Corona Dream- Ode to Andre
Imagine that you are sitting in a room with your friends, and the tv starts streaming your dreams – you have dreamt that there are buses and subways drifting by, and the windows have your Hanky Panky underwear stuck to them. The trains and buses are surrounded by strange looking circular fish like creatures. You panic – thinking this is so weird, what does this dream mean, and why is everybody looking at me?
Welcome to my Corona Virus nightmare…
I told my daughters about this dream – Alyssa responded that it seems to be a stress dream about a past event – remember the time you came to my yoga class mom? You opened up your towel and clinging to the towel were three pairs of Hanky Panky underwear... Yes, it could be stress.
My daughter Heather sent me an article written by Rebecca Renner of National Geographic. Seems that many people have been experiencing, and recalling, strange dreams during this pandemic. One study measured a 35% increase in dream recall during the pandemic. According to the article, during our sleep, stress triggers our brain to produce dreams, and chemicals much like those found in psychedelic drugs are released through these dreams. Our brains normally reach to our memories (literally, the Hanky Panky twist); but during this recent timeframe we have limited activity, have heard a lot about the Corona Virus, hence, many of us have been experiencing dreams of Corona, that feel threatening (1).
I recently caught an interview of a Harvard Professor on tv– Dierdre Barrett. She explained that there are reasons we are having common traumatic dreams – and she referenced a book that she wrote on dreams: The Committee of Sleep: How Artists, Scientists, and Athletes Use Dreams for Creative Problem Solving – and How You Can Too (1). The title is derived from a Steinbeck quote: “It is a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.”
Barrett provides many examples of how artists/scientists/and other creative people utilize their dreams: The song yesterday – where McCartney woke up with the tune, and couldn’t believe he had dreamed it, had to check with several people, but finally “staked his claim”. In his words, he stuck a little sign on it and said “Okay it’s mine!”. Then there’s Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly, who was sitting around one night with her fiancé Percy Shelly, Lord Byron, Mary’s sister Claire (Byron’s mistress) and physician John Polidori. They were at Byron’s Swiss villa, and there was a thunderstorm. They shared ghost stories. At bedtime Byron challenged them to write their own horror stories – several were published. But Mary’s dream that night showed her, in her words, “the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital notion.” The dream became the horror story we are all familiar with – Frankenstein.
These were all great examples, but I was looking for dreams responding to a particular crisis – and then I came across the Surrealists in Ms. Barret’s book. After World War I, there was a flux of young, disillusioned Europeans – many of them artists, who refused to use their talents supporting the war or politicians of the time. Instead, they revolutionized, calling for big changes in the art world – all art, painting, literature and drama. Surrealism evolved, liberating art from previous restraints. Dreams were used more as a tool to channel that emotional angst into their art. Some that were in that inner circle, led by Andre Breton, were Max Ernst, Salvador Dali and Man Ray, all who would become known for their works during that time frame. According to Barret, Andre Breton referred to the revolution as “the resolution of the two states, dreaming and reality, which are so seemingly contradictory into a kind of absolute reality – a surreality”. In his Manifesto of Surrealism, published in 1924, he described surrealism as “Dictated by thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.”
Let’s explore a little surreality, shall we?
I want to present a few of the pieces that Dierdre Barret references as Surrealists –
First, Salvador Dali’s “The Dream”.
(3) The Dream, Salvadore Dali, 1931, https://www.dalipaintings.com/the-dream.jsp
The central figure in the piece appears to be sleeping – some reference the bulging eyelids suggest confusion, like one feels in a dream. The figure to the left with the amputated foot and bleeding face is supposed to be Oedipus – you know, the guy who killed his father and married his mother. The column coming out of his back references the Freudian superego, who punishes and suppresses his sexual desires. Dali was a student of Freud – so you will see references to Freudian thought in his paintings, and likely his dreams.
Dali described an interesting technique to capture his dreams, which involved sitting in a comfortable armchair, preferably Spanish (he was Spanish). You hold a heavy key in your left hand, and place a plate on the floor beneath your hand. You then let yourself go towards a “serene afternoon sleep, like the spiritual drop of anisette of your soul rising in the cube of sugar of your body”. The key drops, makes a noise as it lands on the plate – waking you from the onset of dreams – and that unleashes what psychologists call “hypnagogic imagery” (2,3,4).
Now let’s look at another of the same title – The Dream, by Frida Kahlo.
(5)The Dream (The Bed), 1940, Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo was born in Mexico in 1907 and died in 1954. She was known for her self portraits, paintings of Mexican culture, and her folk art style. She married Diego Rivera twice – Diego Rivera painted many surreal paintings but was also known for his murals in Mexico and cities like Detroit, where he created the Detroit Industry Murals. Kahlo caught the interest of Andre Breton, who invited her to a show in New York and later in Paris, where she actually became the first Mexican artist to have sold a painting to the Louvre. Her pictures often are self portraits, and often depict roots. These roots are said to have both positive and negative messages, positive of self growth, negative of feeling trapped. She actually did have a paper mache skeleton that slept above her. Frida’s art was not so successful in her time, but went through a revival in the 1970s, and she has been celebrated ever since. Frida’s everywhere, admired as a strong figure by many, in particular women, who see her as a symbol of strength and individualism. She did overcome many hardships – a bus accident in her teens which left her with a suffering body, a cheating husband (the love of her life, Diego Rivera), and Mexican “machismo”, which she rebelled against as is evident in many of her paintings (6).
Here is Max Ernst’s “2 Enfants sont menaces par un rassignol” or “Two Children Threatened by a Nightingale” (7).
(7)Max Ernst’s 2 Enfants sont menaces par un rassignol
Max Ernst created this picture after a dream while he had a fever caused by the measles. While staring at a piece of mahogany next to his bed he imagined a nightingale, an eye, a nose, a bird’s head, a spinning top, etc. Max often used this technique of staring at objects until things formed – he was both frightened and exhilarated by hallucinations that arose from his anxieties. He did much of his work through an alter ego he created – Loplop, described by Ernst as a “most superior bird”. As such Loplop was considered to be a representation of Ernst’s psychological and confusing angst (7).
Finally one more picture – this is titled “Corona Sleep – Ode to Andre”.
This is a collage I put together by meshing a few images that depicted at least parts of my dream. I was inspired through that dream and events that followed to expand upon it. You can see the Corona virus in the sky, which from my dream, were the circular fish. The Corona red trickles through New York City into the subway system which links to the rest of the city. Two pictures were used from the New York City subway – one realistic (8), except for the Hanky Panky’s below the windows (again, the dream), and the other abstract, made from a Fresco (9) at a New York City Subway station, enlarged to give an effect of dwellings off to the right, and chaos along the subway tracks, chaos that seems to knock the subway off course. People can be seen sheltering in place. The most prominent artwork is a banner of Frida Kahlo (7) on a building in the skyline – depicting strength, and insurmountable roots, reminding us we will get through this too.
If you look real closely at the picture I created, Corona - Ode to Andre, you may be able to see some of the referenced surreal artwork (3,5,7), which we may see a resurgence of during these uncertain times. Dreams are the links to our subconscious being, they help reveal the silver lining, which has always been there. Rooted. Like Frida.
Diane Lundin
References:
The pandemic is giving people vivid, unusual dreams. Here’s why. Written by Rebecca Renner for National Geographic, April 15, 2020.
The Committee of Sleep: How Artists, Scientists, and Athletes Use Dreams for Creative Problem Solving – and How You Can Too, 2/27/2001, Crown, 224 pages.
The Dream, Salvadore Dali, 1931. https://www.dalipaintings.com/the-dream.jsp
The Dream, Salvadore Dali, 1931. http://salvadordaliprints.org/the-dream/
The Dream (The Bed), 1940 - by Frida Kahlo. https://www.fridakahlo.org/the-dream-the-bed.jsp
Frida Kahlo, Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frida_Kahlo
Two Children Threatened by a Nightingale, 1924, Max Ernst. https://www.max-ernst.com/two-children-are-threatened-by-a-nightingale.jsp
Credit: Metropolitan Transportation Authority / Patrick Cashin.
New York Subway Station, mural by Edith Cramer. https://www.nycsubway.org/wiki/Artwork:_New_York_Subway_Station_(Edith_Kramer)
Self-Portrait Dedicated to Dr. Eloesser by Frida Kahlo, 1940. http://zc.com.sa/wp2/evolution-self-portrait/