In the 1970s-80s, Rita Wolff painted a series of watercolors of dreams. Thirty or so were published in a book with this grandiose claim:

Although she is self-taught and has only been painting for a dozen years it can be said that Wolff has extended that art by a new category; because unlike the dream-like subjects of surrealism, Wolff creates pictorial records of actual dreams, of her own, of friends and acquaintances.

As if nobody ever painted or drew an actual dream before 1975!

Her real innovation is the high proportion of other people's dreams that Rita illustrated. She wasn't first; Henri Rousseau's famous The Dream was his friend Yadwigha's dream, not his own. But it's rare. Maddeningly, the book undercuts this genuine originality by omitting the "actual dreams" that the paintings illustrate--removing the other half of the collaboration!

As art, her images are atmospheric, but... what you see is all you get.

--Chris Wayan

SOURCE: Rita Wolff: Watercolours, 1974-1985 by Rita Wolff, 1986; St Martin's Press, NY (Plate XVIII). Plate's title is Leo's Dream, but the introduction calls it Leon's Dream, identifying the dreamer as her friend Leon Krier.

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