I’ve been obsessing over “The Scream” ever since the painting sold for a record $120 million at Sotheby’s last week. Most others have dwelled how disturbing that contorted, anxious face is. But I find the face inspiring, even uplifting. Maybe it’s because I now know the inside story of “The Scream.” Maybe it’s because I spoke with Sue Prideaux, who spent countless hours reading the artist’s diaries and personal letters for her biography “Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream.”
I reached Prideaux on her cell phone in London after she returned on an overnight flight from The Auction That Broke The Record. After sweetly telling her grandchildren to take their shoes off before playing on the bed, she took me back more than a century — to a cemetery in Oslo, Norway.