I Scream, Munch Screams, The Ice Cream is Melting
The Scream, Edvard Munch
“Can only have been painted by a madman”. These words are scribbled on Edvard Munch’s haunting painting, ‘The Scream’. Up until recently the author behind this brazenly diagnostic sentence was contested. Originally, it was thought to be Munch himself, then it was re-labelled as the jottings of a pretty harsh art critic. But a couple of weeks ago the verdict became, at least temporarily, final. It was Munch. And clearly, he was going through some stuff. ‘The Scream’ has frequently been lauded as an eerily accurate depiction of mental turmoil. I definitely feel a sense of heavy existential dread drape over me when I look at it. Though my reaction pales in significance to the experience that inspired the painting.
“I was walking along a path with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood-red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature.”
These are Munch’s own words, recalling a fateful and frightening summer’s evening in his home town, Oslo. That evening was defining for Munch’s artistic career as well as an obviously traumatic saga in his lifelong struggle with anxiety and depression. But it was defining for another reason, and in a way that did not just affect him but every person on Earth for years following. The painful oranges and reds that hung over the disturbed Munch were not merely figments of his troubled mind, they were likely the consequence of an inferno that roared over 11,000 km away in the Sunda Strait of Indonesia. It was the doing of the great and violent eruption of the Krakatoa volcano.
Drawing the connection between a volcano on one side of the globe and an anxiety-ridden, Bohemian artist on the other is not a straight path through logic space, but it is a fascinating one. It first helps to know a little more about volcanoes and a bit about how nature is able to brush such a large spectrum of vivid colours across our skies. Let’s start with the age-old question, why is the sky blue? (And why is it sometimes not?)
White light, such as the light arriving at us from the Sun, is made up of all the colours in the visible spectrum - and many colours that are outside of it (UV, infra-red, microwave, etc). When we talk about colours in a scientific sense, what we are really concerned with is the wavelength of the light. Wavelength determines the colour, with longer wavelengths being closer to the red end of the spectrum and shorter wavelengths belonging more to the blue side.
So, imagine a beam of sunlight with the full portfolio of wavelengths commuting across the solar system. In the vacuum of space the beam is in perfect condition, with all the colours mixed together into a solid white beam. But, as it storms over the threshold of Earth’s atmosphere, the different wavelengths start to behave in their own unique ways; some start bouncing around on the molecules in the atmosphere while others zip right through, unperturbed. What determines this pinball-effect is the size of the molecules in the atmosphere. If the molecules are about the same size as a particular wavelength, they will scatter that light. Otherwise, they treat each other like strangers on public transport: avoid eye-contact at all costs.
The composition of Earth’s atmosphere just happens to contain molecules that most commonly scatter the colour blue. Now you may have noticed that isn’t always the case. In the mornings and evenings, the sky can take on a more ‘Scream-y’ characteristic with reds and oranges. That is because the amount of atmosphere the light has to travel through also affects the scattering of light. Even if wavelengths and molecule sizes aren’t matched up, if light travels through enough atmosphere eventually it will get pinballed like all the others. When the sun is closer to the horizon, the beam of light has to travel through more atmosphere to reach your eyes compared to when it’s directly overhead. By this point, the blues and other short-wavelength colours, have been scattered so much they’re not even present; all that’s left are those reddish, longer-wavelength colours.
If you’re thinking, “What does this have to do with volcanoes and weird paintings? Will you please get to the point.” Then here you go. If you change the composition of the atmosphere by introducing a lot more of a molecule that scatters wavelengths other than blue, then you can change the colour of the sky. One example of a molecule that does this is sulphur dioxide, an abundant product of volcanic eruptions. The Krakatoa eruption of 1883 coincided neatly with Munch’s painting of ‘The Scream’. Krakatoa killed 36,000 people on one side of the world and tormented a man on the other. And not only that, but it caused frighteningly cold temperatures across the globe for the following few years.
The temperature dip occurs because those same sulphur molecules undergo reactions forming sulphuric acid that clumps up and forms reflective aerosols. The aerosols float about in the upper atmosphere and prevent whole chunks of that sunbeam from making it to ground, and consequently things get a little chilly and crop harvests can get a little small. This is a volcanic winter.
From just one eruption, and a slight alteration in the constitution of the atmosphere, our weather and the agricultural system can go completely pear shaped. For me, it puts into perspective the fragility of our planet. The fact that singular events that are way out of our control can have lasting impacts on the entire population – and on Norwegian painters! And yet in spite of the warnings that mother nature provides we persist with a full-on fossil-fuelled assault on the atmosphere. We are erupting carbon dioxide out at a rate that dwarfs volcanoes, and much more than 36,000 people are dying every year because of it. And if you’re wondering how that makes me feel, I’ll politely refer you back to the above painting.
