Edvard Munch 2008, the painting "Vampire" set a new record for his paintings when it was sold for US$38,162,000 at Sotheby's New York. Munch's image appears on the Norwegian 1,000-kroner note, along with pictures inspired by his artwork. In February 2012, a major Munch exhibition, "Edvard Munch. The Modern Eye", opened at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt; the exhibition was opened by Mette-Marit, Crown Princess of Norway. In May 2012, "The Scream" sold for US$119.9 million, and is the second most expensive artwork ever sold at an open auction. (It was surpassed in November 2013 by "Three Studies of Lucian Freud", which sold
The Kiss (Munch painting) was part of a series Munch called the "Frieze of Life", on which he spent more than 30 years of his career. The cycle depicts stages of a relationship between men and women and is part of what Munch called "the battle between men and women that is called love". It includes portrayals of attraction, courtship, realization, and disappointment. According to the Museum of Modern Art, the dark ambiance of "The Kiss" is representative of Munch's ambivalence regarding romance. In the 1897 painting, art historian Reinhold Heller finds it "virtually impossible" to separate the two figures, particularly where their faces