The Modern Process Of Eve's Nightmare

Henry Fuseli (1746-1828), a Swiss artist who resides in London in the late18th century and early19th century, was known as the forerunner of Romanticism along with Goya and Blake.A century before Freud and Surrealism,he has created a lot of works in the subject of dream.The major research object of this essay is Fuseli’s "dream"series,which first lists the clue of "dream" paintings in art history,then further combined with the social and cultural background and the development trend of psychology,analyses how did a generation of artists represented by Fuseli,Blake and Goya get rid of pythonic dream pictures and turn to human’s spirit and soul.This essay then takes contemporary artists’dream paintings as a cross-sectional study context,by comparison,gets that in Fuseli’s dream paintings,he pays more attention to human’s feelings of terror and repression suffered from modern life.On this basis,taken "nightmare" image as an entry point, explores the sources of the sexual threat hidden in Fuseli’s paintings and the accompanying sense of fear.Further more,analyses how did Fuseli’s works resonate with contemporary artists,writers or even the public,then with the help of Jung Carl Gustav’s prototype and collective unconsciousness theory,reveals the collective unconscious fears of the "outburst of nightmare phenomena" hidden in the modern process and finally comes to a conclusion that Fuseli is a dreamer of nightmare on the eve of the modern process.