Painting the Dream: A History of Dreams in Art, from the Renaissance to Surrealism

by Daniel Bergez

Overview

The first-ever history of the representation of dreams in Western painting, illustrated with works by more than 130 artists 

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780789213136
Publisher:	Abbeville Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/16/2018
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	8.90(w) x 11.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Daniel Bergez is a scholar, curator, and critic whose work focuses on the relationship between painting and literature. His books in French include Literature and Painting; To Paint, To Write: The Dialogue of the Arts; The Salon and Its Artists; and Gao Xingjian: Painter of the Soul, which won the Prix Bernier of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. Bergez is also a painter whose work is regularly exhibited in France, the U.S., China, and Japan.

Editorial Reviews

08/20/2018
“The theme of the dream, perhaps more than any other, has resulted in a very wide range of artistic variations,” writes Bergez, a French scholar and curator, at the start of this beautifully illustrated volume. In 200 chronological images, he discusses how portrayals of dreams have changed throughout time: French Baroque master Georges de La Tour drew inspiration for his oneiric paintings from biblical stories, whereas the 19th century English-born American Thomas Cole derived his landscapes from imagination and fantasy. Additionally, Bergez includes several artworks inspired by classic literature, such as Eugène Delacroix’s depiction of a scene from Hamlet, and astutely notes the dreamlike qualities in these renditions: “The sketchlike quality of the painting... with human figures vaguely situated in space... takes on the blurry outlines of a dream.” Bergez explains how works by the Surrealists, such as René Magritte and Salvador Dalí, were often connected to psychoanalysis “that almost explicitly referred to Freud.” Weaving open-ended questions throughout the text (“Who is the dreamer here—the sleeping woman, or the painter who images this theme?”), Bergez allows readers to draw their own conclusions. This is a revealing, contemplative historical survey of imagination depicted in Western art. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"The commentary, like the images that accompany it, is informative and fascinating. The selection of illustrations is masterful."

Le Figaro

"The author's exploration of these dreamlike territories, more iconographic than theoretical, is full of literary knowledge that clarifies and enriches the subject."

Connaissance des Arts

"Featured in Literary Hub's Fall Nonfiction Preview
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From the Publisher

"…Bergez's survey is almost like a museum exhibition between the covers of a book. It is full of rich analysis of individual works animated by sleep, reverie, nightmares, and the unconscious. … The book features many of art history’s usual stars (Dürer, Picasso) but also introduces less well-known figures, like Tamara de Lempicka, whose angular and sharply cropped painting of a sleeping woman offers an entrée into synthetic Cubism. In other words, Bergez delivers not only a survey of the dream in painting, from the Middle Ages to the early twentieth century, but also an alternate history of European art."

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