Highways and Byways: Taiwan’s retired railway stations

For more than a century, Taiwan Railway Administration (TRA) has been connecting the north and south of the nation. Between 1912 and 1926, the rail network was expanded to the eastern counties of Hualien and Taitung. Even though the number of people living in Taiwan has grown massively — it has more than tripled since World War II — a combination of population outflow in certain places, and a greater range of transportation options, has led to the closure of several TRA stations. One of the most-visited retired stations is in, and named for, Kaohsiung’s Cishan District (旗山). Until the late 1970s, it was a key stop on the 39.4km-long Ciwei Branch Line (旗尾線), which was built between 1910 and 1912 to link Jioucyutang (九曲堂) on the Western Trunk Line with Ciwei Sugar Factory (旗尾糖廠) and neighboring Meinong District (美濃). The line, which carried rice and bananas as well as sugar and people, was dismantled in 1982. The station at Cishan was left to decay until 2005, when the Kaohsiung County Government listed it as a relic and funded renovation work. Like many of the railway buildings that date from the period of Japanese rule, Cishan Station (旗山火車站) is single story and mostly made of wood. Yet its resemblance to Taiwan’s most famous colonial-era retired station, at Shengsing (勝興) in Miaoli, isn’t strong. On account of its Tudor-influenced shape, it looks more like the former Chiayi Forest Management Club (營林俱樂部) in downtown Chiayi. There are frequent buses between Cishan and downtown Kaohsiung, and some from Tainan to Cishan. Between 1903 and 1998, what’s since become known as the Old Mountain Line (舊山線) was the highest stretch of the main north-south railroad. Shengsing Station (勝興火車站), at an altitude of 402m, is an authentic if often crowded tourist attraction. Thanks to its popularity, there’s always plenty

By Steven Crook

Inside an infuriating Netflix series on Jeffrey Epstein

It’s difficult to watch Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich, a four-hour Netflix series on the now-deceased convicted sex offender without a choking sense of outrage. How many girls had to suffer to get attention? How perversely twisted is the American justice system that a Gatsby-esque billionaire, friends with such powerful figures as Bill Clinton , Prince Andrew and Donald Trump, a longstanding donor to Harvard and MIT, could buy his way out of an almost certain life sentence for child sex abuse and trafficking? Filthy Rich arrives, of course, less than a year after Epstein, 66, died, officially by suicide, in a New York jail last August. “There’s no justice in this,” Shawna Rivera, speaking publicly for the first time about Epstein’s alleged abuse starting when she was 14, says in the final episode. “There was just so much more to be said that will never be said.” There is, however, much to be learned from the sordid, winding, thwarted path to Epstein’s eventual arrest on sex trafficking charges in July last year. Filthy Rich doesn’t so much break new ground as synthesize the abundance of information with the visceral impact of first-person testimony on Epstein’s crimes — stories of predation, self-doubt and shame by numerous survivors betrayed by the justice system supposed to protect them. Epstein’s decades-long legal saga is “the biggest example I’ve ever seen of somebody using their money and influence to thwart reporting on the subject and to work out an outrageous deal,” Joe Berlinger, an executive producer, told the Guardian. Production on Filthy Rich began before Epstein became a household name — before his death, before his shock arrest, before a 2018 Pulitzer-winning investigation by the Miami Times-Herald into the sweetheart plea deal negotiated by federal prosecutors to keep Epstein out of prison. “The level of incompetence and back-door dealing

By Adrian Horton

Ai Weiwei creates 10,000 masks in aid of coronavirus

Art has come together with activism in the shape of face masks created by Ai Weiwei (艾未未) which show images of sunflower seeds, mythical beasts and perhaps most appropriately of all, a defiant middle finger. The Chinese artist and activist has printed an initial batch of 10,000 face masks to be sold for charity through eBay. All the takings will go to coronavirus humanitarian efforts led by Human Rights Watch , Refugees International and Medecins Sans Frontiers . Ai was at home in Cambridge when he began getting angry about face mask news stories including the US being accused of “modern piracy,” accused of taking masks meant for Germany. It was almost laughable, he said. “It is such a waste. There is so much argument around the mask. A face mask weighs only three grams but it carries so much state argument about global safety and who has it and who doesn’t have it.” He printed a wood carving on to a mask and put it on Instagram. People loved it and asked how they could get hold of one. From that came his new art project. The art works will be sold singly for US$50, US$300 for a series of four and US$1,500 for a collection of 20. They will have images familiar to fans of the artist’s work, including sunflower seeds based on his Tate Modern installation in which he filled the gallery’s Turbine Hall with 100 million individually crafted sunflower seeds. Some of the images will include his middle finger gesture of defiance. Ai said the pandemic was a humanitarian crisis. “It challenges our understanding of the 21st century and warns of dangers ahead. It requires each individual to act, both alone and collectively.” He likened each purchase to an act of hope and social awareness. The images have been silk-screened by hand

By Mark Brown

Taiwan’s MLMs failing to deliver

The Lunar New Year vacation had just ended when Alice Wu began to worry about COVID-19. Not long after, on Feb. 10, Wu — who didn’t give her Chinese name to speak freely for this story — received the first of several coronavirus-related sales messages through her smartphone. The pitch came from an acquaintance who represents Amway, an American multi-level marketing (MLM) company that’s been active in Taiwan since 1982. “I’ve only met her once, and I’ve never bought from her. If her sister wasn’t one of my daughter’s teachers, I’d probably block her,” says Wu, who lives in Taichung. MLM, sometimes called direct selling or network marketing, is usually presented as a two-in-one business opportunity. Distributors can make money by selling the firm’s products, and also by getting other people to sign up. Every sale made by a “downline” you enlisted adds to your income; if your “downline” goes on to introduce someone to the MLM, you’ll also get a cut of that new recruit’s sales. To protect the public from pyramid schemes, Article 18 of Taiwan’s Multi-Level Marketing Supervision Act states that representatives’ major income should come from “promoting and selling goods or services… instead of earning mainly by introducing new participants.” ‘THE CURRENT DANGER’ Amway, Taiwan’s number one MLM firm in terms of total sales, is best known for nutritional and home-care products. The message sent to Wu, however, promoted an air-treatment machine priced at NT$41,000. “While it didn’t mention COVID-19 by name, it did claim that the air purifier could help protect my family from ‘the current danger,’” she says. Salespeople in other countries have been less subtle, some even promising potential buyers that machines of this kind are effective against coronaviruses. According to experts, air purifiers won’t help much against a virus that isn’t airborne as such, but spread through

By Steven Crook

Writing through the pandemic

One poet wrote about a stroll around a Taitung park. Another reminisced about her hometown in rural South Africa. And a third looked back on a love affair of long ago. These were some of the poems shared over morning coffee by members of the Taichung Poetry Collective one recent weekend. The group of budding and seasoned poets gathers routinely to critique each other’s work. And while the talk was of metaphors and rhyming couplets, looming in the back of these poets’ minds was the COVID-19 crisis that has left much of the world reeling in lockdowns, unemployment and death. “I should write because of it, but I can’t,” said the poetry group’s co-founder, Michelle Strydom, whose writing has admittedly become deeper and darker. “I feel guilty for being able to drive to work.” Drawing from the feeling of entrapment, her poem Dreams of Dying Birds details the perils of the world outside the nation’s relative safety. These dreams I remember The birds always die Bloody feathers scattered carried away by wind’s tide The Taichung group, which hopes to publish a collection of poetry in the near future, has held workshops while maintaining social distance. First they tried poetry in the park with members spaced out. Then virtual poetry workshops, which proved to be awkward. Computer lag time created a stuttered flow to the conversation, losing the feeling of the poem, Strydom said. Yet poets need an outlet, members said, with anxiety either paralyzing the creative process or driving writers to become more prolific. “Meaningful memories need to come out,” said Matt Martini, a member of the Taichung poets’ group. “There’s pressure of sorts, but at the same time you can’t write on demand.” For inspiration, Martini has recently turned to American poet and musician, Saul Williams, whose work has spanned from the slam

By John Evans

Innovation under COVID-19

While engineering professor Liu Jen-sen (劉振森) manually took the temperature of hundreds of students entering the building, he was sure there was a more efficient way to complete the annoying task. With hundreds of students entering National Taiwan University’s (NTU) Electrical Engineering Building every period, the exercise put faculty in close proximity with visitors when social distancing was crucial to fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. Liu immediately had a eureka moment, headed to his basement workshop and cobbled together a prototype for Prevention No 1 (防疫一號), an automated temperature measuring station. With infrared thermal camera systems costing up to NT$500,000, Liu’s was a steal at NT$6,000. Prevention No 1 is now used across campus and in other institutions. The latest version at NTU’s main entrances, which costs about NT$12,000, can even scan visitor’s ID cards and transmit the information to a central database. BATTLING COVID-19 Liu is one of several Taiwanese who have gained attention for their inventions to battle the COVID-19 pandemic. Lai Hsien-yung (賴賢勇), an anesthesiologist with Mennonite Christian Hospital developed a simple protective device for use when intubating patients, and Soochow University physics professor Chen Chiu-min (陳秋民) made aN ultraviolet disinfection device for masks using common household goods. Both Lai and Chen have shared their designs with the public. Liu had planned to keep Prevention No 1 for campus use only, but his department head Wu Chung-chih (吳忠幟) and college dean Chang Yao-wen (張耀文) convinced him to publicize the blueprints and hold a press conference to promote them. “I was just responding to a problem caused by the pandemic,” Liu says. “I wasn’t thinking of making a big deal out of it; I just wanted to make things more convenient for everyone.” Since then, public institutions and private companies have built their own versions of the apparatus, and a group

By Han Cheung

Americans find ways to stay active, keep distance

Vicki Friedman always wanted to play golf with her adult sons but until this spring couldn’t find time to learn the game and practice. Shaun Warkentin was looking for a diversion when his young sons tired of jumping on the backyard trampoline and being indoors. He discovered the joy of taking them fishing. Neighborhood and park trails across the country have been getting higher-than-usual use by runners, walkers and bicyclists as people find ways to get fresh air while maintaining social distancing during the coronavirus outbreak. Golf courses are welcoming more beginners and people returning to the game, states have seen robust sales of fishing licenses since the coronavirus hit full force in the US in March and fitness tracking technology has shown a surge in the number of steps recorded. Friedman, who lives in Chesapeake, Virginia, took up golf at age 54 after the community college where she works ordered employees to do their jobs from home. That gave her more than an extra hour a day she otherwise would spend commuting. “When you see what’s happening around the world, you prioritize and ask yourself what are some of the things you want to do,” she said. “I’ve always been geared toward work. Right now you want to invest in yourself. What else do I want to do that is fun?” Friedman goes to the driving range a couple of times a week, hits plastic wiffle golf balls in her backyard and, as a Mother’s Day gift from her son, went to a course for the first time and was treated to nine holes. She said on a recent afternoon she was about to play her fourth round in three weeks with the set of used clubs she bought for US$30. “This is a way we can spend time together outside,” she said. “It’s something new.

India’s ‘superfood’ goes global

Green, spiky and with a strong, sweet smell, the bulky jackfruit has morphed from a backyard nuisance in India’s south coast into the meat-substitute darling of vegans and vegetarians in the West. Part of the South Asia’s diet for centuries, jackfruit was so abundant that tonnes of it went to waste every year. But now India, the world’s biggest producer of jackfruit, is capitalizing on its growing popularity as a “superfood” meat alternative — touted by chefs from San Francisco to London and Delhi for its pork-like texture when unripe. “There are a lot of inquiries from abroad... At the international level, the interest in jackfruit has grown manifold,” Varghese Tharakkan says from his orchard in Kerala’s Thrissur district. The fruit, which weighs five kilograms on average, has a waxy yellow flesh when ripe and is eaten fresh, or used to make cakes, juices, ice creams and crisps. When unripe, it is added to curries or fried, minced and sauted. In the West, shredded jackfruit has become a popular alternative to pulled pork and is even used as a pizza topping. “People love it,” Anu Bhambri, who owns a chain of restaurants in the US and India, says. “The jackfruit tacos have been a hit at each and every location. The jackfruit cutlet — every table orders it, it’s one of my favorites!” James Joseph quit his job as a director at Microsoft after spotting Western interest in jackfruit “gaining momentum as a vegan alternative to meat.” JACK OF ALL FRUITS The COVID-19 crisis, Joseph says, has created two spikes in consumer interest. “Coronavirus caused a fear for chicken and people switched to tender jackfruit. In Kerala, lockdown caused a surge in demand for mature green jackfruit and seeds due to shortage of vegetables due to border restrictions,” he says. Global interest in veganism was already soaring

By Abhaya Srivastava

Insect enthusiast puts cricket ramen on the menu

In a steamy Tokyo kitchen, a roasted scent wafts through the air as Yuto Shinohara prepares soup stock for ramen, derived not from pork or chicken, but crickets. “In this pan, we have 10,000 crickets, making stock for 100 bowls,” Shinohara said, as he stirred a large silver pot. The bowls of ramen produced by Shinohara and his team look and smell like those at restaurants across Japan: fine white noodles sit in a savory soup, topped with a juicy slice of pork and fat pieces of pickled bamboo shoots. There’s little to give away the fact that 26-year-old Shinohara uses crickets in the broth, oil, soy sauce and even noodles. Except, that is, for the deep-fried insect perched next to a mitsuba leaf garnish on the soup’s surface. Shinohara isn’t a professional chef, in fact his preferred description of himself is “earth boy.” And it’s his love of all things nature-related that led to him insect-based food. “I want to introduce the joy of insect eating, so that insects will be respected equally to animals and plants,” he said. Shinohara’s love affair with insects began as a child, when he spent most of his time in fields and bushes, catching grasshoppers and cicadas. He was so fascinated by creepy-crawlies that he eventually even tasted them — but only secretly. “I couldn’t tell anyone that I love insects or I eat insects until I was about 20 years old,” he says shyly. “I was afraid of becoming the odd one out or being bullied for it.” ‘LIKE A DELICATE SWEET’ Humans have been eating insects for thousands of years and they remain a common food in many countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Oceania. But for many in the West and elsewhere, a cultural bias against insects as food remains strong. Environmental and agriculture experts have been trying to break

By Harumi Ozawa

Cash, long a refuge in uncertain times, now under suspicion

In troubled times, people have been known to hoard currency at home — a financial security blanket against deep uncertainty. But in this crisis, things are different. This time cash itself, passed from hand to hand across neighborhoods, cities and societies just like the coronavirus, is a source of suspicion rather than reassurance. No longer a thing to be shoved mindlessly into a pocket, tucked into a worn wallet or thrown casually on a kitchen counter, money’s status has changed during the virus era — perhaps irrevocably. The pandemic has also reawakened debate about the continued viability of what has been the physical lifeblood of global economies: paper money and coins. From the supermarkets of the US and Japan to the shantytowns of Africa to the gas stations of Tehran, a growing number of businesses and individuals worldwide have stopped using banknotes in fear that physical currency, handled by tens of thousands of people over their useful life, could be a vector for the spreading coronavirus. Public officials and health experts have said that the risk of transferring the virus from person to person through the use of money is minimal. That hasn’t stopped businesses from refusing to accept currency, and some countries from urging citizens to stop using banknotes altogether. In the midst of the coronavirus era, a thousand calculations are made before cash is handled — mostly with gloved hands. Some leave the money laid out on surfaces for days, for the virus to die. Others disinfect banknotes with spray. Some even microwave them in the belief it kills the virus. In China, banks are now required to sterilize cash with ultraviolet light or heat, then store notes for at least a week before they are given to customers. “In many areas, cash was already beginning to disappear due the increased risk of

By Zeina Karam

Taiwan in Time: A great loss for Taiwanese literature

May 25 to May 31 Three months before his 90th birthday in 2015, Chung Chao-cheng (鍾肇政) woke up shortly after midnight and experienced a inexplicable sense of clarity. “Suddenly, my mind started going all over the place. There were some recent memories, but also many that I thought I had long forgotten. They would appear and disappear from my brain one after another, and they were so clear, so lucid. Even the memories from 70, 80 years ago felt like they happened yesterday. I suddenly thought, if I still remember so much, why don’t I write everything down?” Despite his solid reputation among Taiwan’s literary giants, Chung had never felt comfortable writing a memoir, declaring his aversion in the introduction to the 1998 book, Memoirs of Chung Chao-cheng: Struggle and Uncertainty (鍾肇政回憶錄:徬徨與掙扎), a collection of personal essays put together his friend Chien Hung-chun (錢鴻鈞). “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he told himself. “Write down what you remember. Whatever you don’t remember, let it turn into foam with the waves, fly away with the wind, disappear into the passage of time. Hey, you 90-year-old geezer, try to capture everything that’s left in your deteriorating brain.” “I got off my bed, wiped my face, fixed myself a glass of milk and lit a cigarette. I’ve decided to leave something behind — I don’t dare call it a ‘work,’ but, why does that even matter?” Unfortunately, Chung never started his endeavor due to health issues, although he did publish a collection of love letters he wrote in his youth the following year. His son, Chung Yen-wei (鍾延威), finished the memoir for him and published it as Climbing a Mountain (攀一座山) last December, in time before Chung died last Saturday. TRANSLINGUAL BLUES Born in 1925, Chung was a prominent member of the “translingual generation” (跨語言的一代),

By Han Cheung

Stinky tofu straight to your door

With his sugarcane juice stall at Monga Nightmarket (艋舺夜市) floundering due to COVID-19, things took a turn for the worse for Lin Chih-hang (林志航) when he was furloughed from a part-time job. The crowds are trickling back to this nightmarket in Taipei’s Wanhua District (萬華), but Lin is now so busy that he has hired a friend to run his stall. As the sole driver of the night market’s delivery service, established on April 12, Lin takes on an average of 20 orders on weeknights and over 60 on weekends, with his father helping out when he is too busy. Chen Tzu-hui (陳姿卉), who owns a seafood stall in the middle of the market, says that the delivery service has helped the night market regain at least 30 percent of its business before the coronavirus struck, and many of their counterparts throughout Taiwan have been using similar methods to salvage their losses. And what was just a temporary measure for Monga Nightmarket’s vendors to weather the pandemic is likely to stay as a permanent service. “I didn’t expect it to become so busy,” Lin says. “Given how popular the service is now, we can’t just suddenly stop it after the pandemic is over. There’s no going back.” SELF HELP DELIVERY Lin delivered 37 orders on his busiest night last month. Since he only delivers within Wanhua, he often takes five different orders on one trip. He inspects the orders to see which items require immediate delivery — deep fried foods, for example — and then determines his route. Chen’s stall is the dispatch center. Replying to Line messages on two phones and answering the occasional call, Chen scribbles down each order on a notepad and broadcasts it through the street’s loudspeakers. The vendors arrive one after another with their goodies — the

By Han Cheung

Bridges to somewhere

In Taiwan’s foothills, suspension bridges — or the remnants of them — are almost as commonplace as temples. “Suspension bridge” is a direct translation of the Chinese-language term (吊橋, diaoqiao), but it’s a little misleading. These spans aren’t huge pieces of infrastructure. The larger ones are just wide enough for the little trucks used by farmers. Others are suitable for two-wheelers and wheelbarrows. If one end is higher than the other, they may incorporate steps, like the recently-inaugurated, pedestrians-only Shuanglong Rainbow Suspension Bridge (雙龍七彩吊橋) in Nantou County. Because torrential rains hammer Taiwan during the hot season, the landscape is scarred by ravines and wadis. Fording certain creeks is out of the question. After World War II, bridges made of steel wires and wooden planks, held in place by a concrete tower on either side, made it possible for remote hill farmers to get their crops to market, and for their children to attend school. In the past few decades, many suspension bridges have been superseded by bigger structures able to carry two-way traffic. Several old bridges have been left to collapse, like one beside Taichung Local Road 100 in Taiping District (太平). In a tropical climate, the wooden elements quickly rot. The hawsers anchored to each side are more durable, but may snap if struck by falling rocks (a significant threat in mountainous areas) or stretched because one of the towers has toppled. Others are properly maintained or replaced, and have become tourist attractions. When I reached the northern end of Provincial Highway 21, after the most challenging section of one of the most difficult bike rides I’ve ever done, I spent a good bit of time on Fusing Suspension Bridge (福興吊橋), taking in the scenery and catching my breath before returning to the road. The 150m-long bridge crosses the Dajia River (大甲溪),

By Steven Crook

Eslite Gallery opens new space

Eslite Gallery will hold an open house at their new gallery tomorrow in Taipei’s Songshan Cultural and Creative Park. The doors to the new space will open at 4pm and will feature works by local and international artists. As a nod to the ongoing pandemic and Taiwan’s handling of it, the gallery also announced a project called Artivate, calling on 12 of its artists to emblazon details from their artwork on cloth masks. Participating local artists include Jimmy Liao (幾米), whose illustrated books with simple stories about people coping in the modern urban world have become hot sellers across Asia, and Tsong Pu (莊普), who is known for creating meticulous geometric paintings. Jeng Jun-dian’s (鄭君殿) cross-hatching style, for which he layers the surface of the canvas with thousands of single, interconnected brush strokes of solid coloring, is clearly evident in the detail from Wilfred, while Huang Ben-rei (黃本蕊) expresses her inner thoughts, emotions and revelations through Nini, a fictitious bunny. International artists include Japanese artists Hiroyuki Matsuura, who works in animation, graffiti, graphic design, painting, and sculpture, and Teppei Kaneuji who uses materials from everyday life, found objects and manga, to investigate the mass consumption of contemporary Japanese culture. The opening ends at 6pm. ■ Tomorrow from 4pm to 6pm ■ Eslite Performance Hall, B2, 88 Tobacco Factory Road, Taipei City (台北市信義區菸廠路88號B2), tel: (02) 6636-5888 X 1588

By Noah Buchan

Piped noise, robots and ‘sex dolls’

Livening up sport without fans is a challenge for competitions returning after the coronavirus, and organizers have tried several ways to make empty stadiums more appealing. After South Korean football club FC Seoul was accused of placing sex dolls in the stands, AFP Sport looks at some of the innovations: TAIWAN’S ROBOT DRUMMERS Sport took a surreal twist when Taiwan’s baseball league started last month, with robots providing live music as they drummed in the stands. In what could have been a scene from Star Wars, a group of robots — some wearing wigs — banged drums for Rakuten Monkeys’ opening game. Mannequins wearing team colors were placed around the stadium, along with cardboard cut-outs of fans, media and players’ family members. GERMANY’S CROWD SOURCING Cardboard cut-outs have been a popular way to fill empty seats, but German football club Borussia Moenchengladbach took the idea a step further and gave fans the chance to have life-sized images of themselves in the stands. Thousands of people have taken up the offer, where they pay 19 euros to have their image placed in the Borussia-Park stadium. “The campaign organizers are regularly overrun with orders — we can hardly keep up trying to install them all,” fan representative Thomas Weinmann told the Bundesliga Web site. SOUTH KOREA’S PIPED NOISE The sound of tinny, recorded cheering has replaced the spine-tingling roar of the crowd in some stadiums. In South Korea’s K-League, recordings of popular chants have echoed around the country’s empty football venues, some of which hosted games at the 2002 World Cup. Meanwhile, TV viewers of Australian Rules football will hear pre-recorded crowd noises laid over the match footage when games return next month. “We’ve had a number of different trials and consulted a number of people, including from the movie business, just to get it right,” Lewis Martin, managing

Justice warriors or meddling busybodies?

When Auntie Su (蘇) was evicted from her apartment last Monday, locals were so overjoyed that they sent thank you wreaths to the Tainan Police Department. “Justice has been served.” “Punish villains and eradicate evil,” read some of the notes. “Thank you, hardworking police for bringing peace and quiet back to Tainan!” a neighbor posted on Facebook. Auntie Su is a notorious “informer demon” (檢舉魔人), someone who is known to excessively report violations either for reward money or — depending which side you’re on — to serve as a justice warrior or a nosy annoyance. Usually they are called “professional” informers (檢舉達人), but Su, who would often scream at the violators and make a scene, gained such infamy that she earned her special moniker. She’s had many brushes with the law but committed no crime — she was evicted for failing to pay rent. While Su was obviously not making much money off her exploits, some do earn a living as informers. Cash rewards are offered for mostly environmental violations such as not cleaning up after one’s dog or littering, with the bulk of the money going to informers. Last year, Taipei’s leading whistleblower reported 3,705 cases and earning NT$810,000; the top five claimed nearly 75 percent of the total budget. But many are not in it for the dough. Last year the Taipei Police Department’s Traffic Division received over 870,000 citizen reports of traffic violations that did not pay — most of them for illegal parking. These informers say they do it because the justice system has failed to curb violations, many of which could prove deadly. “The cases reported probably make up just a fraction of the actual violations. Due to the inefficiency of the public enforcement system, violators simply have no respect for the law. Professional informers

By Han Cheung

‘The Scream’ to practice social distancing

It is a masterpiece that seems to speak to the later horrors of war in the 20th century and even the anguishes of the 21st. Now Edvard Munch’s The Scream has another claim on modernity, after it emerged that an oversight by the artist means the 1910 version of the work needs to practice some physical distancing. An international consortium of scientists seeking to identify the main cause of deterioration of the paint in the canvas has discovered Munch accidentally used an impure tube of cadmium yellow which can fade and flake even in relatively low humidity, including when breathed upon by crowds of art lovers. The result is that Munch’s initially bright yellow brushstrokes have turned to an off-white color in the painting’s sunset and in the neck area of the central angst-ridden figure. The thickly applied opaque yellow paint in the lake above the figure is also flaking away from the canvas, which was famously stolen in 2004. “It turned out that rather than use pure cadmium sulphide as he should have done, apparently he also used a dirty version, a not very clean version that contained chlorides,” said Koen Janssens from the University of Antwerp. “I don’t think it was an intentional use — I think he just bought a not very high level of paint. This is 1910 and at that point the chemical industry producing the chemical pigments is there but it doesn’t mean they have the quality control of today.” Scientists from Belgium, Italy the US and Brazil took part in the investigation. They initially tested whether reducing the painting’s exposure to light may be key to protecting it from further deterioration. “But it turned out that the light is not really very harmful so it doesn’t make sense to reduce light levels below the normal one,” Janssens said. “You

By Daniel Boffey