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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, 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 [1] holds an annual juried show of visual dream art.

Notable works directly based on dreams

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

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 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^[1]
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

References

^ Lawler, Karen (October 5, 2012). "Flying Lotus – Until The Quiet Comes". State. County Kildare. Archived from the original on 2013-10-30. Retrieved 2012-10-05.