This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Feb. 8, 2011 - Missing an important exam, standing in the grocery store naked and flying high above the earth: Most of us have done all those things at one time or another -- in our dreams.
"Dreamscapes," an exhibit opening at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, 3716 Washington Blvd., Friday Jan. 11, explores the forms taken on by exhilaration, terror, sadness, embarrassment and improbability during our nocturnal hours.
A translucent red staircase leads to nowhere, and yet to anywhere you want to go. A woman urinating amber beads greets you on the stair landing. A boulder gazes out to sea. The works illustrating the stuff that dreams are made of were selected by senior curator Francesca Herndon-Consagra, who hardly limited the exhibition to sweet dreams. Nightmarish images and other sensory renditions play a significant role.
The Tadao Ando-designed Pulitzer building is a key component of the dream world on display, Herndon-Consagra told the Beacon in a recent interview about "Dreamscapes."
How did you conceive of "Dreamscapes" as a theme that would work well with the Pulitzer's renowned architecture?
Herndon-Consagra: I looked at the Pulitzer's Watercourt with Scott Burton's "Rock Settee"; it's a dreamscape in a city. Then I looked at the glass wall that separates the inside from outside -- it's two stories worth of glass; it's a major glass presence.
When you think like artist Rene Magritte does, you understand this idea of the inside and the outside being very ambiguous at different levels of consciousness -- when you're asleep and when you're awake.
I took the idea of wanting to create a psychological response to this building and the dreamscape and I kind of fused them together. The Pulitzer is a structured building but there is feeling in it. I like the feeling that the art touches within us these levels of consciousness just as the building does.
What is it about dreaming that lends itself to artistic expression?
Herndon-Consagra: Both dreaming and art are very visual. The primary way we recall dreams is visually. When you're in a dream, you respond immediately to things, to moods and feelings. When you look at painting, and you don't know much about it, you're open to it and being led into a world, just like when you go to the movies: You suspend your belief for a minute. Heavy rocks can be floating by you in a movie and you kind of believe it. When the viewers become participants, it opens their minds ...
What art historians and art critics do is not dissimilar to what dream interpreters do. They look at symbols within the arts just as dream interpreters look at symbols in your dreams. It's about getting to an emotional truth. When you are experiencing a really good movie, you're feeling something true within you. The same thing can happen with a really good painting, or a really good building; something deep within us gets awakened and your heart thaws a little.
Can everyone relate to "Dreamscapes" no matter what kind of dream life they have?
Herndon-Consagra: We don't have labels on our work. We want people to experience this in their own way. Dreaming is integral to who we are as humans. People recall dreams very differently; some recall in color, some in black and white. Some people dream in color and recall it in black and white. Some people recall dreams meticulously. Some people remember the feelings. Some people don't dream at all.
How does the exhibit reflect your own dreams?
Herndon-Consagra: The only place my own type of dreaming interjects into the exhibit is at the very, very end. My dream recall is in black and white and it's kind of fuzzy, then I start pulling in the different details.
The last work of the show is a life-size image of a person walking into a forest; we'll have it displayed at the end of a corridor. That's what I connected with one of my dream states. It's in black and white and it's fuzzy, and that's where I start.
Would this whimsical collection be a good way to introduce a child to great art?
Herndon-Consagra: It's for everybody. But parents need to be aware, for example, that there's a sculpture of a naked woman urinating. And there might be some things that could upset a kid because dreaming isn't always pretty. I didn't just put up pretty pictures.
