Dreams and Reality

The Dreams and Reality exhibition was inspiring and beautiful especially for first time arts exhibition goers like myself. I have never looked at paintings the way I did the day I went to the exhibition as each and every one of the paintings stood out from the rest and each embodied its own history and emotions. Initially thinking that paintings were just strokes of the brush and colours of the paint, I never really gave painting any second thought but as the tour guide told us the story of the painters and artists, I saw the paintings in a very different light. I began to realise that within every stroke, therein lies a meaning and with every colour that was chosen, emotions were conveyed. Just as Professor Jan has said in many of his lectures, the form of a painting is crucial in conveying its meaning.

Dreams and Reality certainly did bring out the imaginative life and actual life that we live in. The ‘History and War’ section of the exhibition brought out the most emotions for me. Of those that stood out to me was Gustav Dore’s “The Enigma”. Drenched in shades of grey, it showcased a depressive and morbid atmosphere where one is clearly and easily exposed to the emotions the painter was trying to portray. The lifeless bodies of innocents and soldiers strewn all over the remains of the battlefield enveloped in thick smoke certainly intensify the emotions. The winged woman in the middle of the painting described the distress and helplessness the painter was perhaps feeling at that point in time as she seemed to be begging for answers from the sphinx. Here I saw how vast meanings and emotions could be interpreted from only one painting.

Claude Monet, Gutav Dore, Gustav Courbet and Philip Wilson Steer’s painting were remarkably beautiful to me. Not forgetting also, Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night Over The Rhone’ which was undeniably the most popular piece in the entire exhibition. The exhibition gave me an opportunity to observe the paintings up close and changed my perspective of the visual arts for the better.