The masterly Norwegian artist Edvard Munch (1863–1944), whose paintings were exhibited in a rare show in New York in March, never wavered in his idiosyncratic, expressionist impulses. He had the uncanny ability to infuse even the most symbol-laden and iconic images with the terrestrial energy of lived experiences, and, conversely, he managed to raise quotidian scenes to the level of symbols. Of the ten works on view, two were crowd-pleasingly famous and distinctively Munchian. In Madonna (1892– 1894), the nude torso and placid face of a dark-haired woman sits in a swirling, dreamlike background, which contracts to a red-orange halo above her head. Like its companion, Vampire (1917)—wherein a man bows his head as a red-haired woman bites his neck against a dark, billowy ground —the composition is powerfully simple. Nothing distracts the viewer from the central and centered image, itself rendered with great economy. T ...

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