The DreamMax Beckmann
Oil on canvas
71 3/4" x 35 7/8"
1921
.On November 7, 1920, Beckmann wrote to J. B. Neumann, his art dealer and friend: "I think you'll be glad to know that The Dream has progressed nicely and begins to give me pleasure. With me that means a lot, since most of the time I'm in a state of deep anger. Which I'll probably be in again tomorrow. But today The Dream is so clear before my eyes as if I were asleep."
.
What a curious, yet highly artistic paradox: clear as if I were asleep. Many artists have pictured dreams as nebulous, fleeting fancies, but Beckmann's Dream is razor-sharp. It remains a clear picture of unclearness.
.
"Each of the five characters is enslaved by a different illusion; each is trapped within his own shell of inhibitions and incapacities. The three male inhabitants of the cage are cripples. The drunken maid at the bottom is wrapped in a sexual fantasy and uses a cello as a substitute lover. Her face is flushed with excitement; her mouth smiles in coarse delight, but her eyes remain tightly closed to reality or reason. A yellow trickle at the bottom left corner shows what shabby relief fate has allotted her. We have to think back to Titian's Danae and her golden stream of delight to appreciate the full measure of Beckmann's irony. But we really must look to Hieronymus Bosch in order to find similarly gross ideograms for the vengeance which reality inflicts on dreamers who disregard its laws.
.
http://www.artchive.com/artchive/B/beckmann/dream.jpg.html
