World Dream Bank home - add a dream - newest - art gallery - sampler - dreams by title, subject, author, date, place, names

Threatened City

Dreamed before 1978 by Rita Wolff

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!

Her art's skillful and atmospheric, but... this is all you get.

'Threatened City', a 1978 dream watercolor by Rita Wolff.
Deprived of her text, what can we make of this dream? Those might be temples with megalithic statues, still inadequate to the scale of the real thing looming over the horizon. But is it the god threatening the city, or the cult?

--Chris Wayan

SOURCE: Rita Wolff: Watercolours, 1974-1985 by Rita Wolff, 1986; St Martin's Press, NY, Plate X



LISTS AND LINKS: nocturnes - giants - monsters - stone - cities - threats - gods, cults & religions in general - watercolor & gouache - more Rita Wolff - 1981: the Green Giant threatens a city in Giant's Hands - 1986: a library stalks the desert: Queen Kong - 1987: stone giants of Patagonia, in Duck!

World Dream Bank homepage - Art gallery - New stuff - Introductory sampler, best dreams, best art - On dreamwork - Books
Indexes: Subject - Author - Date - Names - Places - Art media/styles
Titles: A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - IJ - KL - M - NO - PQ - R - Sa-Sh - Si-Sz - T - UV - WXYZ
Email: wdreamb@yahoo.com - Catalog of art, books, CDs - Behind the Curtain: FAQs, bio, site map - Kindred sites