Visions and Dreams in Painting

Public lecture at the Fitzwilliam Museum Festival of Ideas 2012

Representing dreams: Three challenges

Two levels of reality: the dreamers reality and the dreams reality The non-visibility of dreams; but then, dreams are primarily visual (arguably) Dreams are memories. They are not generally seen but told to others upon waking.

Before the 19th C.

Challenge: Dreams have to be told. Solution: Choose dreams that are familiar to audiences.
That is: famous dreams of famous dreamers (from the Bible and Saints Legends)

Josephs Dream, 13th C., Bourges Cathedral Stained Glass Window (Genesis 37:5ff)

Georg Pencz, Joseph Telling his Dream, 1544, woodcut

Joseph recounting his dream to his brothers, follower of Raphael, 1520s

Vienna Genesis, Joseph interpreting the baker and the butlers dreams, 1st half 6th C., book ill. (Genesis 40)

Joseph story: The butler and the bakers dream 13th C. mosaic, San Marco, Venice

Chartres Cathedral, Pharaos Dream, stained glass, 13th C.

Visions
These are no ordinary dreams. They are visions from God. The dreams are prophetic.
All Christian dreams are visions. Ordinary dreams are not a subject for art.

Gregory the Great said:

There are 3 types of dream: 1) Dreams caused by digestive troubles 2) Dreams sent by God 3) Dreams sent by the Devil Common people cannot distinguish between these hence all dreams are deemed to be dangerous. Only a few saintly men can identify a God-sent dream.
(6th C. AD, in his Dialogues and Moralia)

8th/9th-C. manuscript of Gregorys Moralia, Sothebys (sold 2012)

How can we recognise a dream vision in an image?

Middle Ages:
Art historian Sixten Ringbom: the sleeping figure is a visual quotation mark for a vision

Sleepers are enclosed in a bed-bubble.

A dream messenger, e.g. angel.

Murals, Benedictine Church, Lambach, Austria, 11th C.

Menologion of Basilius II, Dream of Romanus, c.985 (Byzantine)

Chartres Cathedral, Pharaos Dream, stained glass, 13th C.

Dream of Pope Innocent III

Fresco by Giotto, part of fresco cyle in church of St Francis in Assisi (Italy) Painted in 1290 / 1300 Based on Bonaventures Life of Francis

Giotto, Dream of Pope Innocent III St Francis, Assisi, 1290/1300

Basilica of St Francis, Assisi, exterior of the church (Giottos frescoes are inside)

Dream of Pope Innocent III: Visual Analysis

Panel split in half. Left: saint holding up church. Right: pope asleep in chamber. The chamber is an echo of the earlier bed-bubble. No stylistic difference between dream and dreamer: same plane of reality. The church held up by St Francis is the actual church in which the fresco is situated.

Dream of Pope Innocent III: Visual Analysis continued

2 guards: one with eyes closed, the other with eyes open. They replace the earlier dream messenger. The guards dont see the dream: only the visionary dreamer does. The pope dreamed that Francis was holding up the church. This caused him to legitimise the Franciscan sect. This led to the building of the church in Assisi.

Two realities
Art historian Colum Hourihane: The challenge of representing the invisible as something other than the physical world lies at the very heart of mediaeval iconography.

Giotto (attrib.), Dream of Pope Innocent III, early 14th C., Louvre

Taddeo Gaddi, Dream of Innocent III, 14th C.

Benozzo Gozzoli, Dream of Innocent III, 15th C.

Modern dreams
Sigmund Freud, On the Interpretation of Dreams, 1900 Dreams continue to be seen as encoded messages in need of interpretation but they no longer come from God but from the dreamers own unconscious mind.

Sigmund Freud, On the Interpretation of Dreams, 1900

The privacy of dreaming

Dreams are now no longer familiar and shared (Bible etc) but individual. The individual dream is hermetic and impenetrable to shared conscious meanings.

Dreams and the unrepresentable

Dreams could become a vehicle for representing the unrepresentable, the traumatic, or the split human subject.

Max Beckmann, The Dream, 1921

Beckmanns Dream, 1921: Visual Analysis

Enclosed claustrophobic space 5 figures squeezed into the space. Objects include: trumpet, hand organ, placard, ladder, fish, Punch puppet, crate, cello, banjo, toppled chair Central woman displays inside of wrist (Christ-like). Man with bandaged + amputated hands Another man with stumps for legs

Beckmanns Dream, 1921: Visual Analysis continued

Beckmann served in World War 1 as a medical officer: traumatised by what he saw Some motifs recur in his paintings: inside of wrist, trumpet, moustachioed man (self-portrait?) A theatre of dreams; dream imagery used to express realities of post-war German politics + shell-shock trauma

Beckmann, The Night, 1918/19

Surrealism
Art historian Donald Kuspit: The surrealist dream is a dream of psychic disintegration. It articulates the failure to be whole.

Paul Klee
In Klees painting (see next slide), the dream looms over the sleeper. The sleeper is an echo of the mediaeval dreamer.

Paul Klee, Strong Dream 1929

The dream without the dreamer

Often in the 20th C., the dreamer is no longer shown, only the dream. This dream is often a nightmare. It threatens to overwhelm reality. But it is also a means of liberating artists imaginations and of creating new fantastic visual worlds.

Dal, The Dream , 1937

Andr Breton, Second Surrealist Manifesto, 1929 in: La Rvolution surraliste

A Artists photos: all shown with closed eyes. Are they dreamers?

Remedios Varo, Still-life Reviving, 1963

Frida Kahlo, The Dream (The Bed), 1940

Leonora Carrington, Sol NIger, 1979

Modern isolation
The 20th-C. dream becomes emblematic of the modern subjects isolation and inability to communicate shared meanings.
But then there are also whimsical images, like Karel Appels Dream Beasts:

Karel Appel, Dream Beast, 1947

Thank you for listening (or reading).

http://artincambridge.blogspot.co.uk

Dr Nina Lbbren

(Anglia Ruskin University)