Not many countries put a portrait of extreme mental anguish at the forefront of their tourism campaigns. But, then again, there are few more acclaimed modern pictures than Edvard Munch’s The Scream — with its setting sun, blood-red sky, blue-black fjord and the image of a man blocking his ears from, as Munch put it, “an infinite scream passing through nature”.
This gripping depiction of anxiety and angst — in fact, three versions of them — is the star turn of the recently opened Munch Museum, housed alongside hundreds of other paintings, murals, woodcuts and prints from the great painter’s canon. The museum’s position at the heart of Oslo’s waterfront points to a fascinating new strategic direction for Norway — with important lessons for London.
