{"id":1113,"date":"2012-05-06T09:00:49","date_gmt":"2012-05-06T14:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.barbdahlgren.com\/?p=1113"},"modified":"2012-05-06T12:45:18","modified_gmt":"2012-05-06T17:45:18","slug":"the-scream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/barbdahlgren.com\/?p=1113","title":{"rendered":"The Scream"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Please bear with me as I work through my astonishment at finding out The Scream<\/em>, painted by Norwegian Edvard Munch in 1895, sold for a whopping $120 million this past week at Sotheby\u2019s in New York.\u00a0 Okay, the real price was $119,922,500, but who\u2019s counting????\u00a0<\/p>\n

Have you seen this picture?\u00a0 It\u2019s considered a masterpiece, second only to the Mona Lisa <\/em>in fame.\u00a0 Its image has been on everything from editorial cartoons to coffee mugs, which seems appropriate since that\u2019s how most of us feel on Monday morning before we\u2019ve had our caffeine fix.\u00a0 But $120 million?\u00a0 Give me a break.\u00a0 Has the world gone mad?\u00a0 Well, if you look at this picture long enough you would think so.<\/p>\n

Although I\u2019ve been to many world famous art museums here and abroad, I admit that my artwork pallet isn\u2019t as sharp as the trained eye.\u00a0 So here are a few things about this particular purchase that bother me.\u00a0<\/p>\n

First, it always saddens me when people become famous after they die. \u00a0Van Gogh sold few paintings while alive and was basically considered an artistic failure.\u00a0 Yet today his artwork such as The Starry Night<\/em> and The Sower<\/em> is worth millions and displayed in the best museums.\u00a0 Authors like Henry David Thoreau, Edgar Allen Poe, and Emily Dickenson published few of their writings and were paid very little while alive.\u00a0 Yet today you can\u2019t get through a high school literature class without reading their prose. \u00a0I just think it\u2019s nice to be alive when people start to appreciate your life\u2019s work.\u00a0 And although Munch was not considered an abject failure while alive, he would be shocked to see how his artwork has influenced the world.\u00a0 I know I am!<\/p>\n

Secondly, do you know what a person could do with $120 million?\u00a0 They could leave a legacy of good works.\u00a0 They could educate the underprivileged, shelter the homeless, train the unemployed for new jobs, feed the poor, or become president.\u00a0 Oops!\u00a0 Sorry!\u00a0 You need much more money than that to become president.\u00a0 But the point is that $120 million is a massive amount of money.\u00a0 While it\u2019s true a million dollars doesn\u2019t go as far as it used to, it can still go farther than most of us.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

However, with that said, I will concede that people who make the money or have the money should be allowed to spend it how they want \u2013 whether it is for a solid gold toilet seat, platinum bassinette, diamond tiara, or The Scream.<\/em>\u00a0 We poor, those without a million or so in the bank, have no right to tell rich people how to spend their money.<\/p>\n

Lastly, I think there is a problem with society putting an inflated value on certain things.\u00a0 We pay athletes and entertainers exorbitant salaries to play ball and make us laugh, while we pay other professions very little in comparison to educate our children, put out fires, protect us from criminals, or fight our battles. \u00a0\u00a0And when it comes to material possessions I guess it\u2019s a matter of what the market will allow.\u00a0 I still remember people paying hundreds of dollars for beanie babies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However in spite of all of this I think about Ephesians 2:10 when Paul refers to Christians as God\u2019s artwork.\u00a0 It says, \u201cFor we are God\u2019s masterpiece (NLT).\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

As masterpieces go I must admit I identify more with Munch\u2019s The Scream<\/em> than a Degas ballerina. \u00a0Sometimes I even look like that person in The Scream.<\/em> Many times I\u2019ve put my hands over my ears trying to block out the sounds of life.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

Masterpieces are worth a lot.\u00a0 I know this because Jesus paid for me with the highest price of all \u2013 his life.\u00a0 Now to look at me, many would think why in the world would Jesus pay that kind of price for that?\u00a0 Even I marvel at it.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

So is The Scream<\/em> worth $120 million?\u00a0 Probably not!\u00a0 But I\u2019m not worth the price Jesus paid for me either.\u00a0 Yet, here I am!\u00a0 Happy and thankful he considers me a masterpiece.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Please bear with me as I work through my astonishment at finding out The Scream, painted by Norwegian Edvard Munch in 1895, sold for a whopping $120 million this past week at Sotheby\u2019s in New York.\u00a0 Okay, the real price … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/barbdahlgren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/barbdahlgren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/barbdahlgren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barbdahlgren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barbdahlgren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/barbdahlgren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1113\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/barbdahlgren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barbdahlgren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/barbdahlgren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}