Painting the dream: from the biblical dream to surrealism

Abstract

Organized by period, from the Middle Ages to the present, this engaging book shows how the idea of the dream, and its depictions, have shifted throughout history, from the biblical dream --a communication from God-- to the deeply personal dream, the lighthearted fantasy, the nightmare. Sometimes these ideas have existed simultaneously: thus we have, only a few years apart, Raphael's limpid High Renaissance composition of Jacob dreaming his Ladder; Albrecht Dürer's watercolor of a mysterious deluge that he saw in his own slumbers; and Hieronymus Bosch's nightmarish hellscapes. More recently, movements such as Symbolism and Surrealism have taken the dream as a primary source of inspiration, even conflating dreaming and the creative process itself. This rich vein of visionary art runs from Gustave Moreau and Odilon Redon, through De Chirico and Dalí, down to the present--demonstrating, as Bergez reminds us, that Morpheus was a god of form as well as of dreams.

Contents

Biblical and medieval dreams -- Dreams from the Renaissance to the Rococo -- Romantic dreams -- Realism, or the dream disappointed -- Dreams and aesthetic invention in the late nineteenth century -- The twentieth century: surrealism and it's surroundings.