‘Scream’ Sells for $119M.

Edvard Munch’s of The Scream may not be the most expensive piece of artwork ever sold, but it ranks pretty close.  The painting was sold at a Sotheby’s auction on Wednesday evening in New York to a buyer who chose to remain anonymous, and will pay $119.9 million for this treasure, according to The Associated Press.  The bidding ended at the sum of $107M, and the collector, who bid by telephone, can be expected to pay additional auction house fees that should bring the final payment to just shy of $120M, stated CBC’s David Common.

The Scream depicts a man with his hands on his face, crying out in despair under a red sky has become a modern symbol for human anxiety, fear or suffering. “The Scream together with the Mona Lisa, is the most famous and recognized  image in art history,” stated Michael Frahm of the London-based art advisory service firm Frahm Ltd.

This version of The Scream is hand-painted by the artist with a poem in which Munch describes himself as “shivering with anxiety” and feeling “the great scream in nature.”   Munch, a Norwegian Symbolist painter who lived 1863 to 1944, created four copies of The Scream, three of them now in Norwegian museums.  This pastel on board at Sotheby’s was the only work in private hands.

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