Painting '',
Edvard Munch The Scream () is the popular name given to each of many versions of a composition, created as
paintings,
pastels, and
lithographs by the
Expressionist artist
Edvard Munch between 1893 and 1910.
Der Schrei der Natur (
The Scream of Nature) is the title Munch gave to these works, all of which show a figure with an agonized expression against a landscape with a tumultuous orange sky.
Arthur Lubow has described
The Scream as "an icon of modern art, a
Mona Lisa for our time."
Music In music there are long traditions of scream in
rock,
punk rock,
heavy metal,
soul music,
rock and roll, and
emo music. Vocalists are developing various techniques of screaming that results in different ways of screaming. In rock and metal, music singers are developing very demanding
guttural and growled sounds. Scream is also used predominant as an aesthetic element in "
cante jondo", a vocal style in
flamenco. The name of this style is translated as "deep sing". The origins of flamenco and also of its name are still not clear. Flamenco is related to the gypsies' music and it is said to have appeared in Andalusia in Spain. In cante jondo, that is a subdivision of flamenco, which is considered to be more serious and deep, the singer is reduced to the most rudimentary method of expression, which is the cry and the scream. Ricardo Molima, a Spanish poet, wrote "flamenco is the primal scream in its primitive form, from a people sunk in poverty and ignorance. Thus, the original flamenco song could be described as a type of self-therapy." David N. Green, musician, writer and composer, wrote in 1987 an essay about musicians using screams as a singing technique in music. He makes the distinction between harmonic scream that relates to the harmony of the music and has components of
tonality, the true scream that is
atonal, the lyrical scream that is related with the song's
lyrics and the pure scream that is not. The harmonic scream is the scream that is still very clear and has a defined pitch and that, according to Green, can actually be related to a fake scream; as it has no great disturbance, the lyrical scream that is related to words, most of the time
swearing and the pure scream or the true scream, that in this case can also be called as the real scream or the primal scream. Scream in music can also be seen in other ways than just a vocal action. Many musicians use scream as an inspirational source for their playing with
instruments. This is usually represented in a loud hit on the instrument's
chords, in the case of the instruments that have chords, or a loud striking note, on the blowing instruments.
Sound art Pressure of the unspeakable is a radio feature work by
Gregory Whitehead. Initiated in 1991 the project started with the founding of the
Institute of the Screamscape studies where people were asked through radio and television to call on a hot line and scream. Whitehead notes: "In addition to framing the
nervous system, the telephone-microphone-tape-recorder-radio circuitry also provided the key for the acoustic demarcation of pressure in the system: distortion, the disruption of digital codes, pure unmanageable noise. The scream as an eruption in excess of prescribed circuitries, as capable of 'blowing' communications technologies not designed for such extreme and unspeakable meanings". Whitehead gathered slowly an archive of screams that was edited and resulted in a theoretical narrative radio feature. Allen S. Weiss notes about his work that "the screamscape lies beyond any possible determination of authenticity". The people's vociferations are just manifestations that through their
anonymity create a sense of togetherness.
Cinema Screaming is a trope in
disaster films and
horror films, especially in the latter where notable actresses are popularly known as
scream queens.
Theater Actors are taught from the beginning of their careers how to scream correctly. They learn how to awaken that uncomfortable feeling in the listener without necessarily having to have any psychological attachment.
Antonin Artaud Antonin Artaud's last written work
To have done with the judgment of god was recorded by him for the French radio in 1947. One day before it was scheduled, the director of the radio prohibited it for strong
anti-religious and
anti-American reasons. The piece consists of intensive texts with interludes of instrumental and vocal improvised sounds and screams. Allen S. Weiss writes about Antonin Artaud's scream: "the scream is the expulsion of an unbearable, impossible internal polarization between life's forces and death's negation, simultaneously signifying and simulation creation and destruction [...] scream, as a nonmaterial double of excrement, may be both expression and expulsion, a sign of birth creation and frustration [...] the scream is the desublimation of speech into the body, in opposition to the sublimation of body into meaningful speech". The extreme character of the scream has a life danger element that stands for denying of death. In Artaud's case, a person who was always very close to death and has been calling himself so ever since having strong shock therapies, the scream represents exactly this border between life and death, creation and destruction, of art work and of oneself. Artaud's screams are mostly related to words. The small interludes that are in between the texts parts sometimes contain screams.
Performance art Marina Abramović used scream as an element in different performances: together with
Ulay in
AAA AAA, the two are facing each other and are gradually screaming louder and louder while getting closer and closer to each other's face, until they both lose their voice;
Freeing the voice, where Abramovic is staying with her head upside down and screaming till she is left with no voice anymore. == Other aspects ==