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There's been lots of stuff in the papers about people dreaming more than they usual during the Great Lockdown. I certainly have. Over the centuries, art has seen plenty of attempts to capture the sensation of dreaming. Here are my Top Ten dream pictures. In ascending order...
10/ The Arrival, by Giorgio de Chirico (1913). De Chirco is the go-to guy when it comes to painted dreams. The Surrealists loved his empty piazzas and puffing trains. What he really pinned down brilliantly is that sense of frightening isolation - no one there, except you.
9/ The Frogs Asking for a King, by Gustave Moreau (1879). Moreau's tremulous Symbolist fantasies are usually full of expiring princesses and flying dragons. But he also illustrated the fables of La Fontaine, and did it well. The frogs want a king. So the gods send them...a heron!
8/ Altarpiece, by Hilma af Klint (1915). To create her nutty abstractions, Hilma af Klint organised seances with a group of women who called themselves The Five. While in a trance, af Klint allowed a supreme being known as the High Master to guide her hand as she drew...
7/ The Persistence of Memory, by Salvador Dali (1931). You can't leave out Dali when it comes to dream pictures. Melting clocks, desert landscapes, crawling ants, barren trees - every good Dali painting seems determined to set a new record for cramming in the most dream cliches.
6/Penitent Magdalene, by Artemisia Gentileschi (1625). The story goes that for the last 30 years of her life Mary Magdalene lived alone in a cave in Provence with no food or water. She survived on the celestial music sent down to her at night by God. Hope she's got her earphones!
5/ The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife, by Hokusai ( 1814). The great Japanese print maker, Hokusai, had a sideline in Shunga - Japanese eroticism. The text tells the story of a woman diver who dreams of being pleasured by an octopus. The noises we hear are: zubu, zubu; fu fu.
4/ Self-portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, by Frida Khalo (1940). Frida Kahlo's self-portraits probably fall into the category of daydreams rather than dreams. It's as if her imagination is strolling through the past, remembering fantastical encounters with nature.
3/ The Knight's Dream, by Antonio de Pereda ( c.1650). This scary picture hangs in the chapel of the Academy of San Fernando in Madrid. While the knight sleeps, an angel fills his table with symbols of life's brevity. Skulls, flowers, money, music - here today, gone tomorrow.
2/ Eine Kleine Nachtsmusic, by Dorothea Tanning (1943). 'It's about confrontation', Tanning said of this tiny picture that packs a big wallop. The little girls are her. The sense of endless wandering comes from a dream. The spooky sunflower on the stairs is a masculine presence.
1/ The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters , by Goya (1799). The opening plate of Goya's Caprichos is a self-portrait. Goya has fallen asleep at his desk, and while he slumbers, the contents of his imagination have escaped from his head, and out into the world.. So step carefully..
