{{Short description|Art based on dreams or meant to resemble dreams}} {{for|the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu academy and team|Dream Art Project}} {{unfocused|date=October 2017}} {{More citations needed|date=August 2010}} thumb|250px|right|Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes: ''The Dream'', 1883 '''Dream art''' is any form of art that is directly based on a material from one's dreams, or a material that resembles dreams, but not directly based on them.
==History== The first known reference to dream art was in the 12th century, when Charles Cooper Brown found a new way to look at art. However, dreams ''as'' art, without a "real" frame story, appear to be a later development—though there is no way to know whether many premodern works were dream-based.
In European literature, the Romantic movement emphasized the value of emotion and irrational inspiration. "Visions", whether from dreams or intoxication, served as raw material and were taken to represent the artist's highest creative potential.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Symbolism and Expressionism introduced dream imagery into visual art. Expressionism was also a literary movement, and included the later work of the playwright August Strindberg, who coined the term "dream play" for a style of narrative that did not distinguish between fantasy and reality.
At the same time, discussion of dreams reached a new level of public awareness in the Western world due to the work of Sigmund Freud, who introduced the notion of the subconscious mind as a field of scientific inquiry. Freud greatly influenced the 20th-century Surrealists, who combined the visionary impulses of Romantics and Expressionists with a focus on the unconscious as a creative tool, and an assumption that apparently irrational content could contain significant meaning, perhaps more so than rational content.
The invention of film and animation brought new possibilities for vivid depiction of nonrealistic events, but films consisting ''entirely'' of dream imagery have remained an avant-garde rarity. Comic books and comic strips have explored dreams somewhat more often, starting with Winsor McCay's popular newspaper strips; the trend toward confessional works in alternative comics of the 1980s saw a proliferation of artists drawing their own dreams.
In the collection, [https://www.amazon.com/dp/0982869509 The Committee of Sleep], Harvard psychologist Deirdre Barrett identifies modern dream-inspired art such as paintings including Jasper Johns's ''Flag'', much of the work of Jim Dine and Salvador Dalí, novels ranging from ''Sophie's Choice'' to works by Anne Rice and Stephen King and films including Robert Altman's ''Three Women'', John Sayles ''Brother from Another Planet'' and Ingmar Bergman's ''Wild Strawberries''. That book also describes how the song "Yesterday" by Paul McCartney was heard by him in a dream and most of Billy Joel's and Ladysmith Black Mambazo's music has originated in dreams.
Dream material continues to be used by a wide range of contemporary artists for various purposes. This practice is considered by some to be of psychological value for the artist—independent of the artistic value of the results—as part of the discipline of "dream work".
The international Association for the Study of Dreams[https://www.asdreams.org] holds an annual juried show of visual dream art.
==Notable works directly based on dreams== {{seemain|Works based on dreams}} {{Unreferenced section|date=March 2009}}
===Visual art=== * Many works by William Blake (1757–1827) * Many works by Salvador Dalí (1904–1989) * Many works by Man Ray * Many works by Max Magnus Norman * Many works by Odilon Redon (1840–1916) * Many works by Jonathan Borofsky (born 1942) * Many works by Jim Shaw (born 1952)
===Literature=== * ''Kubla Khan'' (1816) by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (possibly based on a dream provoked by opium) * ''Frankenstein'' (1818) by Mary Shelley * ''The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'' (1886) by Robert Louis Stevenson * ''Dracula'', which Bram Stoker claimed was inspired by a nightmare he had experienced * ''Ten Nights' Dreams'' (1908) by Natsume Soseki * ''The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath'' (1927) and other works by H.P. Lovecraft * ''The Kin of Ata Are Waiting for You'' (1971) by Dorothy Bryant * Most of Clive Barker's work * ''The Art of Dreaming'' (1993) by Carlos Castaneda * ''Twilight'' (2005) by Stephenie Meyer * ''The Facts of Winter'' (2005) by Paul LaFarge
===Film=== {{main|Oneiric (film theory)|Surrealist cinema}} * Several films of Andrei Tarkovsky, most notably ''The Mirror'' * The major films of Sergei Parajanov, most notably ''Sayat Nova'' and ''Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors'' * Much of the filmography of David Lynch (e.g. ''Eraserhead'', ''Blue Velvet'', ''Mulholland Drive'', etc.) * ''The Brother from Another Planet'' by John Sayles * ''Dreams'' (1990) by Akira Kurosawa * Many works of Federico Fellini (1920–1993) * The works of Luis Buñuel * ''Meshes of the Afternoon'' (1943), ''At Land'' (1944), and ''Ritual in Transfigured Time'' (1946) by Maya Deren. * ''3 Women'' (1977) by Robert Altman * ''Eyes Wide Shut'' (1999) by Stanley Kubrick * ''Waking Life'' (2001) by Richard Linklater * ''Destino'' (2003), an animated short film by Dominique Monféry * ''Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind'' (2004) and ''Science of Sleep'' (2006) by Michel Gondry * ''Paprika'' (2006) by Satoshi Kon * ''Dream'' (2008) by Kim Ki-duk * ''Lucid Dream'' (2017) by Kim Joon-sung * ''Napping Princess'' by Kenji Kamiyama (2017) * ''118'' (2019) by K. V. Guhan * ''Malignant'' (2021) by James Wan * ''Last Night in Soho'' (2021) by Edgar Wright * ''Slumberland'' (2022) by Francis Lawrence
===Comics=== * Many short works of Julie Doucet * Many short works of David B. * ''Jim'' by Jim Woodring * ''Psychonaut'' by Aleksandar Zograf * ''Rare Bit Fiends'' by Rick Veitch * ''Slow Wave'' by Jesse Reklaw
===Music=== * ''Devil's Trill Sonata'' by Giuseppe Tartini * ''Réverie'' by Claude Debussy * ''La Villa Strangiato'' by Rush (the song was inspired by nightmares guitarist Alex Lifeson would have, though the band came up with the music themselves) * ''Selected Ambient Works Volume II'' by Aphex Twin * ''Yesterday'' by The Beatles (written by Paul McCartney) * ''El Cielo'' by Dredg * ''Inside a Dream'' by Jane Wiedlin * ''Isn't Anything and Loveless'' by My Bloody Valentine * ''And the Glass-Handed Kites'' and other works of Mew * ''If I Needed You'' by Townes Van Zandt * ''The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking'' by Roger Waters * ''Lucid Dreams'' by Celia Green * ''Micro Cuts'' by Muse * ''My Fruit Psychobells...A Seed Combustible, Bath, Leaving Your Body Map, and Part the Second'' by maudlin of the Well *''Dimethyltryptamine'' by Jay Electronica * ''Until the Quiet Comes'' by Flying Lotus<ref>{{cite journal|last=Lawler |first=Karen |date=October 5, 2012 |url=http://www.state.ie/album-reviews/flying-lotus-until-the-quiet-comes |title=Flying Lotus – Until The Quiet Comes |journal=State |location=County Kildare |accessdate=2012-10-05 |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20131030014855/http://www.state.ie/album-reviews/flying-lotus-until-the-quiet-comes |archivedate=2013-10-30 |url-status=live }}</ref> * ''Dreaming'' by Blondie
===Video Games=== * ''Yume Nikki'' by Kikiyama * ''Omori'' by Omocat * ''LSD: Dream Emulator'' by Asmik Ace Entertainment * ''Dreams'' by Media Molecule * ''Deltarune'' by Toby Fox
==Works intended to resemble dreams, but not directly based on them==
===Novels=== * ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' by Lewis Carroll (1865) * ''The Nightmare has Triplets'' trilogy by James Branch Cabell ** ''Smirt: An Urbane Nightmare'' (1934) ** ''Smith: A Sylvan Interlude'' (1934) ** ''Smire: An Acceptance in the Third Person'' (1937) * ''The Coma'' by Alex Garland * "Darkness at Noon" by Arther Koestler * Most of the works of Franz Kafka * ''Finnegans Wake'' by James Joyce * ''Wake Trilogy'' by Lisa McMann ** ''WAKE'' (2008) ** ''FADE'' (2009) ** ''GONE'' (2010)
===Drama=== * ''A Dream Play'' (1901) and other plays by August Strindberg during his Symbolist and Expressionist periods * ''Copacabana'' by Barry Manilow (born 1947)
===Film=== * ''Un chien andalou'' (1927) by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí (actually started when Buñuel and Dalí discussed their dreams, then decided to start with two of them and make a film) * Many films by Maya Deren (1917–1961) * Many films by David Lynch, especially ''Eraserhead'' and ''Mulholland Drive'', contain dreamlike elements. * Dream scenes are popular in many horror movies, notably the ''Nightmare on Elm Street'' series * ''The Trial'' by Orson Welles (based on the novel by Franz Kafka) * ''Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind'' features around witnessing the effects of having one's memory erased through dreaming. * ''The Science of Sleep'' (2006) by Michel Gondry * ''The Cell'' (2000) by Tarsem Singh contains vivid and surreal imagery to convey the mind-world of a serial killer. * ''The Good Night'' (2007) by Jake Paltrow * The animated science fiction film ''Paprika'' (2006) by Satoshi Kon features intense dream imagery. * ''Inception'' (2010) by Christopher Nolan contains extravagant sequences inside the dreams of people through "dream sharing". There are many sequences in 'reality' that also feature very dream-like imagery, questioning the main protagonist's state of consciousness.
===Comics=== * ''Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend'' (1904–1921) and ''Little Nemo'' (1905–1913) by Winsor McCay (also his animated films) * The Sandman (DC Comics/Vertigo) by Neil Gaiman * Many works of Milo Manara * ''Dream Company'', a webcomic by Moon Ji-Hyeon
==See also== * Dream world (plot device) *Video games about dreams * Magic realism * Fantastic art * Dream pop * Shoegaze * Psychedelic art * Dream diary * Dream interpretation * DreamsID (Dreams Interpreted and Drawn)
==References== {{reflist}}
==Further reading== * Blagrove, Mark and Lockheart, Julia. ''The Science and Art of Dreaming''. Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, 2023. * Reisman, David. ''Foreign Objects: Dream Drawings''. New York: Hornbill Press, 2004.
==External links== * [http://www.ondreaming.org Dreams: Artwork of the Collective Unconscious] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140826153617/http://www.ondreaming.org/ |date=2014-08-26 }} (1998) by Gail Bixler-Thomas * ''[https://www.doctorhugo.org/dreamz/ Fuzzy Dreamz]'' (1996) by Dr. Hugo Heyrman —an online art project of short films, forming a psychogeography of dreams.
{{Dreaming}}
Category:Visual arts genres Art Category:Magical realism