Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

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.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

One hundred years ago, Freud shook the Western world with The Interpretation of Dreams, which argued that the manifest dreams we remember contain symbolic references to powerful feelings and desires in the unconscious. The book profoundly influenced the arts, especially the Surrealist movement. Compiled by Gamwell (Health and Happiness in 20th-Century Avant-Garde Art) to commemorate Dreams' centenary, this collection of essays helps to clarify the history of psychoanalysis--often misunderstood and still debated--and its social impact. Although it is an exhibition catalog for a show scheduled to travel to New York, Vienna, and Paris, it stands alone as solid cultural history and fascinating reading. Broad in scope, it contains examples from all the arts including dance, film, and installation. The book is packed with illustrations, many of which are small--but don't let that stop you from buying this book. Well produced, informative, and accessible, this book will appeal to readers involved with psychology, any of the arts, or Western history in general.--Susan M. Olcott, Columbus, OH (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

CHOICE Review

This large-format, richly illustrated book commemorates the 100th anniversary of the publication of Sigmund Freud's Interpretation of Dreams. The focus of the book is on art works that derive their inspiration from dreams and 20th-century dream theory, particularly psychoanalytic theory. The book begins with three introductory essays: the first, by Gamwell (SUNY, Binghamton), presents a historical overview of the relation of visual art to dream theory over the last 100 years; a second, by Ernest Hartmann, argues on the basis of research in cognitive science that the basic mechanism of dreaming is also the basic mechanism of art; and a third essay, by Donald Kuspit, contrasts the Freudian attempt to reduce art to defended fantasy with the Romantic idea that art is irreducibly visionary and mystical. About two-thirds of the book is an annotated picture gallery of dream-based paintings and film stills (some 150 color and black-and-white reproductions) and a listing of more than a 1,000 dream-oriented paintings, sculpture, photography, performance art, video art, dance, artist's books, and film--with thumbnail black-and-white reproductions. Although it is not immediately apparent from the title, the work is basically a collection of thematic art reproductions and listings with extensive explanatory text. General readers; undergraduate and graduate students; professionals. C. Koch; Oberlin College

Author notes provided by Syndetics

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.