The Dream, Artistic Practice, and Shattered Time
The Dream, Artistic Practice, and Shattered Time

Summary/Abstract: What can the coded structures of psychic representation (such as the dreamwork) offer us in our understanding of the visual field? I look at how these mechanisms might be seen to operate outside of dreams, and what they might share with artistic practice. I propose to show how aspects of the oneiric process are at play in relation to a painting by Peter Paul Rubens, through a detail from another artwork long past, reappearing reconfigured in Rubens' represent. This association has other temporal implications, including art historical time through questioning the dating of previous work by Rubens, also the material mark of time, in my “making.” I suggest how the excessive nature of (my) associative artistic practice that generated this “find,” is analogous to the method of dream interpretation in psychoanalysis, and by engaging in this way, through a practice of “listening” & making a response to a work of art, I evoke unresolved affect located in the artwork and biography of Rubens.

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