Love Bites

After seeing the Rauschenberg show, I discovered my new favorite painting down the hall. It's by Edvard Munch. It depicts an intimate close-up of a man and a woman who are surrounded by darkness. The man looks to be distressed, giving in to and relying on the comfort from this consoling woman. She's bent over and cradling him with her arms as she buries a kiss into his neck. Even her flowing red hair pours over him. It's desperate and haunting yet a very loving scene. Munch originally titled the piece LOVE AND PAIN. This was part of a series Munch was working on that traced the path of love from innocence, to passion, to emotional pain, to jealousy and then to despair. I like the ambiguity. The idea that from deepest pain can come consoling love. Or passion so strong that it's painful. I found this to be a gentle and comforting image.
But Munch's friend and writer Stanislaw Przybyszewski saw something else and renamed the painting VAMPIRE. And that's what it's known as now. He saw the woman's actions as hostile, dominating and restraining and wrote,

"A man broken in spirit; on his neck, the face of a biting vampire...he cannot rid himself of that vampire nor of the pain, and the woman will always sit there, will bite eternally with the tongues of a thousand vipers, with a thousand venomous teeth."

I love that description too. "tongues of a thousand vipers, with a thousand venomous teeth" So angry. So helpless. I find both interpretation of the painting beautiful. I find in both not despair and loss but a tender and sexual intimacy that comes from someone who will always be there for you. Sure, maybe it's codependancy but love is complicated. Plus I love blood sucking vampires.