Friday, May 4, 2012

The Scream and Angelus Novus

It occurred to me that there is arguably some similarity between Munch's 'The Scream,' which just sold at auction for close to $120 million, and Klee's 'Angelus Novus,' the subject of a well-known passage by Walter Benjamin describing it as picturing "the angel of history." The arguable similarity lies in the vibes the works give off rather than in a literal visual similarity. (The Benjamin passage is quoted by Benedict Anderson in Imagined Communities at the end of ch. 9; see also Anthony Marx, Faith in Nation, pp. 204-5.) I'm pretty sure this thought isn't original so I'm not even bothering to google around and find out how many people have had it before me.

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