Essays on Dreamlike

Dreams have always inspired artists to produce real visual images. Paintings in pre-historic walls are evidence that human beings have been representing their dreams since time immemorial. Artists in all generations since man’s civilization have been using dreams as inspiration for their works (Barrett 7). Artists such William Blake, Salvador Dali and Edward Burne-Jones, are among those painters that have used dreams as their inspiration. William Blake Jacob’s ladder (1800) William Blake was an English painter, poet, and printmaker in the Romantic Age. Blake was talented in expressiveness and creativity. Most of his works lack the influence ...

Salvador Dali (1904-198) was a Spanish artist considered to be the icon of the Surrealist movement. Probably the most universally famous and highly regarded of the artists of the twentieth century, Salvador Dali was born in the town of Figueres, in Catalonia, Spain where his father held the position of notary public. Although well known as a painter of the Surrealist Movement, he was also a gifted photographer and film maker. As a child, Dali was encouraged in his art by his family and in particular a friend of his father’s, a lawyer named Pepito Pichot, whose brother ...

Throughout the entire play, Shakespeare shows that sleep is important to the development of the events in the story. Arguably, sleep serves as the channel that runs through the life of each character in different ways. As the characters sleep, they become unaware of the events that happen. In turn, the characters attribute the events in their sleep to dreams as they are unable to explain the events in their sleep. Sleep and dreams overshadows the main idea in the play and lead to the theme of dreams versus reality. The title of the play suggests that the events ...

Gogol’s “The Nose” is a short story that is set in Russia during the early 1800s. The story follows in the strange tradition of Russian literature of the time, examining bizarre themes and situations that could not happen in reality. “The Nose” is the story of a man’s nose-- the Major Kovalyov’s nose, to be precise-- that the barber, Ivan, finds in his morning bread. During this time period, Russia was facing increasing amounts of turmoil. The cultural forces within Russia were causing a shift, a shift that would take place over nearly a century and a half. As a result, the themes ...

Salvador Dali painted The Persistence of Memory in 1931, and today it is regarded among the 20th century’s most acclaimed and remembered paintings. This painting served as a means of introducing Surrealism in conventional America. The reason this painting has always been increasingly appealing, and has both encouraged and perplexed analysis and explanation is because Dali has effectively combined the dreamlike and the everyday, the illogical and symbolic, technology and nature. Even the hardness and softness in the painting create confusion. However, according to the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), these “baffling” qualities of the painting, especially the watches, ...

Ever since the innovation of television as a means to bring motion picture content to homes, the use of sound in television has been markedly different from that of film. "The role that sound plays in TV is extremely importantit engages the look and the glance rather than the gaze, and thus has a different relation to voyeurism from cinema's" (Ellis 128). In effect, television has a much greater emphasis on sound than cinema does, because the ability to refocus attention from a television show (as opposed to film, where one is confined in a dark theater watching only that) means that more of ...

INTRODUCTION

Wong Kar-Wai is a director based from Hong Kong, who is hugely respected as not only a director, but an artist who is constantly mentioned by critics and film enthusiasts alike. Although many of his films did not go on to become big as other major films in the Box Office, Wong Kar-Wai's films have begun to be well known for breaking the contemporary style of Hong Kong cinema.

For many years, Hong Kong filmmakers followed a set system of rules in the genre and narrative forms to fit their own personal style; still, they were considered as being nothing more than a ...

Wong Kar-Wai is, most certainly, one of the most celebrated and acclaimed Chinese filmmakers currently working in film; his films have been recognized as innovative, dreamlike and visceral. Critics and film scholars throughout the world have observed and celebrated his work as an auteur, who creates vivid, stunning stories as only an artist can. Due to the individualistic and personal nature of his films, Wong Kar-Wai is certain to be regarded as an auteur who pours the entirety of his artistic vision into his films.

Wong's style is far from contemporary; in fact, his aesthetics and sense of tone ...

INTRODUCTION

In the 1982 science-fiction film Blade Runner, director Ridley Scott takes great care to fashion a detailed, unique dystopian world for the characters to inhabit. The setting is Los Angeles in the (at the time of production) dystopian future of 2019, where corporations rule the world and synthetic humans called replicants have been outlawed. The film follows bounty hunter Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) as he is tasked to hunt down several replicants who have escaped to Earth. The care taken in the creation of the world of Blade Runner, in combination with the dreamlike, meandering story, creates a visual and cultural ...