Munch Museum sees 40 percent surge in visitors

Oslo's Munch Museum has seen a 40 percent surge in visitors this summer on the back of a major retrospective marking the 150th anniversary of the artist's birth.

Published: 31 July 2013 11:14 CEST

Munch Museum sees 40 percent surge in visitors

Munch's The Scream

Nearly 40,000 people visited the Munch 150 exhibition in June and July, drawn by the chance of seeing famous works such as "The Scream", "Madonna", "Vampire" and "The Dance of Life."

Edvard Munch was born on 12 December 1863 and died in 1944, aged 80, just months before Norway was liberated from German occupation.

The exhibition, which is split between the Munch Museum and Oslo's National Gallery, is expecting still greater numbers in August, historically the busiest month for tourism.

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Munch wrote 'madman' tag on 'Scream' painting, museum rules

File photo: AFP

Barely visible to the naked eye, the phrase “Can only have been painted by a madman” is written in pencil in Norwegian in the upper left corner of the iconic artwork.

The dark painting from 1893, now a symbol of existential angst, depicts a humanlike figure standing on a bridge, clutching its head in apparent horror against the backdrop of a swirling sky.

The author of the phrase has long been a mystery, with the main theory until now holding that it was a disgruntled viewer who penned it at the beginning of the 20th century on one of the four versions made by Munch.

But, using infrared technology to analyse the handwriting, experts at Norway’s National Museum have now concluded that it was the artist himself.

“The writing is without a doubt Munch’s own,” museum curator Mai Britt Guleng said in a statement.

“The handwriting itself, as well as events that happened in 1895, when Munch showed the painting in Norway for the first time, all point in the same direction.”

The first showing of the work to the public in Oslo — then known as Kristiania — provoked furious criticism and raised questions about Munch’s mental state, which, according to Guleng, likely prompted Munch to write the inscription on the canvas shortly afterwards.

A pioneer of expressionism, Munch was haunted by the premature deaths of several family members, including his mother and his sister Johanne Sophie, due to illness. In 1908, he was temporarily committed to a psychiatric hospital.

This version of “The Scream” was stolen in 1994, the opening day of the Winter Olympic Games in Lillehammer. It was recovered several months later.

The masterpiece will again go on display when the National Museum reopens in a new building in 2022.

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