The Scream Returns

Shame on me for not knowing this sooner!  It seems that both versions of Edvard Munch's greatest work, "The Scream", have been returned, intact but for a small pull in the canvas of the darker version most of us know.  This is such great news!  I could never comprehend why anyone would steal a well-known priceless work of art execpt perhaps for ransom.  I don't think the local pawn shop would be interested.

Munch has always been one of my favorite fellows, not only for his talent but for being able to survive a most hideous early life.  Until his early death, Edvard's father raised the Munch children with such fierce paranoia and rage it frightened some of them into mental illness.  Edvard first looses his mother to TB, then his most beloved older sister, then his father died young, then he looses a brother, followed by his two remaining sisters.  Many feel he was a victim of bipolarism.  But he poured his demons into each canvas, painting several versions of the same piece.  His figures were more symbolic than impressionistic, and indeed they seem stifled yet overflowing with emotional energy.  I admire him much for the same reasons I admire Beethoven, these men of genius both dealt a cruel affliction in life.  It's what they did with those lives regardless that inspires me. 

"From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity."    Edvard Munch  1864-1944