A-level 'Unseen' Proposal

10th April 2018

A-level essay proposal

Michelle Tjahjono

I have chosen to investigate dreams as my response to the ‘Unseen’ topic because I wanted to explore the three dimensional meaning of dreams and the extent to what the human’s mind can imagine. I am fascinated by Sigmund Freud’s Unconscious mind and his analogy of an iceberg to describe the features of the mind’s three levels- the conscious, preconscious and unconscious mind.

“The virtuous man contents himself with dreaming that which the wicked man does in actual life”- (Freud, Sigmund, The Interpretation of Dreams, 1899). Freud claimed that the unconscious mind acts as a cauldron for primitive wishes (dreaming) and urges that surpass what is acceptable in society (actual life). For example, Freud extracted unacceptable sexual desires, violent motives, irrational impulses, shameful experiences and selfish needs (the actions of the ‘wicked man’) through psychotherapy and pointed out that these were thoughts or feelings repressed or kept at bay through defence mechanisms. Freud was highly criticised for presenting ideas that could not be accurately measured in a systematic and scientific way but nevertheless his ideas contain an element of truth, which can be made known, through art.

Without necessarily trying to justify that these thoughts are acceptable to society and normal life, I believe expressing these thoughts will help people to understand that they are natural and a part of everyone’s identity. Furthermore, “dreams are the conscious expression of the unconscious mind” (SimplyPsychology.org) Thus, the unconscious illustrates the fantasy that a person cannot access in their normal waking life. I knew that the fantasy could be portrayed using mediums that could be blurred or blended easily such as oil bars and pencils. Personally, dreams are further than a reflection of the unconscious life, rather it was the ability for the person to create their own story. The person would become the character they yearned to be in the normal waking life, or a part of their personality that they wanted to stay hidden.

For example, dreams that allowed us to fly, skate on water, or shoot fire out of the palm of our hands gave us the power to feel and live differently to everyone else in the conscious life. Furthermore, dreams and reality share the same similarities in terms of the freedom of choice and actions that could potentially take place, which art envisions. I hope to find out the impact of dreams on the waking life and be able to project the detailed imagery that people can create in their minds on paper. Furthermore, I want to be able to investigate how artists present dreams and the unconscious through their inspiration, influences and works.

Surrealism and Salvador Dali’s Persistence of Memory

Surrealism is a cultural movement, originating in the early 1920s, which was introduced to society and the art community as a means to unlock the gates of the unconscious mind. The surrealists at the time were heavily influenced by psychoanalyses which is “employing a range of techniques designed to access the unconscious, such as hypnosis and dream-analysis” (Flanagan,Cara. Berry, Dave. Jarvis, Matt. Liddle, Rob. 2015).

This ‘fantasy’ that was imagined, was purposely repressed by the rational mind because of the taboos of normal waking life. Surreal thoughts contained the power to revolutionise the everyday world and spill the truth about controversial and unacceptable ideas as stated by Karl Marx (1932), who was an economic and philosophical socialist. These ideas may have been described as taboo, which surrealists believe everyone thinks, but is afraid, or uncomfortable admitting to peers, family or even themselves. For example, Maria Rubinke’s produces small porcelain figures that explore the illogicial composition of surrealism to transform what are traditional and sweet objects into expressions of desire and sadism.

Figure 1 (left), Bloody Mary, Maria Rubinke, 2011

It is said that surrealism shared many elements of the anti- rationalism of Dada, the movement out of which it grew. According to theartstory.org (2017) “the original Parisian Surrealists used art as a reprieve from violent political situations and to address the unease they felt about the world’s uncertainties”. Artists were free to expose their innermost thoughts to the world through their pieces. Furthermore, artists were also free to generate symbolic work using a variety of media, which uncovered a wide range of phenomena including anxieties, personality development, abnormal behaviour, moral compass and gender. The visuals of surrealism were known to treat and comfort these phenomena.

Artists such as Salvador Dali, Yves Tanguy, and Rene Magritte depicts a dream state through a semi- realistic style in which objects or people were painted in much detail giving the three dimension illusion of the real waking life. However, this illusion may have only emphasised the dream- like quality even more because the fantasy may be inspired by the repressed thoughts in real life. Dali was known to work in colour whether Tanguy conveyed the dream state through a monochromatic style. This is how they envision their dreams.

It may be argued that colour adds a three dimensional aspect to the piece because colours themselves have the ability to trigger emotions and memories (as most people see in colour in normal waking life). Furthermore, colour may help object recognition and show associations between different parts of one’s dream. For example, blue is known to calm stress and brings feelings of peace and connection. Likewise, red is associated with energy, danger, power and determination as well as love (color-wheel-pro.com, 1995-2006). Dali used gesture and colour to portray his feelings, emotions and memories as well as aid the realism of his objects (theartstory.org, 2017).

Whether focusing on a monochromatic style portrayed Tanguy’s emotions through varying levels of that feeling. For example, in figure 2 if he used levels of a brown, brick red through the background of his piece, this emphasised mild danger or passion that slowly fades away as the levels of red fade too.

Figure 2, Le Ruban des excés (The Ribbon of Excess), 1932

Moreover, other surrealists used automatism or automatic writing, which acted as a transcript for their voices of the unconscious mind. For example, Joan Miró and Max Ernst explored their bizarre imagery through collages, decalcomania, doodling, and grattage whether artists such as Hans Arp focused solely on collages. This suggests that surrealism as a movement has no bounds in terms of media and technique and allows individual artists to express their own thoughts in their own style. Additionally, surrealism is created to lean more towards meaning and message as opposed to focused on the type of media that needs to be used. This emphasises the freedom that surrealism poses- one that is not limited to choice of medium.

Figure 3, The Persistence of Memory (1931) by Salvador Dalí

“If Persistence of Memory depicts a dream state, the melting and distorted clocks symbolize the erratic passage of time that we experience while dreaming.” (theartstory.org, 2017)

Figure 2 caused many people to discuss their inability to track time when they are sleeping. This is compared to the busy and scheduled lives people may have in the waking life. Being productive is so practiced and tracked in society that it does not seem possible that time stops. For example, this is what happens when someone has awoken, expecting it to be the middle of the night but is instead surprised to find that it is already the morning- time is “melting” because they do not have any power in the unconscious.

The concept of time is doubted heavily in Figure 2, which is what Dali intended. The normal concept of time is like a budget, which should be spent wisely which he emphasised through the fact that most people are always rushing and filling their lives with tasks that must be done on time. These were “useless and irrelevant in the dream state” (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1768) This is seen in the painting through, not only the melting of the watches but also the solidarity of the watches- as if they were dumped and left hanging in a deserted and empty land.

On the other hand, many art scholars had interpreted a more technical detail in the painting- the pocket watches. In the 1920s and 30s, surrealists mocked the aspects of life that the middle- class took very seriously which included the upmost importance of things like pocket watches, as they mark the pressure of time (as stated in Wikipedia.org/surrealism, 2017) .One could say that the surrealists began to think on a higher level because their response to the middle class implies that the surrealists were free. This is because they were not confined by the rules and concepts of most other people such as time. But how would artists/illustrators convey this fantasy, which breaks free from these rules and concepts?

The Wonderland and Fantasy

Lewis Carrol’s, Alice in Wonderland is about a girl called Alice, “who wishes for a more exciting world” (according to enotes.com, No date) and takes a surreal and magical journey after she notices a rabbit in clothing run by. She follows it and subsequently falls through a rabbit hole to a place called Wonderland. She goes on an adventure and meets many kinds of creatures and many bizarre happenings. One of the main characters include the March Hare, the Mad Hatter, the Queen of Hearts and the white rabbit. At the start, she encounters locked doors that she opens with a key that she finds. Moreover, drinking shrinking potions and eating pieces of cake allowed her to experience phases of metamorphosis. This allows her to efficiently manoeuvre and fit through tight spaces or large obstacles as she searches for the garden. The shrinking and enlarging of Alice forced the reader to expand their minds and worldviews by exposing them to ideas and images that would not normally occur to the shape of humans. This was to purposely liberate the imagination.

Figure 4 (left), Alice discovers a bottle marked “Drink Me”,1865

When Alice reaches the garden, she meets a set of playing cards who occupy themselves by painting white roses red because they did not plant them. They claim that the Queen will behead them if she finds out. Alice hides the cards and thus saves them from the wrath of the Queen. Nearing the end of the story, Alice is seated at the courtroom where the Jack of Hears is on trial for stealing the Queen’s tarts. Furthermore, the story reaches a climax as Alice becomes bolder to be able to point out the utter absurdity of the trial, even though the queen orders her to be beheaded. Alice retaliates by saying that she is not afraid of playing cards and the cards begin to fly at her. The plot twists as she awakes from a dream.

Alice tells her sister about her dream, and her sister tells Alice she is growing up very quickly but she must keep her “heart of childhood” According to (Wikipedia, No date). Even though the Alice books may not be considered surrealist, they were “undeniably influential” (thedailybeast.com, 2015) to some surrealists and the movement. The strange creatures, odd scenes, unexpected and random entrances do share much in common with the surrealist art.

However, it is argued that there is no evidence that Lewis Carroll (the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland) had any of the philosophical ideas in mind where surrealism was used as a movement to purposely doubt the logical thoughts of a reader’s mind. According to his biographies, he was not the revolutionary type, rather he solely wanted to entertain and delight his friend’s daughters. This makes sense as Alice is a female who his friend’s daughter could identify with. It is clear that the story was personal. Surrealism experimented with organisation and embraced randomness, whether the Alice books are highly structured and based on a linear storyline.

One source of inspiration for John Tenniel was the anti academic, Nazarene movement of the nineteenth century. This style is often characterised as “shaded outlines’ where the lines on the side of the characters drawn are given extra thickness or drawn as double lines to portray this thickness in the shading or volume. Furthermore, this style pays attention to precision and detail, with the artist making a hard clear outline along the figures, creating a prominent shape, “as well as withholding expression and paleness of tone” (Wikipedia, No date).

Furthermore, this style pays attention to precision and detail, with the artist making a hard clear outline along the figures, creating prominent figures and compositions, as well as withholding expression and paleness of tone. This is why using primarily pencil, pen and ink on paper, was necessary to create this precision and detail. However, there is the element of abstraction in his illustrations because he withholds from using colour (colour enhances the realism of his pieces) yet the pay close attention to detail and lines. This increases the realism to the shape of human beings and the three dimensional aspect of tone and shape. After the 1850s, Tenniel’s style transitioned to incorporate more detail in backgrounds and his figures. Including more background detail, which corrected his previously weak Germanic composition of his illustrations and meant that he could depict specific moments of time, location and feeling. The Lewis Carrol story makes connections of literature and art through creating an illusion of realism through the detail of John Tenniel’s illustration figures. But this illusion only extends to their surface, as the story goes on, the characters behave in increasing bizarre and perform socially unacceptable acts, which makes the reader question their own sanity and social conventions. Surrealism tells a story and evokes imagination and concept, which may not only confuse and shock the reader, but there is no doubt it captivates viewers and plays with our own unconscious mind and thoughts.

The Unacceptable Nature of Dreams

The unconscious mind was known to be a “reservoir of repression” (According to age-of-the-sage.org, No date) where repressed memories, traumatic experiences and socially unacceptable ideas, wishes or desires were held. The unconscious mind affects the conscious mind in ways that might alter how an individual felt comfortable whilst behaving. People may be consciously reluctant to explicitly face the socially unacceptable impulses or traumatic events they had psychologically repressed. This emphasises the ugliness of one’s unconscious thoughts and how unforgiving that society may be if someone was to actually express these and make these thoughts publicly known. However, surrealism and other expressions of the mind have aided those who feel isolated. It has also helped those who are judged by society about their own thoughts, which are deemed socially unacceptable. Through this type of psychoanalyses, art movements have acted as mediators, and allowed what was hidden beneath the surface, reveal itself.

Freud has broken down the purpose of the dream into two insightful points where he considers the motive of the dream (an unconscious ‘wish’), and the motive for the distortion of dreams. (According to Freud.org, No date) When dreams are disguised or masked, the ‘wish’ or true motive is not apparent or manifest in the dream. The wish is repressed because it is being hidden or masked by the other aspects of the dream. For example, Freud claimed that dreams of the death of a loved on can be portrayed through an absurd dream of by sibling rivalry. Likewise, an unacceptable sexual desire may be portrayed through the imagery of ‘violets’. These show the existence of such wishes are normally repressed. Overall, the dream is played out by two conflicting forces- the unconscious wish/ desire and a force which opposes it. Freud calls the opposing force the censorship. The techniques that a dream (or one’s unconscious mind) are used to achieve censorship of one’s wishes.

Furthermore, Freud identified two distinct drives that both coincide and conflict within the individual. Eros is the name given to the drive of love, sexuality, life, self satisfaction and specifies preservation. Thanatos is the Greek word for “death” and is used to describe the drive of aggression, sadism, destruction and death. Freud points out that human beings, following Thanatos, have used life to invent tools able to complete exterminate themselves; in turn, Eros is expected to “make an effort to assert himself in the struggle with an equally immortal adversary. But who can foresee with what success and with what result?” -(Freud, Sigmund, The Interpretation of Dreams, 1899).

Figure 5 (above) “Young girl eating a bird (The pleasure)”, Rene Magritte (1927) provided by danturkel.com, (2009)

This piece expressed both morbid and erotic aspects that are classic elements of Surrealism. One interpretation of the image is a story of Adam and Eve where Eve is a young girl eating a live bird rather than being tempted and thereafter eating the forbidden apple. The piece explores the sexuality of the young girl (a topic of great interest to some Surrealist artists) and the corruption of innocence and the loss of virginity. It appeals to sadism and yet shows no indication of nude bodies. This emphasises the ugliness and disgust of one’s own thoughts that cannot possibly be socially accepted. A piece like this is responded to with shock and horror. Arrays of birds happily surround her on a strong brown tree, but the dull, pale background emphasise the dark and empty nature of predators.

Figure 6 “Venus Asleep”, Paul Delvaux (1944) provided by danturkel.com, (2009)

Venus is sleeping on the bed in the centre of the piece, and the rest of the painting depicts her dream. She dreams of death but death (the skeleton figure) approaches her as if to embrace her, like lovers embracing from each side. Delvaux wanted to paint the pain and anguish caused by the German bombings of Brussels, and this dream painting does so in showing the Thanatos instinct in one’s mind, accompanied inappropriately, but always by Eros. There are contrasts between life and death, nude women and bleak surroundings, which is a vision that Delvaux often uses in his paintings to create a sense of unexpressed disquiet and anxiety. These are emotions that are induced in the reader but are also reflected in the bombings. The idea of Eros and Thanatos together are one of the combinations that brings ugliness and uncomfortable thoughts to life. It is also what makes surrealism so distinctive.

Figure 7, “Autumn Cannibalism”, Salvador Dali (1936) provided by danturkel.com, (2009)

Figure 7, already seen in the name with ‘cannibalism’, depicts the gruesome horror of the Spanish Civil War. This is a more political piece. Spain has been chewed and spewed out into a horrible organic mess that devours itself. It is seen as the view from the collective unconscious of all of Spain, herself, as she witnesses her own self-destruction in war. Once again, this stresses the hideous and malevolent expressions of the unconscious mind. It may be argued that these expressions are therapeutic to the unconscious mind as a way to respond to the horrendous actions people are able to do in the conscious life.

I have found out that the unconscious wishes are constantly looking for a way out or for a way to express themselves through our conscious life. For those unacceptable wishes or ugly thoughts, they are a constant physical stimulus (tension) which threatens to disrupt our sleep. This is dealt with in a non- repressed environment, through the creation of a dream. The unconscious wish uses the unresolved issues or traumatic events of our waking life as a path to their expression in our dream lives. Surrealism has allowed elements if not, most of our unconscious ‘realities’ to come to make some sense through our conscious eyes. Dreams and reality do share the same similarities such as Figure 7 of ‘Autumn Cannibalism’, where the horrors of real life are reflected in the horror in our unconscious.

From experience, dreams refer to events in the recent past. Many of us have had a dream, which contains elements from things that happened to us the previous day. But as seen in Figure 3, time is irrelevant as memory persists through days, weeks, months or years. Therefore, I have found out that dreams have two sources of inspiration- the present happenings (the day’s residues of the last day like little upsets that we have not been able to deal with from that previous day), and happenings from the distant past like childhood wishes that have become, over time, repressed. This has supported my understanding of the topic of the ‘unseen’ and my direction of dreams and the unconscious mind. If wishes which construct dreams are repressed then they must be infantile wishes, and perhaps the surrealist artists express these as a way of therapy or to discover more about their own identity. But I have also explored the fantasy aspect of the unconscious through stories such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, may give a reader the chance to not only get in touch with their childhood, but experience confusion, excitement and delight. This ultimately makes people more accepting of such bizarre and strange concepts and they might also be more willing to share their own outlandish stories.

This will extend to my practical work as now, the experiences of my past life matter more than ever. Also, the vivid tragedy or shocking imagery of our unconscious dreams are a reflection, perhaps of the horrible and traumatic events of our past or present life. These dreams, I believe will only help me to understand how I can face fears or process the harsh reality of my conscious life. It may be difficult expressing feelings or experiences of my own out to the public and social world, but they will only have power if I give them power. It may be argued that expressing these thoughts on paper gives them power, but I think expressing the emotion through my artwork, makes me more able to accept and face humiliation or fears. For example, what is repressed and forbidden are wishes from childhood, which are grandiose fantasies of ambition (‘I am the greatest’), which I have learned naturally, were unacceptable in the social world, and more so, sexual fantasies which were not allowed. I want to begin to pick apart details from one dream so that there can, for example, be variations of the same dream and may evoke curiosity of a repeated or consistent dream. Likewise, I will become more selective about what I want in a piece or which objects will be placed in a more effective way to create an interesting and bizarre composition. Moreover, I want to become more confident in the imagery of my unconscious mind by adding realistic elements such as tone and three dimension details- aspects into my work- aspects that Dali and Tenniel relied heavily on to fool readers/ viewers into seeing a realistic object or character. The impact of dreams on normal waking life have allowed artists to discover and portray more about their identity and their thoughts about the conscious world (or the unconscious world).

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CHAPTER 2: Fantasy and Wonderland

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