Dream

The nineteenth century heralded a revolution in the understanding of the dream, with Sigmund Freud (1836–1939) and Carl Jung (1875–1961) engaging very different interpretations of what both agreed was a phenomenon highly significant for the understanding of the farthest reaches of the human subconscious. Freud argued that dreams revealed the most occluded aspects of the individual unconscious, particularly the realm of sublimated sexual desire, the universal constant of the human condition. Jung saw the dream as tapping into the universal consciousness of humankind, and containing symbols that permeate all human cultures, ultimately uniting humans in what he argued was a more elevated universal and common bond than Freud's lowest common denominator. Art since the nineteenth century has blended these two currents, with most manifestations depicting the dream experience from the perspective of the individual (one sees the dream but not the dreamer), displaying a pervasive sexuality (whether implicit or explicit), and drawing upon the rich symbolic treasury of the entire history of world art. Consciousness of the importance of the dream experience for and in art has resulted in the creation of dream realms that are awe-inspiring, fascinating, and quite often frightening. Salvador Dali (1904–1989) and René Magritte (1898–1967) both play with the idea of the elasticity of time and perspective in the dream, while Giorgio De Chirico's (1888–1978) dream-scapes have to do with the bending of space. Paul Delvaux's (1897–1994) dreamlike scenes are simultaneously sexual and menacing, whereas Marc Chagall's (1887–1985) work is playful, blending the quotidian and the bizarre in a lush, colorful, and romantic synthesis that is instantly recognizable as "dreamlike." Max Ernst's (1891–1976) overlapping and repeated images—recognizable, yet juxtaposed incongruously, Paul Klee's (1879–1940) often extremely playful and "light" images that yet conceal a highly intellectual subtext, Rousseau's lush forests and spare deserts of the imagination, and the elemental power of Constantin Brancusi's (1876–1957) visions of flight (a common element in dreams) are but a few manifestations of the dream in twentieth century art.

The dream is a particularly widespread theme in film and photography. From Edwin Porter's (1969–1941) early short films, notably An Artist's Dream (1900) and Dream of a Rarebit Fiend (1906), to the dream sequence in Alfred Hitchcock's (1899–1980) Vertigo (1958), Akira Kurosawa's (1910–1998) Dreams (1990), and the vivid dream landscapes of Ingmar Bergman's (b. 1918) Wild Strawberries (1957) and Federico Fellini's (1920–1993) 8 1/2 (1963), the very nature of film has proved fertile ground for the exposition of dreams through the varying lenses of each director. The deceptive realism of film provides an excellent foil for the recounting of dreams through the eyes of the dreamer.