Passage Norwegian Artist Edvard Munch's Instantly Identifiable Painting Der Schrei Der

Passage
Norwegian artist Edvard Munch's instantly identifiable painting Der Schrei der Natur or, more simply, The Scream, destabilizes the very concept of a work of art as discrete and unique.  Boasting two versions in pastel and two in oil as well as a lithograph-all generated between 1893 and 1910-Munch's masterpiece arguably constitutes not a single but a multiplicitous work.  Moreover, Munch originally conceived of the painting not as a freestanding piece but as part of a more ambitious project called the Frieze of Life.  The Frieze included 22 panels portraying life circumstances and moods, such as illness, love, and death; the panel depicting despair was the precursor for The Scream.In a poem based on an 1892 diary entry, Munch relates the genesis of what would become his most celebrated work.  He was walking across a bridge with two friends in the vicinity of Ekeberg Hill, overlooking Oslo, when "…the sun was setting-suddenly the sky turned blood-red-I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence-there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city--my friends walked on and I stood there trembling with anxiety-and I sensed an infinite Scream passing through nature."The artistic consequence of Munch's terrifying epiphany is a black-shrouded figure, ill-defined and ghostlike, whose sickly pale face stares out at the viewer against the menacing background of a bloodshot sky.  Mouth wide open, eyes bulging, hands clasped to its ears in a pose more horrified than horrifying, the figure appears to tremble on a bridge over turbulent waters.The Scream aptly captured both the self-indulgence and despair characterizing the turn of the twentieth century at the same time that it heralded the existential angst of the mid-century.  Influenced by luminaries such as the impressionist painter Monet and the more deeply expressive Van Gogh, Munch's free-form style, vivid colors, and striking juxtapositions mark this work as avant-garde.Nevertheless, as art curator Martha Tedeschi asserts, The Scream is one of only a handful of paintings in the history of art able to "communicate a specific meaning almost immediately to almost every viewer"; its primitive character transmits a raw emotionality and subjectivity.  Unsurprisingly, then, the painting has over-spilt the bounds of traditional art to become an icon of popular culture.  In the 1970s, Andy Warhol mass-produced the image on silk, the serial replications reflecting the painting's own multiplicity.  Wildly appropriated and often misused, the image-through which Munch purported to be doing nothing less than studying his own soul-has appeared on everything from keychains to dormitory posters and is in danger of becoming kitsch.Interestingly enough, two different versions of The Scream have been the targets of unusual thefts; however, in both instances the paintings were recovered.  First, a version was stolen from the National Gallery in Oslo during the 1994 Olympics in Lillehammer.  In an almost comical heist, two men employed a ladder to easily access a second-story window and abscond with the painting, taking the time to leave a postcard that read, "Thanks for the poor security."  Then, in 2004, robbers entered Oslo's Munch Museum in broad daylight, intimidated museum guards with firearms, and used a wire cutter to extract another version of The Scream from the wall along with Munch's Madonna painting.Munch was a remarkably prolific painter; when he died in 1944, he left a legacy of over a thousand paintings, several thousand drawings, and more than 15,000 prints.  Ironically, however, it is the "single" provocative image of The Scream that, as both masterpiece and pop icon, has eclipsed all this artist's other works.
-The passage suggests that a work of art is most relatable if it:

A) combines popular styles.
B) exudes universal appeal.
C) embodies the mood of the times.
D) portrays its subject realistically.