Dreams 1900 - 2000: Science, Art, and the Unconscious Mind

When Sigmund Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams in 1900, he began the modern study of a phenomenon that has fascinated human beings for thousands of years. At the same time he opened a new realm, the unconscious mind, to filmmakers and artists who were inspired by his theories. This beautifully designed and lavishly illustrated book—written to commemorate the centenary of Freud's classic work—examines the shifting roles that dreams have played in twentieth-century art and science.

Over the course of the twentieth century, as scientists have researched the psychology and physiology of dreams, artists from Odilon Redon and Joan Miró to Jenny Holzer, Ingmar Bergman, and Laurie Anderson have produced dramatic images centered in the unconscious. An exploration of this artistic output, this volume features a hundred color and fifty black-and-white illustrations depicting work by a broad range of artists in painting, photography, sculpture, video, film, performance, dance, and other media.

In her opening essay, Lynn Gamwell reviews the psychoanalytic understanding of dreams and explores the ways in which Freud's theories have been interpreted artistically. The next essay, by Ernest Hartmann, traces attempts to link somatic and psychological dimensions of dreaming and to discover parallels between these dimensions and creative thought. In the final essay, Donald Kuspit assesses the impact of the transition from the mystical outlook that human beings held in the nineteenth century to the twentieth-century scientific paradigm for the human mind.

A century of dreamwork is captured in this stunning volume, which concludes with a "dream archive"—an illustrated catalogue raisonné of approximately five hundred examples of twentieth-century art about dreams.

When Sigmund Freud published The Interpretation of Dreams in 1900, he began the modern study of a phenomenon that has fascinated human beings for thousands of years. At the same time he opened a new realm, the unconscious mind, to filmmakers and artists who were inspired by his theories. This beautifully designed and lavishly illustrated book—written to commemorate the centenary of Freud's classic work—examines the shifting roles that dreams have played in twentieth-century art and science.

Over the course of the twentieth century, as scientists have researched the psychology and physiology of dreams, artists from Odilon Redon and Joan Miró to Jenny Holzer, Ingmar Bergman, and Laurie Anderson have produced dramatic images centered in the unconscious. An exploration of this artistic output, this volume features a hundred color and fifty black-and-white illustrations depicting work by a broad range of artists in painting, photography, sculpture, video, film, performance, dance, and other media.

In her opening essay, Lynn Gamwell reviews the psychoanalytic understanding of dreams and explores the ways in which Freud's theories have been interpreted artistically. The next essay, by Ernest Hartmann, traces attempts to link somatic and psychological dimensions of dreaming and to discover parallels between these dimensions and creative thought. In the final essay, Donald Kuspit assesses the impact of the transition from the mystical outlook that human beings held in the nineteenth century to the twentieth-century scientific paradigm for the human mind. A century of dreamwork is captured in this stunning volume, which concludes with a "dream archive"—an illustrated catalogue raisonné of approximately five hundred examples of twentieth-century art about dreams.

Contributors: Lucy Daniels, Lucy Daniels Foundation, Raleigh, N.C.; Lynn Gamwell, State University of New York, Binghamton; Ernest Hartmann, M.D., Tufts University School of Medicine; Donald Kuspit, State University of New York, Stony Brook; August Ruhs, M.D., Universitëtsklinik für Tiefenpsychologie und Psychotherapie, Vienna

Lynn Gamwell is Director of the Art Museum at the State University of New York, Binghamton, and she curates the Gallery of Art and Science in cooperation with the New York Academy of Sciences. She is coauthor with Donald Kuspit of Health and Happiness in Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde Art and with Nancy Tomes of Madness in America: Cultural and Medical Perceptions of Mental Illness before 1914, both from Cornell.