Edvard Munch’s The Scream Animated to the Psychedelic Sounds of Pink Floyd: The Winter Version

Back in the spring, we fea­tured Roman­ian ani­ma­tor Sebas­t­ian Cosor’s ani­ma­tion of Edvard Munch’s The Scream set to Pink Floy­d’s “The Great Gig in the Sky.” But the win­ter­time has almost come, which neces­si­tates not just a change in the clothes we wear, but a change in the ani­ma­tions of The Scream we watch. For­tu­nate­ly, Cosor has already put togeth­er a sea­son­al­ly appro­pri­ate ver­sion of his ear­li­er video, which you can see above.

The set­ting of Munch’s orig­i­nal Scream paint­ing can, with its depop­u­lat­ed land­scape under a hot orange sky, look pret­ty hell­ish, even before you notice the ago­nized fel­low writhing in the mid­dle of it. Would­n’t it feel alto­geth­er more pleas­ant under a snow­fall? And the scream­er him­self — sure­ly he’d give off a jol­lier vibe if he wore a San­ta hat? Cosor has answered these ques­tions and oth­ers in this humor­ous two-minute CGI film, which once again unites 1970s psy­che­del­ic rock with late-19th/ear­ly-2oth-cen­tu­ry Nor­we­gian paint­ing.

Some may con­sid­er this a kind of des­e­cra­tion of an impor­tant work of art (whether they mean the Nor­we­gian paint­ing or the psy­che­del­ic rock), but even those who don’t might har­bor one seri­ous objec­tion: isn’t the mid­dle of Novem­ber a bit ear­ly to haul out the Christ­mas stuff? Fair enough, as the hol­i­day dec­o­ra­tions in stores and pub­lic places do seem to appear a lit­tle ear­li­er each year. But if we can’t make an excep­tion for the case of a fes­tive pro­duc­tion as strange as this, for what can we make an excep­tion?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Edvard Munch’s Famous Paint­ing The Scream Ani­mat­ed to the Sound of Pink Floyd’s Pri­mal Music

30,000 Works of Art by Edvard Munch & Oth­er Artists Put Online by Norway’s Nation­al Muse­um of Art

Col­in Mar­shall writes else­where on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, and the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future? Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.