Pål Enger never quite knew why he had to steal “The Scream”

Some paintings are just too provoking. They have to be responded to. Picasso’s “Guernica”, a howl against war, with red paint; Velázquez’s shapely “Rokeby Venus” with a meat cleaver wielded by a cross suffragette; the infuriating smile of the “Mona Lisa” with almost anything (stones, cake, paint, a teacup, soup). And Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” with its swirling reds and blues and its anguished central figure, silently crying out, hands clamped over ears…? With plain removal.