X-post from Lounge: "The Scream" mystery solved - didn't sound that mysterious!

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https://nypost.com/2021/02/22/edvard-munch-wrote-hidden-madman-message-on-the-scream/

.... The pencil inscription reads: “Can only have been painted by a madman,” infrared scans have shown.

And though historians have long known about the phrase, small and hidden among the distorted brushstrokes that make up the howling figure, there’s been some speculation that it was graffitied by an observer, not the Norwegian artist. ....

The mysterious origins of the phrase help complete a sad picture: Munch created the painting, which has now become a universal symbol for mortal anxiety, just after his sister Laura was committed to an asylum with bipolar disorder.

Though the screaming figure doesn’t look like him, it’s believed to be influenced by his own experience of observing a blood red sky after being abandoned by two companions, seen in the background. In that moment, he was hit by a “gust of melancholy,” according to his diary.

After Munch unveiled the painting, reactions centered on his own mental health, rather than the painting itself.

The experts said it stands to reason that Munch wrote the “madman” inscription after struggling with the many critical reviews at the time. In 1908, he suffered a mental breakdown. ....

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