The Scream, What He Heard

Edvard Munch wrote it down in 1892. Walking above the fjord at sunset, the sky turned blood red and he felt a scream pass through nature. Out there at his easel he was not inventing that sky. He was copying it.

What hangs here is that face, closer than Munch ever painted it. The skull has opened, the eyes are lit from behind, and the hands are still clamped to the head. The sky has not stopped burning.