Artists and Their Monsters - NYTimes.com In the spring, Edvard Munch's 1895 work "The Scream," one of the artist's now-iconic depictions of terror, sold for $119.9 million at Sotheby's, setting a record for any work of art sold at auction. This was no "Water Lilies." We obviously put a high price on our sense of dread. Munch's screamer - set in a swirling landscape, elongated hands holding a face distended in horror - is not so much a portrait as an embodiment of an inner state. Raw fear made flesh. A sort of monster. Monsters serve a purpose in every age. They confront us with qualities in the world, and in ourselves, that we find difficult to face. And without artists to create them - from Gorgon to Godzilla - there would be no monsters at all. The editors asked eight artists to draw a monster that embodies their deepest or most irrational fear - a creature that belongs not to the monsters of history but to their private horrors. This gallery is haunted by a range of fears - of financial ruin, cancer, the abduction of our humanity and even the intimidating haircut. But it also raises perhaps the most frightening specter of all: the monster is us.