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.
2 comments:
Thirty-eight million dollars!! That's no nightmare - for most folks today that would a dream come true! :) Welcome back from your travels.
It looks like the man in the picture has had nightmares and the woman is comforting him; as simple as that. But the title Vampire implies that the picture is about something devilish going on between these two people.
It reminds me of a saying I've often heard in relation to this or that woman: "She's giving him red wine and is sucking his red blood".
The woman in the picture is comforting the man(red wine) after she has probably sucked all his vitality(red blood)leaving him helpless and in need of her comforting. Poor man!
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