Screams and whispers
GIRIDHAR KHASNIS
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Edvard Munch's paintings, stolen from a museum in 2004 and recently recovered, are not alien to commotions and upheavals.
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The spirit of an era: "The Scream".
IVER STENSRUD must surely be a relieved man. "For two years and nine days we have been hunting systematically for these pictures and now we've found them... This is a joyous day for the police, and for Norway. We are 100 per cent certain they are the originals. The damage was much less than feared," he said at a press conference in Oslo recently.
Daring robbery
He was of course referring to Edvard Munch's celebrated paintings, "The Scream" and "Madonna", which were on August 22, 2004, ripped off from the walls of the Munch's Museum in Oslo by two gun-brandishing men in full view of the Sunday crowd. The daring burglary was captured by closed circuit television; however, thanks to the black hoods they wore, the identity of the intruders remained a mystery. The raiders had escaped with their prize catch in a waiting stolen getaway car — not before tripping and dropping the paintings twice on the ground; they also tore and flung the frames from the paintings to get rid of the embedded electronic devices. All that the police managed to recover later were the discarded black Audi and two damaged frames.
The Museum — a repository of over a thousand paintings of Munch and eighteen thousand of his prints — remained closed for the next ten months. A £4.3 million upgrade was undertaken; an airport-style security system was put in place. When it reopened in June 2005, a pastel version of "The Scream" and a lithograph of "Madonna" were on display to compensate for the lost paintings.
When the Norwegian authorities announced a reward of two million Kroner (£1,70,000) for information leading to the return of the stolen paintings, they did not appear very confident of success. Art experts even believed that the paintings could have been destroyed; they thought the works were too famous to be sold openly in the art market. Even if recovered, many feared that the condition would be awful given the way the thieves had mishandled the paintings.
The police initiated an international search; many people were questioned and several arrests were made. In May 2006, three men found guilty of charges relating to the theft of the paintings were sentenced: Bjoern Hoen, Petter Tharaldsen and Petter Rosenvinge. Hoen and Tharaldsen — in their early thirties — were additionally ordered to pay 750m Kroner (£62.3m) compensation to the City of Oslo to reflect the value of its lost paintings. The paintings were, however, still at large; the real breakthrough came only in August when the paintings were recovered and that too in satisfactory condition.
Echoes from the past
It is not that Munch's paintings are alien to such commotions and upheavals. As early as in February 1994, while Norwegians were busy watching the opening of the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, another version of "The Scream" was stolen from the National Art Museum, Oslo. In a swift 50-second adventure, the robbers had accomplished their mission, without forgetting to paste a small note which read: "Thanks for the poor security". Fortunately for the police, that drama too had ended happily when the painting was recovered undamaged in less than three months and the two thieves put in jail.
"The Scream" is, without doubt, Munch's most famous painting. The image, credited to have triggered the entire expressionist movement, is an extraordinary blend of distorted forms and aggressive colours, reflecting fear, suffering and death. Fiercely disturbing in its content and intent, it captures the intensity of Munch's childhood trauma through strong conflicting lines and a violently intriguing perspective. (Munch, who was born on December 12, 1863 in Lφten, Norway, lost his mother and sister when he was very young; his father and brother too died when he was still growing up; another sister suffered from mental illness.) In terms of popularity, many feel that "The Scream" is in the same league as Leonardo da Vinci's "Mona Lisa", Vincent van Gogh's "Sunflowers" and Pablo Picasso's "Guernica".
Painted in 1893, when Munch was just 30, "The Scream" formed part of a series titled "Frieze of Life", described by the painter himself as a poem of life, love and death. "Madonna" (1894-95) too was part of the series; an icon of modern anxiety, it presented a charming and welcoming erotic nude in a surreal space. There is an unmistakable eerie haunt in the image, masked by inexpressible restlessness and mysterious ambiguity.
Art as consolation
Munch was a contemporary of the likes of van Gogh, Paul Gauguin, James Ensor, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. "All of them were unstable and frequently distraught," writes John Adkins Richardson in Art: The Way It Is. "They staked everything on art. They were outcasts from respectable society who lived on the fringes of the underworld, among prostitutes, thieves, drug addicts, and derelicts. They turned Impressionism into an art of vehement self-expression; it sometimes seems as though their art was the only thing in the world that made life bearable for them."
Munch suffered a nervous breakdown in 1908 - 09 and spent eight months in a sanatorium. He survived to continue a creative life till his death on January 23, 1944.
giridharkhasnis@gmail.com
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