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About 111 years ago the Norwegian expressionist artist Edvard Munch (1863 -1944) embarked upon a trilogy of paintings that he called, collectively, the Frieze of Life. The basic themes of the trilogy were love, suffering and death and the centre piece of the work was The Scream which, until very recently, was hanging nicely in The Munch Museum in Oslo for all to see. Unfortunately now it is only a very privileged few who are able to gaze upon Munch’s famous painting because on the 22nd August 2004 two mysterious men walked in to the Munch Museum and walked off with The Scream and also with Maddona, another of Munch’s paintings. Together these paintings were valued at £10 million but neither were insured for theft because they were, and are, simply, irreplaceable. It’s a very poor substitute I know but I have reproduced The Scream for this months Freewheelin cover. It’s almost certainly my own notion that life is imitating art here but if you look closely at the painting you see two mysterious men, in long black coats, just walking into the scene. Perhaps Munch was being prophetic and had the foreground figure fleeing in despair from the two mysterious men because that figure feared he was going to be captured and kept hidden from public view forever. Street Legal Dylan is trying to pacify the foreground figure but he can’t decide whether it would be best to say “Baby stop crying” or just “We’d better talk this over”. It may be of course that 1978 Dylan is talking in his 2004 concert voice and the foreground figure, like a lot of others it seems, can’t bear to listen! Be that as it may, the question on everyone’s lips about this famous painting and its equally famous foreground figure is “Where are you tonight?” |
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