Robert Anthony turns the most famous cry in art into a moment of hesitation
In 1893 Edvard Munch painted a figure on a road at sunset, hands raised to its face, as a scream passed through the whole landscape. More than a century later, Robert Anthony has sent that figure back to the rail and asked it to stop and think.
The idea came from the Strawberry Mind: what if the figure were not crying out at the world, but listening to its own thoughts? In Second Thoughts the mouth is closed and the eyes are shut. The hands no longer press in alarm; they hold the head steady, as if to keep a thought from escaping. The top of the head has opened, and inside sits a strawberry covered not with seeds but with a hundred small watching eyes. One seed is missing.
Munch's sky is kept in full, in bands of orange and blood red, with the dark winding water below and the long rail running out of the frame. The brushwork is restless and the figure is still, and that contrast is the painting: everything around him moves, and he alone has paused.
Second Thoughts belongs to the Strawberry Mind series, in which Robert Anthony's zany, whimsical ideas are painted in the styles of great masters. This one asks a question for our own time: when so much can be done for us, at speed, what is the value of thinking again? The answer is in the face. The first thought may be handed to us; the second is our own.
Made, like everything on this site, in open partnership with AI, the canvas has its own song: Second Thoughts, a 1950s New York torch song sung in a smoky late-night voice that takes its time. Play it while you look.