Scream

Yes, scream. Indeed. Edvard Munch's (1863-1944) over-reproduced painting, Skrik or Scream, sold for nearly $120 million dollars at auction. As a commentator from the Wall Street Journal stated on the PBS Newshour, it was just a matter of which one of the 1700 billionaires in the world would pay the most for the piece. It is considered a calculated investment in a time of economic turmoil.

This phenomenon says it all about the state of modern capitalism. As unemployment rates stagnate across large parts of the planet and the rich-poor gap widens, the wealthy play with toys, like this painting, under the guise of making responsible cultural choices. It is another version of Marie Antionette's highly publicized Petit Trianon, built at great expense during the days prior to the French Revolution. 

Meanwhile, the human context of Munch's work is lost in the hub-bub over its auction value. Consider Munch's life span, which encompassed the American Civil, War, The Franco-Prussian War, The Russian Revolution, World War I, The Great Depression, and Word War II. He lived in violent and tumultuous times of rising capitalism joined to rabid nationalism and reactions to it. 

Munch was the son of a Norwegian priest-physician, known for his fundamentalist ideas of propriety. Naturally, Munch took up with bohemians and nihilists, thereby reaping the consternation and disapproval of his father. In the time of Freud and Jung, Munch lived in Paris and Berlin. He belonged to the generation in Europe which developed the ideals behind socialism and the movements for universal human rights. He described his inspiration for Scream as his own experience of existential crisis. 

How far removed is this reality from the auction room where Scream was sold as an equivalent to a stock portfolio for enough money to start a foundation which could change the world for the better?  It is enough to make a practical humanist scream.