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MARILYNN S. OLSON, DONALD W. OLSON, AND RUSSELL L. DOESCHER ON THE BLOOD-RED SKY OF MUNCH?S THE SCREAM

THE PAINTER EDVARD MUNCH (1863–1944) wrote copiously about his emotions and artistic process. As a result, art historians know the precise moment of the "great unending scream ... through nature" that inspired his most famous work. He wrote "I was walking along the road with two friends—the Sun set—and I felt a touch of melancholy—all at once the sky became blood red—I stood still and leaned against the railing, dead tired—flaming clouds hung like blood and a sword above the blue-black fjord and the city—my friends went on—I stood there, trembling with anxiety—and I felt as though a great, unending scream was piercing through nature."1	1
Another version provides more details about the location and the remarkable colors: "One evening I was walking out along a mountain road near Christiania [now Oslo]—together with two companions ... the Sun went down ... it was as if a flaming sword of blood slashed open the vault of heaven—the atmosphere turned to blood—with glaring tongues of fire—the hills became deep blue—the fjord shaded into cold blue—among the yellow and red colors—that garish blood-red—on the road—and the railing—my companions' faces became yellow-white—I felt something like a great scream—and truly I heard a great scream."2 The 1893 painting which resulted, The Scream, captured a single moment of personal anguish which has come to stand for the terror of modern life. Yet Munch's masterpiece (a color reproduction of the painting appears on the cover of this issue) was inspired by a specific worldwide environmental phenomenon, the red skies of 1883–1884, produced when the volcanic Indonesian island of Krakatoa exploded, sending volcanic aerosols into the atmosphere.3 The environmental roots of Munch's most famous creation thus reveal powerful connections between art, nature, and history, all of them intertwined in the shared human experience of a spectacular sky.	2
Courtesy the National Gallery, Oslo /The Munch Museum / The Munch-Ellingsen Group / Artists Rights Society, New York.
Munch never forgot that sunset, and during his lifetime he wrote many accounts of this memorable evening. He showed no interest at all, however, in the material causes of the blood-red skies. In the winter of 1891–1892, Munch discussed the event with his friend Christian Skredsvig, whose memoir helps to explicate the process of life becoming art. "For a long time he had wanted to paint the memory of a sunset. Red as blood. No, it was coagulated blood. But no one else would perceive it the same way he did. They would think only about clouds. He talked himself sick of this sight that had gripped him with terror. With sadness, because the paltry resources of painting were not adequate. 'He is striving after the impossible and has despair as his religion,' I thought but I advised him to paint it—and so he painted his remarkable 'Scream.'"4	. . .