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Scream Dream

Normally long-winded art critics have grown even more garrulous since the two-year-old record of Pablo Picasso?s 1932 Nude, Green Leaves and Bust was broken last week by Edvard Munch?s 1895 pastel The Scream, which Sotheby?s sold for $119.9 million.

Munch?s sufferings informed his art. His art informs the sufferings of our epoch

Normally long-winded art critics have grown even more garrulous since the two-year-old record of Pablo Picasso?s 1932 Nude, Green Leaves and Bust was broken last week by Edvard Munch?s 1895 pastel The Scream, which Sotheby?s sold for $119.9 million. But by no means are they speaking in one voice. This sale could mean that the art market is more vibrant than ever despite the world?s economic woes or it could be a deceptive outlier, where investors? hunt for a ?destination picture? doesn?t say much for broader trends at all. The picture itself, just as it looked ahead to the manifold horrors of the 20th century like the German concentration camps, could now be proving prescient about the psychic anxiety of a generation that expected an everlasting boom but got stuck with a seemingly interminable bust. Perhaps it?s only a safe deposit for some newly-minted billionaire who finds today?s stocks and bonds disappointing, but appreciates the branding power of The Scream?just as culturally ubiquitous as the Mona Lisa but much less abstruse, much more universal.

Speaking of universal, Samuel Johnson has invited much animus since he claimed a century before Munch that great art is that which stands the test of time, of universality. Didn?t Mughal miniatures have value before it was accepted by the West? On the other hand, isn?t the magic of Shakespeare exemplified by the fact that some tribal performers find him as persuasive as London?s West End. Like many iconic pieces, The Scream transcends the debate. It connects with the elite who know its provenance intimately as well as with the hoi polloi who simply see in it a mirror of their own psychosocial trauma. The geography of the sale is also telling, encompassing both old and new hotbeds. It took place in New York but speculation ranged wide about whether the buyer was Microsoft?s Paul Allen, Russia?s Roman Abramovich or some Qatari nobleman.

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First published on: 07-05-2012 at 01:22 IST
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