A video relating to my gallery...

When watching this video, consider the ways that artists have portrayed their opinions and feelings through dreamlike or nightmarish visions

A Thousand Li Of Rivers and Mountains

Wang Xi Meng, a teenage artist during the Song dynasty of China, painted A Thousand Li Of Rivers and Mountains in 1113. This painting is regarded as one of the “Ten Greatest Paintings of Ancient China” and depicts an idealized vision of China.

In the painting, Wang presents China in a spectacular manner. The 37-foot long canvas depicts innumerous magnificent landscapes, remarkable architecture, exotic animals, and humans living in harmony and peace (Baidu Baike). His vivid and glorified portrayal of China conveys a sense of prosperity and powerfulness of the country. The background is heavily tinted with gold – a color signifying wealth and royalty – further glorifying the country. However, an ominous darkness looms over the top of the painting, perhaps symbolizing the approach of an evil threat.

Although Wang portrayed a majestic empire in his painting, A Thousand Li Of Rivers And Mountains ironically contrasts with the contemporary state of China. That period of the Song Dynasty was a time of decadence; the emperor Huizong indulged in the arts and devoted his time to romantic affairs, leaving the empire to suffer from disorder and foreign invasion (Baidu Baike).Wang’s work portrayed a glorious China before the reign of Huizong.

At first glance, the painting simply portrays the splendid landscape of China.

 However, when considering the historical context of the painting, it is in fact a lamentation for the past glory of China. The painting presented a view of China that could no longer be found in Wang’s life, suggesting that the scene was a dreamlike image created in his mind from memories and literary works. The remembrance of past glory laments the contemporary state of China and thus these memories are painful to the patriotic Wang, hence connecting the painting to the idea of “Dark Dreams: Painful Memories”. Thematically, this painting is similar, in a way, to The Abbey in Oakwood as the creator of both works express wistful reminiscence of past glory and mourn for the contemporary state of their country.  

Stormtroops Advancing Under Gas

“Stormtroops Advancing Under Gas” by the German artist Otto Dix in 1924 portrays Dix’s ghastly experience of trench warfare during World War I. In this painting, Dix depicts warfare in a strikingly unorthodox fashion. Rather than portraying war in its traditional glory and spiritual triumph, Dix focuses on the physical cruelty of war. The painting focuses entirely on the soldiers and their action, implying that their entire purpose of life was devoted to killing and staying alive. The gas masks render the soldiers hidden behind them inhuman, as if they were already dead. This displays the savagery of the battlefield – that although the soldiers were physically alive, they were simply dead men walking. The absence of color further emphasizes the hellish nature of war.

World War I heavily influenced Dix’s art. The devastating reality of trench warfare disillusioned the contemporary society from their glorification of war and belief in the continual progress of the human society. Indeed, the war led many to believe in a possible human apocalypse. This disillusionment directly contributed to the stylistic implications of war in Stormtroops Advancing Under gas. In the painting, Dix condemned war and portrayed it as a road to destruction.

This painting relates to the theme of “Dark Dreams: Painful Memories” because while it portrayed Dix’s experience as a machine gunner during the war, it actually represented the war from Dix’s memory, years after it ended. This scene may likely be from a nightmare; Dix himself described wars influence on him with the words, “for …at least ten years afterwards, I kept getting these [frightening] dreams…” (“War Art”). Indeed, for many soldiers, war does not end. Maurice Decaul, ex-marine who deployed in Iraq, describes the long lasting affects of war saying, "We carry these wars inside of us. They tag along in our lives as sea stories and memories, dreams and nightmares, living just below the surface, raging back at times, most times living in quiescence." Thus, one could interpret this painting as a reproduction of one of Dix’s nightmares or hallucinations filled with painful memories of his sufferings during World War I. Similar to The Scream, this painting also depicts a hallucination created by a mental disorder – while The Scream may be a portrayal of Munch’s phobia of open spaces, Stormtroops Advancing Under Gas may be an expression of Dix’s PTSD from the war.

March To The Scaffold

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March To The Scaffold is the fourth movement of the Symphonie Fantastique composed by the French Romantic composer Hector Berlioz in 1830. The symphony describes the love of a young musician for a charming woman who he relates to a musical idea known as the idée fixe – a musical melody that constantly repeats throughout the symphony. His memory of his love for the woman is so strong that he continuously thinks about her, just like the repeating melody in the song. In the fourth movement the young musician, when convinced that his love was spurned, poisons himself with opium and succumbs into a horrifying nightmare. He dreams that he is marched to the scaffold for the murder of his lover and witnesses his own execution.

(For the program notes of the Symponie Fantastique by Hector Berlioz, go to http://ada.evergreen.edu/~arunc/texts/music/berlioz/berlioz.pdf)

In this piece, Berlioz expertly merged the somberness, fierceness, and magnificence of the musician’s relentless march to the scaffold with the vile nature of his narcotics-induced nightmare. The movement starts with a slow and menacing progression of the lower winds and strings, symbolizing the malevolent drug taking control over the musician’s mind. A triumphant melody is often present during the march, depicting the gloriousness of the march, while heavy drums beat a steady, footstep-like rhyme in the background, representing the solemn and unstoppable progression of the march. The mood of the music regularly alters, shifting from triumphant to majestic to threatening. This regular shift of mood portrays the instable mental state of the drugged musician. Towards the climax, the music build up to thundering chaos as the musician arrives at the scaffold. A few bars of the idée fixe – representing the musician’s memory of his beloved – quietly reappears and is then abruptly interrupted by the blasting decapitation of the musician, followed by two dull thumps of his head falling to the ground. The dynamic music vividly portrays the story described on Berlioz’s program.

The music narrates the nightmare of a musician; hence it connects to the theme “Dark Dreams”. This nightmare is caused by the musician’s memories of a beautiful lady with whom he fell in love. However, since the musician’s love was in vain, the memories of his beloved troubled and pained him; hence it relates to the theme “Painful Memories”.

The Scream

The Scream, created in 1893 by Edvard Munch, eminent Norwegian expressionism artist, portrays a queer, human-like creature screaming in agony. The Scream is Munch’s most well-known work andcontains expressions of anguish, isolation, and fear. Similar to Caspar David Friedrich, Munch also believed that a piece of art should reflect the painter’s perspective on the subject (Arthur).

Munch creates the scene in the painting with a surreal style, forming the ocean and the sky with thick strokes of lurid colors. The ironic combination of vividness and simplicity of the background conveys a powerful yet crude feeling for the scene depicted. This feeling complements those of the screaming figure whose distorted figure seems to experience extreme yet primitive anguish. This irony and crudeness renders The Scream a powerful piece of work that would effect generations to come.

Edvard Munch had a tragic life and suffered from numerous misfortunes; he often used art as a medium to express his grief. Munch suffered from a phobia of open space and the fear expressed by the main figure is a depiction of Munch’s feeling when a severe discomfort suddenly overcame him while he was walking with two friends (Labedzki). He wrote in his diary in 1982, describing the scene using the words:

“I was walking along the road with two friends.

The sun was setting.

I felt a breath of melancholy -

Suddenly the sky turned blood-red.

I stopped, and leaned against the railing, deathly tired -
looking out across the flaming clouds that hung like blood and a sword
over the blue-black fjord and town. My friends walked on – I stood there, trembling with fear.

And I sensed a great, infinite scream pass through nature.”

The anguish that The Scream shows is also an outburst of the agony that Munch suffered from disease, deaths of his loved ones, and insanity (Labedzki).

The painting clearly connects to the overall theme of “Dark Dreams: Painful Memories.” Although an actual event inspired Munch’s creation of The Scream, it is evident that the painting does not describe a physical scene. In fact, the painting conveys a hallucination, or dreamlike experience produced by Munch’s strained mental state. The distortion of both the background and the character in the painting only further emphasize that the painting portrays an emotion inspired by his natural phobia and painful experiences.

The Abbey In Oakwood

The Abbey In Oakwood by Caspar David Friedrich, renowned German Romantic landscape painter, was painted in 1810 – the period during which Friedrich’s work was most admired and appreciated. This painting, depicting a funeral procession in the ruins of an abbey, particularly contributed to his rise to prominence (Johnson).

In this painting, Friedrich’s use of contrast and incongruity to establish an ominous landscape exemplifies his unique style of depicting nature from an emotional perspective. First, the stark contrast of light and dark in the painting inspires a sense of apprehension. The bottom half of the painting is in shadows while the top half is in cold light, creating the appearance of a darkness descending upon the land. To add to that, distorted silhouettes of the bare oak trees stand out menacingly from the baleful, colorless sky, almost like dark lightning from heaven. The peculiar incongruity between features of the painting further contributes to its ominous atmosphere. Friedrich portrays a funeral procession at dusk while funerals normally end in the afternoon; the image of a burial at dusk with a few lone figures arouses a sense of unease. The notion of a funeral at a ruined abbey is also absurd and the queer site of burial casts the painting under an unsettling light.

The Abbey In Oakwood displays key ideas of the Romantic Era – a time when society’s discontentment with its political and social condition led to a pursuit of perceiving the world in a dream-like fashion through the emotions of the inner self (Losevsky). The painting illustrates a landscape that is altered by the feelings of the artist. The start of the nineteenth century was a time of French influence in German states and Friedrich conveys his lamentation for the contemporary state of Germany by portraying the resurrection of its ruined architecture in a dismal manner(Johnson).

This artwork relates to the theme of “Dark Dreams: Painful Memories” because it portrays a scene from a dream – or a reminiscence – of the painter. The peculiarity of a funeral at an abbey suggests that the painting does not depict a real event and the blurred edges of the painting may be implying that it is indeed a dream or hallucination. The dream, with its baleful atmosphere, is evidently a dark dream of painful memories. First, many believe the abbey depicted to be a resurrection of the ruined Cistercian Abbey of Eldene (The Abbey in the Oak Wood).  Additionally, since Friedrich had suffered many times from the death of a loved one, the funeral procession may be one of a family memberor friend. It is as if Friedrich recorded one of his nightmares about the sorrowful state of Germany, its past glory, and the deaths of his loved ones.