The Scream

Of course he has a private jet and a luxury yacht and lots of fancy homes.

In 2012, he paid nearly $120 million for one artwork, one of the four versions of Edvard Munch's 1895 pastel, The Scream.

Well, now that he's out over at Apollo, him and his art collection will have a lot of time to console each other.

He has a world-class art collection, cost about a billion dollars.

And there, about ten metres away from the field, was the other.

If I had to compare it to something, I'd say its face looked like Mug's The Scream, but like it was stretched vertically in some imaging software.

And then it started floating right towards me.

I don't know why, but I thought that they would only appear inside the baseball field, so seeing it right in front of me all of a sudden, I let out a small scream.

But that being said, I've gotten more into horror movies because that's a lot of what's the better version of things is horror movies.

And as a kid, I got into Scream and that kind of 90s wave of I Know What You Did Last Summer or Monster Squad.

Did you ever see Monster Squad?

Long time ago.

I think that's one of their most subtle jokes or reoccurring jokes is like how they use artwork on the show because they don't always call attention to it.

But like anytime they go to the museum, the art museum in town, all of that's like real paintings and stuff.

So just quickly, some of the paintings that we see throughout this episode, Van Gogh's self-portrait, Picasso's Three Musicians, Dali's Persistence of Memory, M.C. Escher, Munch's The Scream, and in the background, a couple I can't tell, dogs playing poker, obviously.

And it's like, this was absolutely my introduction to those pieces of artwork, for sure.

A globally famous guy on the street would recognize this work of art.

Sotheby's was set to sell Edvard Munch's The Scream, which had an estimated value of $80 million.

Bidding started at $40 million, with half a dozen buyers actively in the hunt.

The late Sotheby's vice president, Charles Moffat, speaking with a client on the landline phone, outlasted them all.

For the people that really control the party.

And like I've been telling you from the very beginning, those people are people like Leon Black.

Some estimate that if Leon Black ever put the scream up again at auction, it would become the first artwork to sell for over $1 billion.

The purchase cemented his status as a true trophy hunter, buying up masterworks for his private collection.

But the poster is drawing very consciously on a painting that was made almost exactly a century earlier on the other side of the Atlantic in Europe.

And it is, of course, Edvard Munch's The Scream.

Which, do you think, one of the most famous

artworks in history? I think there is a very strong case, isn't there, that it is the second most famous work of art.

second most? OK.

After...

Well, you know, you have to realise, I mean, the great marker of its celebrity is that there is an emoji of Edvard Munch's The Scream.

And there are really not many works of art that have their own emojis.

So, for instance, in my case, I'm presenting ten paintings that are very large, that I've never... shown before but we're all worked on over six years um but come from embodied trauma but they're very but are reimagined as sites of beauty one of them's called the shape of my pain when i'm not dancing which it's one of the most beautiful personal things i've ever made i was it was a accident that crippled me physically.

And I met the artist Sean Scully who explained how he began his landline paintings, which was out of, you know, a crisis of physical impossibility and he was painting lying down and suddenly it was a different way of seeing the sun and the horizon all kind of come together and I thought I have to articulate this so with one brush and two colours I painted this what at the time was one of my largest paintings in one session and I left it and then four years later I revisited it I mean I'm painting it with third degree burns and all kinds of things and a figure appeared in it and it's an homage at one point it's an homage to Monk's The Scream so it's an art historical piece but it's really about something that was really It's about the ballet of pain, how it can be re-visioned as something of great beauty and hope.

And the cover image, which is called The Overlook, is about the Beirut blast in 2020, the potential loss of my sibling I couldn't reach who was in the mountains.

and it was all these layers of oil and pulling them and a portal of breath appears where land and sea meet and the subtitle is The Second Life and I was really moved because that was the title of Tracy's show And I think, I hope she has many more lives.

A globally famous guy on the street would recognize this work of art.

Sotheby's was set to sell Edvard Munch's The Scream, which had an estimated value of $80 million.

Bidding started at $40 million, with half a dozen buyers actively in the hunt.

The late Sotheby's vice president, Charles Moffat, speaking with a client on the landline phone, outlasted them all.

Book a top-rated stay with a Premier host.

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Some estimate that if Leon Black ever put the Scream up again at auction, it would become the first artwork to sell for over $1 billion.

The purchase cemented his status as a true trophy hunter, buying up masterworks for his private collection.