Henry Furseli The Nightmare Analysis

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In Henry Fuseli 's The Nightmare, he represented his penchant for inventing macabre fantasies (britannica.com). Henry Fuseli was an extremely intellectual and spiritual man. Although Fuseli was known for painting scenes from Shakespeare and Milton, he was also known to show certain drama within his paintings that reveled his classical education. Fuseli was reported to be an ordained pastor at the Swiss Evangelical Reformed Church. This however ended due to his political activities in Zurich. These activities forced him into exile in 1761 (khanacademy.org). In 1770 Fuseli arrived in Rome and focused on his art. He created a radical style that has been interpreted by many (kunsthaus.ch). The Nightmare was the painting reportedly made him an artist. It was speculated that he used mind altering substances in order to create his images due to the nature of the pieces he painted (bbk.ac.uk). This painting gave Fuseli the reputation as "a painter of the weird, the supernatural, and the shocking" (bbk.ac.uk). Psychological interpretations for this piece still happen today. Fuseli knew professional men in the field of psychology" and was well educated on supernatural folklore that spoke of supernatural night visitors that prayed on the virgin. That seems to be what this paining shows. Salvador Dali 's painting Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee is …show more content…

Dali paraphrased the use of the guillotine anecdote that Freud referred to in his "The Interpretation of Dreams" (revolvy.com). Dali seemed to relate and admire the ideas of Sigmund Freud and even returned to what was called his 'paranoiac-critical method '™(museothyssen.org). Based on Freudian theories, Dali 's view that images were open to several interpretations made him a leading member of the Surrealist group. During this period, Dali was intrigued by the ideas of Freud and moved to show this through his art. Dali was interested in the unconscious mind as well as the interpretations of