Topic: Comparing Edvard Munch’s painting ‘The Scream’ and its call for civic engagement about mental health during the late 1800s and Vincent Van Gogh’s painting ‘Sorrowing Old Man’ and how the painters used different techniques to produce the same exigence to the audience. 

 

Thesis Statement: Van Gogh uses strong characters and vastly different stylistic choices  to make claims about mental illness with vastly different pathetic appeals. 

 

Introduction

 

Preview: The 1800s is very important to note because the talk about mental health wasn’t very encouraged and people tended to suffer in silence. This is very different from 2022 because now people openly talk about mental health. Munch and Van Gogh both struggled heavily with their mental health and since talking wasn’t a normalized way of speaking up about their internal struggles, they both turned to painting. Their paintings are similar because they both have one main focal point of their character. However, Munch’s stylistic techniques differ from Van Gogh’s. Munch focuses more on the background and the hidden meanings behind each part of his painting such as the colors, the people in the background, the indications of self harm through the bridge, and the scream as a literal metaphor for a cry for help. Both show isolation from society through their paintings as a result of what mental health does to you. Munch shows panic, anger, and genuine fear. Van Gogh’s isn’t as intense, it is more quiet. It is isolation in a solemn way. Van Gogh uses the man in the center as the focal point and doesn’t give much attention to the background. They both have their hands on their face, but in different ways. Both use pathos as a way to call to the civic but they use different emotions in their pathos. 

 

Introduction Rough Draft:

In today’s society, we have come to a renaissance of desensitization about mental health. People who experience depression are encouraged to seek help and talk about what they are going through. During the late 1800s, those who struggled with their mental health were taught to suppress their emotions and suffer in silence. Edvard Munch and Vincent Van Gogh are two people who faced depression and turned to painting as a cry for help when verbally communicating their feelings felt impossible. Munch is most famous for his painting, ‘The Scream’ which shows what feeling alienated from society due to depression is like. Van Gogh’s famous painting, ‘The Sorrowing Old Man’ elicits feelings of depression and the inner turmoil that is commonly felt. Although Munch and Van Gogh both target the same audience, they use different methods in their paintings to achieve the same goal. Despite Munch and Van Gogh using different stylistic techniques and intrinsic proofs to create a different exigence in their paintings, they both pull the same response from the audience. Van Gogh uses strong characters and vastly different stylistic choices  to make claims about mental illness with vastly different pathetic appeals. 

 

Body

1. Main Idea – Edvard Munch and Vincent Van Gogh use colors to evoke different emotions from the audience and symbolize different meanings.

1. Support- Use the article about the colors and what each color symbolizes. ‘The Scream’ is very intense, harsh, and fear-based. ‘The Sorrowing Old Man’ is sad, lonesome, and hopeless. This is shown based on opposite colors, different focal points, different hidden messages. In ‘The Scream’ the person is holding their hands on the side of their face which shows insecurity and anxiety. The man in Van Gogh’s painting has his hands on his head as a way of showing fatigue, depression, and emptiness. 

What I talked about in my speech as the colors for munch. Vs. the softer colors that van gogh uses and the focal points and what the colors mean. Different colors and techniques but still have the same underlying meaning and call to the same exigence for the audience. 

1. The colors symbolize different emotions. The background in ‘The Scream’ has all of the colors which symbolize the emotions: sadness, melancholy, intensity. But the person itself is colorless and very dull which represents alienation. 
2. Specific Support

 

1. Both artists use pathos to call to the civic, but they use pathos in different ways. In ‘The Scream,’ the audience is made to want to help the person since they are feeling so alienated from society. It makes you want to help and save this person since they are feeling so stuck inside of their head that they’re deranged. In ‘Sorrowing Old Man,’ the audience wants to comfort this person. The colors and body language of this painting are more calm and sad, rather than harsh and panic inducing. This painting makes you want to comfort the man rather than feeling a sense of urgency to save him. 

 

• Munch creating a nightmare and monstrous idea. 
• Van Gogh created a realistic piece. 
• Contrast between nightmare and more of a realistic scene
• The titles are very different and already say so much about the meaning 
• With ‘The Scream’ you feel horror
• With ‘Sorrowing Old Man’ you feel sympathetic.