Angst ... from the sublime to the ridiculous

"The Scream"

 

insecurity and despair

“Why did I come into the world without any choice?” asks Edvard Munch (1863-1944), the Norwegian artist who pictorially coined the existential notion of ‘angst’ in the lithograph "The Scream" in 1893, described by a noted art critic at the time as: "a profound and deep-seated spiritual condition of insecurity and despair".

Self Portrait with the Grim Reaper

Kindred to Munch’s work is the surrealistic artistry of Roland Topor (1938-97), a French artist and writer who also explored alienation and identity, asking disturbing questions about how we define ourselves and social conformity. He was a Polish Jew spending his early years in Savoy hiding from the Nazi peril:

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WOODY ALLEN: That's quite a lovely Jackson Pollock, isn't it?

GIRL IN MUSEUM: Yes it is.
WOODY ALLEN: What does it say to you?
GIRL IN MUSEUM: It restates the negativeness of the universe, the hideous lonely emptiness of existence, nothingness, the predicament of man forced to live in a barren, godless eternity, like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void, with nothing but waste, horror, and degradation, forming a useless bleak straightjacket in a black absurd cosmos.
WOODY ALLEN: What are you doing Saturday night?
GIRL IN MUSEUM: Committing suicide.
WOODY ALLEN: What about Friday night?
GIRL IN MUSEUM: [leaves silently]

... from the movie "Play It Again, Sam" directed by Woody Allen
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0yuqpk00Ts&feature=related)