Dreams (Markus Eisen)

This evocative book traces the shifting ways artists have envisioned the dreamworld-from prophetic visions and sacred visitations to nightmares, fantasies, and surreal inventions.

Spanning millennia and a wide range of artistic forms, the volume brings together a diverse selection of works that show how dreams have stirred imagination, shaped belief, and opened pathways to other states of consciousness. Sculptures, painted panels, illuminated manuscripts, frescoes, temple reliefs, narrative cycles, drawings, prints, photographs, collages, and contemporary street art reveal how artists working in different contexts have turned to dream imagery to express wonder, fear, longing, and transformation.

Each work is presented in a two-page spread, with the artwork on one page and a brief interpretive essay on the facing page. These texts focus on symbolic meaning and cultural context, situating dreams within evolving systems of belief-from ancient omens and medieval revelations to Renaissance allegories, Romantic visions, and modern reflections on the unconscious-while remaining closely tied to the visual experience. Across these varied mediums, readers encounter images that frame dreams as divine messages, moral warnings, spiritual encounters, psychological disturbances, and sites of imaginative freedom. Devotional scenes and prophetic narratives give way to more inward, fragmented, and surreal explorations of the dreaming mind. Works by artists such as Giotto, Fra Angelico, Rembrandt, Fuseli, Goya, Hokusai, Magritte, Kahlo, and Banksy appear throughout, alongside many others whose contributions broaden the scope of the inquiry. Together, these materials offer a layered study of the dream as artistic subject and cultural mirror, revealing how artists across time have sought to give form to experiences that resist logic, language, and waking consciousness.

Markus Eisen is an art historian based in Munich.

Buch (Hardcover), Englisch, 128 Seiten