Many undefined phenomena’s turns our simple
human imagination loose, simply because the unseen plays an important role in
our beliefs about almost everything.
In dreams the human brain functions
in a realistic manner, a perfect example of such is a painting drawn by John
Henry Fuseli around 1871-1872 named “The
Nightmare”.
Fuseli, a Swiss born artist who lived
most of his life in England, was the iconic genius of his time. In the late 18th
century most artists were influenced by a style called “Romanticism”. This
style was widely known among legendary artists at that time.
When we wonder, on what does Romanticism mean?
Our brain immediately thinks of “Love”. But if we actually took a closer look and
reviewed the basic concept of Romanticism we would actually find out that it
really explores the imaginative inner realms of the mind, a human point of view
in expressing words like, I feel, I think, I act, I live, I am an individual, my
life is my own, freedom, love, the sense of creating the unseen world of books,
tales, sayings and legends.
In “The Nightmare“ Fuseli created an unseen supernatural
threat, which astonished us as the
“Incubus”.
This all came from European folklore.
( An Incubus is a devious creature of the
night,
a demon known to surmount or lay upon helpless women in their sleep and
conduct in sexual activities with them.
The disturbing cold look on the
Incubus’s face haunted its viewer and gave an infamous reputation that speaks
for itself. The
symbolism is as clear as it can get. It displayed an occurring nightmare of a
sleeping woman. the room seem effected with a soft concentration of light. This
style in painting is called Chiaroscuro, and it literally means “Light-Dark”.
Many Artists use the style “Chiaroscuro”
in their painting technique; it’s when they illuminate a dark area, like
painting a lit candle in a dark room. The mix of dark and bright colors smartly
gives an illusion of a light source.
Then there’s a crazed mare lurking
from behind the curtains, and that itself wasn’t a random use of canvas space.
If we actually took a closer look on the origins of the word nightmare we would
find out that it actually means “An evil spirit that suffocates sleepers”. Fuseli showed a cryptic message of some sort. To
explain more take the symbol of a drawn eye, a heart and the letter U, what
does that look like? It clearly shows the symbol and the formation of the
sentence “I love you”. In Fuseli’s painting The nightmare it does exactly that,
the atmosphere seems dark and at night time, the mare is there just like the “I
love you” sentence, and for Fuseli he wanted to symbolize the night-mare.
There was also a vile of what
seemed to be some kind of medication. Back at that time people were extremely
superstitious, and some strongly believed that if women didn’t have any children
their most likely to have lost their mind and gone insane. In order to calm those women down doctors prescribe a dangerous
hallucinogenic drug called Optisulin. The drug did calm women down, but with
terrible side effects that mostly lead to death and some serious cases of
addictions.
The whole theme represents an intense sexual
sight.
Another theory about the message
art scholars debated about this painting is that the sleeping woman is Anna Landolt.
Anna was Fuseli’s lover, they were deeply in love and Fuseli planned to ask her
hand in marriage, sadly Anna’s father did not agree and they were forced to
leave each other. Heart broken Fuseli created this masterpiece out of
frustration, Fuseli then was reincarnated within the Incubus in the painting.
The painting represented an erotic aspect of lost love and the pain Fuseli
faced on a daily biases knowing she was never his.
We as soul beings of this planet
love to explore the infinite imaginative realm of dreams and unexplained
fantasies. Being allured to this beautiful yet disturbing iconic image is only
natural.
After all it does really tap into pages of our
brain that only our wildest dreams managed to show.
