The Sphinx, or, The Caresses

Khnopff painted this long, narrow canvas in 1896, in a Brussels that had become one of the capitals of Symbolist art. The scene reworks an old myth. Instead of Oedipus facing down the riddling monster, as the French painter Gustave Moreau had shown it in 1864, Khnopff turns the encounter into an embrace. A slender, androgynous youth stands while a sphinx with a woman's head and the spotted body of a leopard presses its cheek to his. Everything is hushed and stalled, the blue columns, the strange still landscape. That ambiguity was the point for Khnopff and his circle, who prized dream and doubt over a clear story. The picture would later catch the eye of the artist Guy Peellaert, who echoed it on the cover of David Bowie's 1974 album Diamond Dogs.