the top. Nothing in the surface is fixed to its moment.
Score: 9.1 / 10
The command is of a reduced means, and where it matters it is complete. The bands of the sky are laid in long strokes of tempera that keep their colour without muddying, red, orange and yellow against the blue-black of the fjord, a harmony pitched to maximum tension and held. Line is the main instrument and it is sure: one rhythm carries from the sky through the shoreline into the body, and the railing cuts it cleanly. The rawness is chosen and load-bearing. The costs: passages of the fjord and the shore are thin and summary, and not more expressive for being thin; the walkers are drawn in shorthand; and the medium is used at the edge of its endurance, which is part of the meaning but not a demonstration of command over it. The surface is known from reproduction, and the figure is held loosely.
Score: 8.6 / 10
One physics: the inner state bends the world, and the world bends the body. Take the two most distant elements, the screaming figure, all curve, and the walkers, all upright. They obey one law, and that is the achievement: the walkers belong to the straight order of railing and road, the figure to the curving order of sky and water, and the law of the picture is the meeting of the two orders at one point, which is the figure. Colour obeys it too: the heat of the sky and the cold of the fjord meet across the same line. Nothing contradicts it. Held below the top because the range the law governs is narrow, one place, one moment, one state, and narrowness is not coherence. The law is complete; the territory it governs is small.
Score: 8.9 / 10
The orders held on one small board: consciousness, as the whole subject; the natural order, sky and fjord, as the medium of that consciousness; the social, in the two walkers, as the world that does not hear; and the sacred by its absence, since the cry comes out of nature where a voice from above once came. They are integrated, not listed: the walkers are part of the argument. What holds the axis lowest is what is only touched or missing. The social and the historical are touched, not held; labour, the family and the state are not there at all. A board with three figures cannot hold more, and the rubric records that ceiling without compensating it. The figure describes the form.
Score: 7.0 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
8.7 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier IV · Canonical
Strongest Dimensions
The Swerve and The Living Form at 9.2, then Pressure on Tradition and The Imperishable at 9.1. A landscape of what was heard rather than seen, pressed on after a public scandal in Berlin; a form in which one wave runs through sky, water and body and meets the straight order of the road at the figure, so that the knowledge lives nowhere but in the line; a founding statement of Expressionism, carried through Berlin to the Brücke and to Vienna; and a board of cardboard, tempera and crayon whole after 133 years, a theft and more than a century in public view.
Limiting Dimension
The Encompassed at 7.0: consciousness, the natural order, a social world in two walkers and the sacred by its absence are held in one structure; labour, the family, the state and history are not there, and the board holds three figures. Below the rest, The Unconcealment, The Archetypal Deep, The Bottomless Well and The Made at 8.6: the first gift is a mood, its meaning read from the hands and the walkers; the figure is archetype from the start; the depth lies in a few relations; and the fjord and shore are thin. They are one fact: the picture says one thing completely, in one place, at one moment.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.8 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears with room: The Living Form at 9.2, The Made at 8.6, The Inner Law at 8.9, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is met on all five: The Swerve at 9.2, Pressure on Tradition at 9.1 and The Imperishable at 9.1 clear the bar of 8.5, and The Unconcealment at 8.6 and The Archetypal Deep at 8.6 clear it by a tenth. The Universal Minimum is met (no axis but The Encompassed falls below 8.6, against 7.5) and The Encompassed, which is exempted, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 7.0. Every summit condition is met; the work is held below the summit by its aggregate alone. The twelve sum to 104.6, an average of 8.72 that displays 8.7, three tenths short of the 9.0 the summit requires.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of the board of 1893 as it hangs in the National Museum, Oslo, in 2026, of its documented history and of the other versions of the motif. The surface is known from reproduction and description rather than from long looking at the board, and where a judgment turns on it, the making above all, it is held more loosely. The work scored is the single board, tempera and crayon on unprimed cardboard, as it stands, its form whole. The crayon drawing of 1893, the pastel and the lithograph of 1895, the tempera of 1910, Despair of 1892 and the Frieze of Life are context and evidence of the motif’s reach, and are not scored. No words are quoted. Munch’s prose poem, dated in his notes to Nice, 22 January 1892, is given in substance only, since its wording varies between his drafts and the translations; the line pencilled at the upper left, attributed by the museum in 2021 to Munch’s hand, is described, not quoted. The theft of 1994 and the theft of the version of 1910 in 2004 are given as facts of survival and charged to no one. Facts that could not be verified are not given or are stated as open, among them the small details of the fjord and the shore, what the drips on the lower surface are, the board’s condition after its recovery in 1994, and how often, if ever, it is lent.