Scream: Still Echoes after More Than a Century

"It's perhaps the most reproduced piece of art ever created. It has adorned key chains and coffee mugs, and the cover of Time magazine. Andy Warhol used it, and now one of the four versions of The Scream, Edvard Munch's iconic work — the only one outside Norway — is coming up for auction at Sotheby's in New York. Sale estimates are as high as $80 million."

"When I think of The Scream, it takes me back to the 1960s and the Vietnam War. The image was everywhere on T-shirts and posters; it seemed to be both a personal scream from the abyss and a symbol of that particular horror. Created in the 1890s, it seemed to portend two world wars and the Holocaust. Simon Shaw, head of Impressionist and Modern Art at Sotheby's in New York, says it's been a talisman in times of crisis that "crystallizes our fears and anxieties. In recent times, the financial crisis and the global turbulence, we have seen more and more use of The Scream since 2007 than ever before," he says."