Edvard Munch had a rough and rocky start to his life. At just the ripe age of five, Munch lost his own mother to tuberculosis, which was only the beginning of all the tragedies he would suffer through in his life. During the remainder of his life, he witnessed his sister, Sophie, suffer and die of the same illness as their mother did and watched another sister become institutionalized for most of her life due to a mental illness she had. Munch’s only brother died at the age of thirty from pneumonia. His father also suffered from a mental illness after losing his wife and having to raise all five kids by himself. Munch himself even suffered a mental illness and that is where the inspiration for most of his artwork came from. Edvard Munch created a sense of insanity and normalcy all in one when he painted The Scream. This piece of art is very abstract and unique in its meaning. Munch used a variety of devices from his artistic mind to make sure The Scream turned out perfectly. His use of warm and cool colors, foreground action, background serenity, and wavy shapes and straight lines shows the audience everything that might have been going on in his mind. Not everyone can empathize with him in that aspect, but most can tell that it was a lot to deal with just …show more content…
All the other ones seem to swirl and mix together, which could be another indication of the insanity versus normalcy theory. The straight lines represent the strict, rigidness that is life. It is a straight, narrow path for most people. For people like Edvard Munch though, life can be a mix of emotions and things, such as the wavy shapes of the sky and land in the painting illustrate. Insanity can become an almost normal part of life for people like him. It might be difficult to cope with at first, but normalcy will reign again. The Scream is a very intricate painting and it has multiple meanings behind depending on who is being