Art of the Unconscious Mind

foreign on June 7th 1525 the artist Albrecht Jura awoke from a nightmare in his sleep he saw a disturbing vision of the end of the world being a painter Dura decided to capture it in a watercolor sketch below is a brief description of what he saw I had this Vision in my sleep and saw how many Great Waters fell from heaven the first struck the ground about four miles away from me enormous noise and splashing that it drowned the entire Countryside dura's vision of the Apocalypse is one of the earliest artistic representations of a dream his fears of a world-ending flood reminiscent that described in the Book of Genesis had entered his subconscious and resurfaced as a nightmare for Millennia dreams have inspired artists to delve into their own minds and bring forth bizarre images from their subconscious from depictions of surreal dream stains to Impossible and at times frightening monsters welcome to the enigmatic world of surreal art where the unconscious mind demands to be drawn every night while we sleep something strange happens our eyes may be closed but we are still able to see we are dreaming and despite this phase of our sleep lasting roughly two hours per night when we awake we often don't remember a thing we're not the only species that can dream it's been observed in other intelligent mammals but we are unique in our ability to record and depict these Visions through art for the Aboriginal people of Australia dreams play a central role in their beliefs and Customs using natural rust-colored pigments they illustrate encounters had with Spirits ancestors and animals these artworks are used to tell legends about our world these stories known as the dream time are captured in a distinctive artistic style characterized by dotted painting and use of earthy tones as the oldest continuous culture on Earth the average original Australians have passed down these tales and techniques for Millennia and quite possibly preserved the oldest unbroken artistic tradition in the world a tradition rooted in dreaming references to visions and their meanings appear in some of the earliest forms of human writing since ancient times dreams were believed to be a journey the soul goes on each night acting as a bridge for the spirit world and the physical one to the ancient Egyptians these nighttime voyages were a chance to see reality more clearly their word for dream reset means Awakening it's no surprise that dreams feature heavily in the Bible a book full of visions of the Divine and glimpses into the cosmic unknown one popular story is the dream of Jacob's Ladder from The Book of Genesis in which the biblical patriarch sees a ladder of angels moving to and from Heaven this scene is depicted in many works of of religious art but perhaps my favorite is the one by Giuseppe de Ribera at first glance it may appear simple plain even just a sleeping man right but if you look closer you can see wispy figures resembling Angels traveling up the light it captures the ephemeral nature of our dreams blink and you'll miss it but where there are dreams there are also nightmares creatures from the unconscious world are not always friendly you can find all sorts of nightmarish paintings from early Christian art many I've explored in more detail on the channel from the disturbing paintings of Hieronymus Bosch to the strange selection of demon doodles from 1565. these early forms of Fantastical art include creatures plucked from a dark imagination for a long time it was believed that bad dreams themselves were caused by monsters in German and Slavic folklore the mayor was a creature that sat on the body during sleep causing the victim to suffer frightening dreams or nightmares the feeling of having a heavy demon sitting on your chest is based on the experience of sleep paralysis those rare moments when your mind wakes up before your body they are often accompanied by unnerving visual hallucinations I guess you could say that the mare is the original sleep paralysis demon while medieval Europeans were having nightmares about the end of the world in the Far East there has long been a tradition of Dreams bringing good luck according to Japanese mythology if you dream of an eagle Mount Fuji and an eggplant on the first night of the year you will have good fortune this strange combination may not seem to have much in common but you can find them together throughout Japanese wood block images at the end of the 19th century French artist odilon redon became inspired by Japanese art and also painted the symbols he found in his dreams some of his Works were based on Greek mythology like the Cyclops in which the giant polyphemus peers over the brow of a hill other paintings are less figurative simply impressions of color and tone that create these vague shapes and ghostly apparitions for his paintings redone earned the nickname The Prince of Dreams here are a few more [Music] redon didn't like it when people attempted to analyze his paintings he preferred for viewers to Simply experience them and see what emotions they stirred [Music] what this artist didn't know is that he was about to inspire a movement one that believed that painting the unconscious could reveal hidden secrets of our psyche things were about to get surreal in the year 1900 the renowned psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud remarked that the interpretation of Dreams is the Royal Road to the unconscious he believed that dreams contain symbols that can unlock our deepest desires fears and hopes perhaps a box of jewels represents greed a skull a fear of death or a mask embarrassment he used these symbols to help understand the minds of his patients if the mind can reveal itself through dreams what if it could reveal itself through ART after all art has long been used as a way to express one's inner feelings consider one of the world's most famous paintings the Scream by Edvard monk the agonized face of the figure in the middle has been seen as the Vivid expression of anxiety at the upper left corner there is a small pencil inscription could only have been painted by a Madman whether or not this was written by the Norwegian artist is still uncertain in the 1920s a group of French artists were heavily inspired by Freud's theories on dreams and how they may reveal the unconscious mind to unlock their own psyche they got to work and let their imaginations run wild the results were paintings based on strange nonsensical subjects and imaginative Landscapes their paintings were Beyond reality or in French surrealism one of the most famous painters of this era was the Spanish artist Salvador Dali he and his fabulous mustache created some of the world's most iconic surrealist paintings like the Persistence of memory a landscape featuring melting clocks the closer you look The Stranger it gets like the ants swarming around a stopwatch and something that looks like a closed eye in the center and then there's the solitary egg in the distance what these images tell us about Dali subconscious are still debated Dali was a vivid dreamer and so many of his paintings captured what he saw whilst asleep like the descriptively named dream caused by the flight of a bee around a pomegranate a second before waking there's a lot going on here tigers with guns jumping out of a giant fish in the chaos and confusion you'll be forgiven for overlooking this elephant in the background an elephant with long spindly legs there are so many absurd painters and paintings in the surrealist movement from the metaphysical Landscapes of the chicharo to the comical portraits by Magritte highlights include the treachery of images a painting with the caption this is not a pipe ah I see what you did there to loosen up their minds the surrealists use the technique they called automatic drawing which involved moving the pen freely across the page this technique sounds suspiciously like scribbling to me something that's been around for a while I guess automatic drawing sounds more artistic for the surrealist artists the aim of these paintings was to capture a snapshot of the unconscious what exactly they captured is still unclear but perhaps that's the point what we're left with are these absurd and wonderful paintings plucked from the imagination foreign has been seen as the high point of imaginative art but as we have seen drawing the unconscious has had a long history the surrealist painters are a continuation of what came before in the Renaissance we see examples of experimental and abstract art such as a book from 1568 made up of geometric shapes these images may not have had specific meanings but served as studies in drawing perspective they remind me of the work of M.C Escher an artist famous for his spirally illogical stairways other artists took the concept of Illusions even further creating paintings with hidden faces can you see the face in this landscape what about this one the moment you see it you can't unsee it one artist particularly fond of Illusions like this was Giuseppe arkhambaldo all the way back in the 16th century this artist created portraits of a man made of fruit a woman made of vegetables or a librarian made up entirely of books are kimbaldo made many more of these mind-bending paintings a gallery of strange fruity faces from centuries past images like these stimulate our unconscious mind to work in another way to see things that are not really there the human brain has a natural bias to see faces in objects a phenomenon known as paredolia this is why some cars seem to have faces houses too even without thinking our busy minds are creating little pieces of art all the time and this brings us to the future of unconscious art so far we have seen art made by humans something with a Consciousness but what about something that does not have a Consciousness at all deep dream is an artificial intelligence program that generates unusual works of art by finding faces in images here's the Mona Lisa with an algorithm trained to find dogs the results are completely bizarre psychedelic even and it's another example of paradolia this time it isn't a human seeing faces it's a machine you can see how it works over a series of images you start with a picture of jellyfish run it through deep dream and you get this do it a second time and the whole thing goes into creative overdrive some of these programs are available to the public like Dali I've made some images of my own can you guess the prompt I used just like its namesake the surrealist artist Salvador Dali Dali is an attempt at creating unconscious art but in the case of the AI there is no consciousness at all with the arrival of artificial intelligence our definitions of creativity are starting to be challenged although AI is still in its infancy and still requires human input to make these artworks it is possible that one day they will be able to create images for themselves out of their imagination maybe one day an AI artist will have a bad dream and decide to paint what they saw just like a human artist did 500 years ago hey thanks for watching I really hope you enjoyed this one if you like this video and want to see more why not subscribe a like and a comment also go a really long way in case you don't know I've made an investigative series The Interruption available to listen wherever you get your podcasts oh and do check out the Channel's merch over at crowdmade we have beanies t-shirts and hoodies links are in the description down below anyway I look forward to seeing you next time goodbye

Channel: hochelaga

Views: 246,482

Keywords: surreal, art, origins, proto-surrealism, history, paintings, fantastical, illusion, explained, odilon redon, unconscious, subconscious

Id: CqMjvkhS29s

Length: 14min 2sec (842 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 12 2023