By CONSTANTIN HOUY

November 2022

The German-born Swiss artist and poet Meret Oppenheim (1913–1985) is well-known for being a major contributor to the Parisian circle of Surrealists. Less well-known is how strongly her art was inspired by her own dreams. Oppenheim recorded her dreams from a young age and attached special importance to them, both in relation to her art and poetry, and as sources of general wisdom and knowledge. Oppenheim considered her dream contents as “going far beyond her own person,” believing them to have a social dimension and a political meaning. This thinking inspired her oft-quoted statement: “It is the artists who dream for society.”

Oppenheim is remembered as an early protagonist in the campaign for gender equality in the field of arts in Europe. When she received the Art Prize of the City of Basel in Switzerland in 1975, she expressed her opinion on the struggle of female artists as follows:

When someone speaks their own, new language that no one yet understands, they sometimes have to wait a long time before they hear an echo. This is even more difficult for a female artist [...] With male artists, one is used to them leading a life as it suits them – and the public turns a blind eye. But when a woman does the same, they typically widen their eyes. That and many other things have to be put up with. Yes, I would even like to say that, as a woman, you have the obligation to prove through your lifestyle that you no longer consider the taboos with which women have been kept in a state of subjugation for thousands of years to be valid. Freedom is not given to you; you have to take it.

These thoughts not only guided Oppenheim’s liberal way of living, but also her approach to creating art, which resulted in a multitude of pieces that expresses the spirit of Surrealism – particularly among her early works – as well as her pugnacious position towards gender equality. One of her early works in this context, Ma Gouvernante, My nurse, Mein Kindermädchen (1936), eloquently expresses her feelings towards the repression of women during this period. The object consists of a silver plate with a pair of women’s shoes trussed with string, heels covered with paper frills. According to Bice Curiger, a Swiss art scholar and early researcher of Oppenheim’s œuvre, this work is “a fierce and at the same time natural union of a roast goose, a maid’s bonnet and a tied-up woman.”

Oppenheim’s best-known work, which she simply titled, Object, was given a more suggestive title by André Breton: Le Déjeuner en fourrure (Breakfast in Fur). The piece, which consists of a fur covered teacup, saucer, and spoon, was first shown in one of Breton’s Surrealist exhibitions in France, and then, in 1936, at the Museum of Modern Art’s (MoMa) first Surrealist show, Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism. The piece was eventually acquired by the museum’s director, Alfred Barr Jr., and is now part of MoMA’s permanent exhibition.

Oppenheim was influenced by her Parisian circle of friends and acquaintances, which included Breton, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Man Ray, Albert Giacometti, and Joan Mirò among others. But while they provided numerous important ideas for her early œuvre, she never felt completely part of the movement. Despite her early works being appropriated by Surrealism, and finding success in terms of public reception, Oppenheim persistently asserted her independence as an artist throughout her life. Her independence and free spirit were already evident in the early 1930s, when she moved to Paris.

In 1933, at aged 19, she was photographed by Man Ray in a series entitled Érotique voilée (Veiled Erotic). One photograph from the series, in which she posed provocatively behind a printing press, was published in the Surrealist journal, Minotaure. It produced a scandal that made her famous in Paris and also earned her great respect among the Surrealists, who viewed it as a form of revolt against the establishment – one of their most important goals. Today, however, after several generations of feminist critique, one is tempted to view the work as an example of the Surrealists’ fetishization of women’s bodies.

Like many of Oppenheim’s early works, Man Ray’s photographs adhere to a central characteristic or maxim of Surrealistic art: combining or juxtaposing disparate elements in one piece to create a dream-like atmosphere. This maxim can be traced back to a passage from Les Chants de Maldoror (“The songs of Maldoror”) by Comte de Lautréamont (1846–1870), a French poet and one of the Surrealists’ greatest influences: “Beau comme la rencontre fortuite sur une table de dissection d'une machine à coudre et d'un parapluie” (“Beautiful as the chance meeting of a sewing machine and an umbrella on a dissecting table”).

In addition to her numerous paintings and drawings, Oppenheim produced sculpture, photographs, poetry, furniture, jewellery, performance pieces, clothing and set designs. These works were often inspired by her own dreams, which she recorded and collected, sometimes even noting down her own interpretations of them. These interpretations were influenced by the theoretical ideas of Carl G. Jung, who was a colleague of the artist’s father, Erich A. Oppenheim. Oppenheim and Jung met in 1935, when she was 22 years old. His work inspired Oppenheim to write down her own dreams and shaped her conception of these visions as sources of potential solutions to problems or useful answers to fundamental questions in life.

In 1984, Oppenheim handed over her “collection folder” with chronologically sorted dream records, graphic sketches and drawings to her friend Christiane Meyer-Thoss. This collection was subsequently edited by Meyer-Thoss and published in 1986, a year after Oppenheim’s death. A new edition, with a new afterword by Meyer-Thoss, was published by Suhrkamp in 2010 under the title, Träume: Aufzeichnungen 1928-1985 (Dreams: Records 1928-1985). The book provides profound insight into the social and political pressures of the day as well as the way Oppenheim mobilized her dreams as a prime resource for her art.

From the back cover of Träume: Aufzeichnungen 1928-1985, published by Suhrkamp:

Instead of keeping a diary, Meret Oppenheim records her dreams at all stages of her life. When writing them down, she avoids any poeticizing. Her gaze is directed towards reality, the event, the normality of the dream. This deliberate restraint contains an artistic credo; the artist sees the real achievement in the discipline and intensity of her receptivity. She applies the dream techniques of copying, imitation, mimicry, which are at work in dreams, to all fields of work. Just like the poems (2002), the dream recordings can direct the viewer's attention to the dream-analogous, cinematographic procedures of her work on objects ("fur cup") and paintings or drawings.

According to Meyer-Thoss, the published collection reproduces Oppenheim’s records “almost completely” and “in the chronological order determined by her.” In her comprehensive epilogue, she suggests that what fascinated Oppenheim about her dreams and inspired her to start recording them 1928 was the “longing potential of the fragmentary” and the “breath of the larger, time-deprived context.”

The spectrum of what Oppenheim dreamt about is quite broad. However, the collection shows us numerous recurring dream motifs, which are at times described in short dream situations but also appear in longer dream narratives with changing places and transforming objects or people. Examples include:

- Dreams about animals, including “catching a white rabbit in a snowy landscape”, “a little mouse and a shining little metallic pig”, “a friendly raven and a happy dog”, “a big fish, a whale, a lizard, a green gecko and a green insect”, “large fish and eels alive as if stored in a kind of jelly”, “meeting a wild boar in the forest”, “an old building or ruin, a grey mamba and an old woman turning into a snake”, and a dream with “birds, wild fowl, elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, little lambs and earthworms.” Oppenheim also dreamt about escape and fights with wild animals, including one about “escaping from snakes”, one about a “fight with a hellhound”, and one about “escaping from a puma, then breaking out its teeth.”

- Dreams about artistic productivity, including one about “eggs = a symbol for productivity”, one about a “tiny fish”, one featuring “a big locomotive in a meadow”, one with “a field of clover”, one where she sees “a cage with a rabbit”, and one about “ships and aeroplanes on the roof terrace.”

- Dreams with visions of nature and experiences related to nature, including one with “gentian turning into a glass of wine”, one about “a greenhouse with sprouting skeletal hands”, one featuring the so-called “mystery of vegetation”, one where she witnesses “a protective rain wall around the bed”, and one with “three white, almost transparent moons”

- Dreams about the ocean and water, including one where she is “walking on the ocean”, one with “light green waves washing around the house”, one about the “wild ocean and strong waves crash against the house in Basel”, and one in which “the ocean reaches the wall of the house and cows are underwater”

- Dreams with a focus on materials, including one featuring “an automobile made of bone”, one with “a hat made of painted green cardboard”, one with “a vehicle made of artificial stone”, one where she sees “boots with light-green sequins and a hooded coat with marabou feathers”, and one where she is “working in a quarry with a lot of crystals”

- Dreams about friends from the Surrealist circle, including one where “André Breton is the Pope”, one that represents “an allegory of war viewed together from a long table in vast landscape”, and one that is “a comparison with Marcel Duchamp”

- Erotic dreams, including one about being “with a man in a bed at the end of a large hall”, one about “love with the dead”, one featuring a “ceremony with dancing and Bali masks”, and one about being a “hermaphrodite in the garden of earthly delights”

- Dreams about the passing of one’s lifetime, including one about a “ride in a vehicle made of cast stone with mother and grandmother” and one featuring a “wooden statue turning over an hourglass as half of one’s life has passed”

- Dreams about music, including one about a “skeleton playing the cello” and one in which “the sound of a fugue is created by wind between rocks”

- Dreams about meetings with the dead, including one where she meets her grandmother and one about her “dead sister who comes back to life”

- Creative dreams in which she invents new objects such as “a rescue instrument for drowning people” and a “small machine for writing sentences for writers”

- Nightmares or fear dreams, including one in a “human slaughterhouse” and one about a “woman in a cage between tree trunks”

The following example is a particularly interesting dream recording interpreted by Oppenheim herself as a so-called anima–animus dream in Jung’s sense referring to the idea of the collective unconscious:

“I experienced a ‘rank elevation’ that delighted me. I dreamed, shortly afterwards, that a man complained to me that it was inconvenient for him to enter and exit using the same door because other people wanted to go past him at the same time. I said to him somewhat mockingly: ‘I suppose you think a second door should be hewn out for you.’ The man had an unusually large chest – a chest swollen with pride.” (Träume 2010, p. 70)

Oppenheim herself elaborates on this, explaining her own understanding of the masculine and feminine parts of her soul that conflict within her, in the “I-myself” (the “Ich selbst”) for a “balance of powers”:

“It is interesting that it was the masculine part of my soul (my animus) to which the tribute had, so to speak, ‘gone into the breast’. ‘I myself’ made fun of it. This is one more proof of how our unconscious mind provides inner balance.”

Another example of a dream Oppenheim interpreted as an anima–animus dream is one she dreamt and recorded in 1935 in Barcelona:

“I am in bed with a man standing at the end of a large hall. Along the walls there is a Greek relief, like the Parthenon. [...] The man I’m walking next to is now suddenly my father. We walk side by side on a plateau. Fir trees are growing down on the slopes, but only the tops are visible. My father points to a group of these fir tops (on the southern slope) that are swaying wildly and says: ‘That’s where I met your mother.’ I say: ‘That’s where my killer is!’ I go down the slope, now I think it’s the north slope, to the foot of the fir trees. There, leaning against a trunk, sits an older gentleman, dressed casually, rusty brown tweed jacket, short grey hair. He points a knife at me. I touch the tip of the knife with the index finger of one hand, the end of the handle with the other index finger, turn the knife around and am about to stab the man when my father appears next to me and says: ‘One doesn’t do that.’ I then give the man a push and he rolls down the slope. He rolls by touching his forehead with his index finger and looks like a uroboros (a snake eating its tail).” (Träume 2010, p. 17-19)

In 1978 – some 43 years after the dream was written down – Oppenheim formulated the following dream interpretation:

“I seem to have succeeded now, in May 1978, in interpreting the dream of September 1935 (in Barcelona). The grey-haired man in the tweed suit (my father) in the place where he ‘met’ my mother (i.e. where I was conceived) was a symbol of the patriarchy within myself, which also fathered me. So, I also carried this old attitude in me and was thus involved in the devaluation of the feminine, which, since the time that patriarchy has existed, has been projected onto the female gender. This devalued feminine is not the natural, child-bearing woman (although it does affect her through projection), but the spiritual feminine principle that women and men have devalued in themselves. This means that it is the patriarchal attitude in myself that devalues or ‘murders’ the (spiritually) feminine in me and, at the same time, as has been its way since time immemorial, holds me back from developing the (spiritually) masculine in myself and thus becoming whole. I wanted to murder this symbol of the patriarchy. My father, perhaps the symbol of the masculine on a higher level, yes, perhaps even of the masculine on the level where it is no longer divorced from the feminine (perhaps also of the ethical in itself), gave me the advice to act mercifully towards the patriarchal attitude and not to assassinate this masculine principle, that is, to repay like with like, but only to give it an impulse in order to bring about a change in the situation (which will lead to the development towards wholeness, of which the uroboros, the snake eating its own tail, is a symbol). Perhaps the passive attitude of the ‘patriarch’, which made it possible for me to turn the knife without difficulty and turn it against him, is an intimation that this enterprise will be successful.”

Oppenheim worked on understanding her dreams throughout her life and continued to developed interpretations more than 40 years afterwards. It is not unlikely that such an intense preoccupation with dreams and their possible interpretations would shape someone’s perceptions of dreams in their waking life, and it may also have an impact on the dreams themselves. Dreams, as Sigmund Freud stated in The Interpretation of Dreams, are largely composed of experiences in waking life, and the dream theory contents internalized in waking life and applied in the context of dream interpretations could thus themselves become “dream material”. As her dreams strongly influenced her art, the constant reflection of her noted dreams can be considered an important part of the work process leading to her outstanding art creations.

Meret Oppenheim’s stature as a major contributor to modern arts and to the status of women in art and society have been strongly recognized in recent years. Her œuvre has been documented, appreciated, and valued by an increasing number of exhibitions and publications, such as catalogues but also scientific contributions. Based on her dream life she created extraordinary pieces of art with societal and even political impact, especially towards gender equality, and inspired generations of artists around the world.

Constantin Houy completed his PhD at the Faculty of Empirical Human Sciences and Economics at Saarland University in 2018 with a thesis on process model understandability. Since April 2021, he has been a researcher in the European Dream Cultures research training group at Saarland University funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), where he works on musicological topics in the context of dream culture research. He is currently working on a dissertation project focussing on dreams in Róbert Wittinger’s Maldoror op. 47, an opera inspired by Lautréamont’s “Les Chants de Maldoror”.

This contribution is partly based on an article written in German for the Lexikon Traumkultur (Lexicon of dream culture) on Meret Oppenheim’s dream records. All quotes taken from dream records and the book cover text are stemming from the above-mentioned dream records book edited by Christiane Meyer-Thoss and were translated by the author of this contribution. The author would like to warmly thank Sharon Sliwinski and her Museum of Dreams team for the valuable remarks which helped to improve the manuscript.

“The Artists Who Dream for Society,” November 2022 © The Museum of Dreams