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WSJ: Was 'The Scream' Inspired by Munch's Tax Return?
As mentioned in: Wall Street JournalMay 8, 2012
Edvard Munch's "The Scream," having captured the imaginations of millions, was sold this week for $120 million, setting a record for the most expensive artwork ever sold at auction. The Wall Street Journal asks whether Munch's iconic expression of anxiety, painted in 1895, may have been inspired by problems all too familiar to contemporary audiences: his taxes.
The Journal looked to Jeffery L. Yablon, Pillsbury's Tax partner and resident collector of quotations about taxes. Yablon has published nine editions of "As Certain As Death: Quotations About Taxes," the largest collection of its kind. The book includes nuggets of tax wisdom and tax angst for every occasion, including the Edvard Munch gem that Yablon provided to the Wall Street Journal:
This tax problem has made a bookkeeper of me too. I'm really not supposed to paint, I guess. Instead, I'm supposed to sit here and scribble figures in a book. If the figures don't balance I'll be put in prison. I don't care about money. All I want to do with the limited time I have left is to use it to paint a few pictures in peace and quiet. By now, I've learned a good deal about painting and ought to be able to contribute my best. The country might benefit from giving me time to paint. But does anyone care?
(as quoted in Sue Prideaux's "Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream," Yale University Press, 2005)
Allan Sloan, writing in Fortune magazine, said of Yablon's "As Certain as Death," "The book is like canapés for anyone interested in taxes, which ought to be all of us. You can't devour it all in one sitting—you graze for a while, come back, graze some more. It features about 250 pages of quotes, many of which are hilarious—if you're into tax humor."
Yablon, a noted Pillsbury tax partner who advises on federal income tax law with a particular emphasis on tax-exempt organizations, individual tax planning and real estate, started collecting quotations about taxes in the 1970s, publishing the first edition in 1994.
Click here to read the Wall Street Journal article.
