At first, it looks like an embrace.

Then the red hair begins to feel like a wound.

In Vampire, Edvard Munch folds two figures into one dark shape: the man bent forward, the woman leaning over him, her hair spilling across his neck and shoulder.

The painting has often been read as danger, desire and emotional surrender, but its other title, Love and Pain, is just as important. Munch leaves the moment unresolved. Is she comforting him, consuming him, or both?

That uncertainty is the whole charge of the image.