Tokyo Art Museum Teams Up With Pokémon To Celebrate Famous Artwork

TheTravel

By Josh Coulson

Published Oct 19, 2018

The Tokyo Art Museum has teamed up with Pokémon to create a range of trading cards based on the iconic 19th-century artwork 'The Scream.'

Art can be an extremely complex thing and is sometimes not a concept that is easy to get one's head around. What should and shouldn't be considered art is a topic that is often disputed. That's largely down to art being so subjective. Not only is a piece's worth entirely based on an individual's opinion, but often whether something should be considered art at all is also entirely subjective.

Chances are that if you believe the art world is not for you, you simply haven't been looking at the right works of art. Take the vast differences between paintings from centuries ago and the impressionist work of the past 100 years or so, for example. Traditionalists tend to prefer the former while other people may lean more towards the latter. It's simply a matter of taste.

Still not convinced? Okay, how about if we told you that Pokémon cards can be considered art? Well, now they really can. As reported by The Verge, the Tokyo Art Museum has joined forces with Pokémon to create some pretty unique trading cards. The cards depict various creatures from the Pokémon universe re-enacting Edvard Munch's iconic painting, The Scream.

The new designs are not available yet but soon will be, on October 27th to be exact, from Pokémon Centers across Japan. They'll only cost 450¥ (around $4) too, so not bad at all. Pokémon that have made the cut for the collection are Pikachu and Eevee among others. Even though some of them aren't typically Pokémon that would learn the move scream in the games, all of them have that capability in this iteration of the trading cards in keeping with their theme.

It's not every day you see your favorite anime characters paying tribute to an artwork that is more than 100 years old, especially one with this dark a meaning. Munch is said to have painted the haunting image after a sunset made him feel as if an infinite scream had just passed through nature. Creepy stuff, but a cool collaboration nonetheless.