At one shocking moment, the Norwegian painter Edvard Munch suddenly felt the icy existential horror of the human experience. Then he wrote:
I was walking along the road with two friends
The Sun was setting – the Sky turned blood-red.
And I felt a wave of Sadness – I paused
tired to Death – Above the blue-black
Fjord and City Blood and Flaming tongues hovered
My friends walked on – I stayed
behind – quaking with Angst – I
felt the great Scream in Nature
So I challenge the Mona Lisa and Whistler’s Mother
-via Simon N. Ricketts