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Pokémon cards go highbrow with The Scream collection

Inspired by the famous Edvard Munch painting, these cards are art themselves

By Allegra Frank@LegsFrank Oct 15, 2018, 2:05pm EDT

Pokémon is art in the same way that a sandwich — or an arrangement of stuff on your desk, or a urinal — is art. That is to say, of course the monster-collecting phenomenon is art, a truth made clearer thanks to a collaboration between the Pokémon Center and the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, inspired by the classic painting The Scream.

A line of Pokémon trading cards will soon be available at both the museum and the storefront, each one featuring a Pokémon mimicking the classic pose from Edvard Munch’s painting. The first card in the set, based on Mimikyu, goes on sale Oct. 27; the whole set will be available through Jan. 20, 2019. Not only is this collection inspired, but it’s also surprisingly similar to the style and color palette of Munch’s most famous work.

Featured in the lineup are Eevee, Mimikyu, Rowlett, Psyduck (my personal favorite here) and Pikachu. Grabbing all of them requires making separate purchases, including buying an expansion pack from the Pokémon Center. (How to get a Pikachu card remains a mystery for now, though.)

On the same day as the collection launches, the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum will launch a retrospective on Edvard Munch’s career. This will mark the first time that The Scream and several other works will be exhibited in Japan, making this a particularly exciting event.

The only explanation as to why Pokémon is involved with something so seemingly out of its wheelhouse as expressionist art is that, well, it’s Pokémon. And it, too, is art.

Check out all five cards below.