"She is the woman of dreams, the woman of lust and woman the nun," Edvard Munch once confided. The Norwegian fin de siècle painter was explaining one of his favorite compositions, which showed three women standing togetherone in black, one in white, one nude. He used this trio in several different canvases, known collectively as "the Sphinx" cycle. They epitomized, as no other subject could, the shy, alcoholic bachelor's agonized obsession with that half of the human race which he never was able to understand.
Yet the Sphinx series is far from Munch's finest...
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