I scratch my head at the number of vampire stories that appear each year. What else is there to be said about Dracula and his descendents? And yet this chiaroscuro by Edvard Munch catches my eye.
How many dreams are forgotten by morning? How many more are gone by the afternoon? But some dread images hang on for a lifetime.
Artists have long kept track of their nightmares, recording them on paper or canvas. Their gruesome narratives are reenacted while we look on, just as helpless to intervene as we are in our own sleep when unquiet thoughts appall us. Munch grew up haunted by his father's morbid Nordic religiosity. I suspect such piety has been the source of many awakenings in the dark.
Vampyr II by Edvard Munch. The oil painting Munch did of the same subject sold for thirty eight million dollars, but I prefer this print. Click on the picture for a closer look.
