Ch 1.5 Art History Dreams, Visions and Symbols

“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens.” Carl Jung

“Art makes visible the invisible.” paraphrased from Paul Klee

At 19, I grew up and awakened from my deep slumber,

burdened by mistakes, regret and interrupted dreams

that turned into nightmares.

To look inward is not to abandon the world; it is to encounter it in another form. What we see dissolves, and what we cannot see begins to take shape. The early 20th century began with the promise of scientific discoveries of evolution that morphed into racism, the theory of relativity that morphed into the atomic bomb, and germ theory that morphed into biological warfare.

In the art world, twin styles emerged with similar appearances but opposite world views. Between the cradle of WW1 and WW2, artists began to question the authenticity of life itself. Where did it all go wrong? In the early 20th century, Sigmund Freud saw the mind as driven by instincts, repression, and desire. Surrealist artists like Dalí and Ernst explored dreams, but often in terms of psychological mechanisms. At 18, I painted “Untitled,” inspired by Dali, not knowing what this style meant.

The successor to Freud was Carl Jung, who denied his mentor’s teaching. In 1913, he went into seclusion and wrote “The Red Book”, illustrating it with his own visionary paintings that resembled the works of Redon, Klee, and Chagall. Jung had a succession of dreams of a massive, bloody flood covering the Northern Sea and the Alps, which prophesied the start of WW1. From that time, Jung rejected Freud’s focus on interpreting dreams from a biological, sexual perspective, and interpreted the psyche as containing archetypes and collective symbolism...reality is not just physical—it includes myth, spirit, and inner meaning. Freud inspired Surrealism. Carl Jung paved a path for Redon, Klee, Chagall, and others to follow. They were considered Avant-garde artists of the early 20th century. Dreams turn into nightmares, or dreams that illuminate hidden meaning. I chose to learn from my dreams, not to hide from them.