The Dream

Paintings like this one conjure a world in which the laws of physics and logic are suspended. Here, a moonlit pasture on the edge of a town can also be read as a domestic interior with a wall clock, a chair, a table, an oil lamp, and a book. Chagall's work shares affinities with Surrealism: dream content, surprising juxtapositions, and word play. Yet, well before the invention of Surrealism, Chagall composed psychically charged pictures, evoking intimate and unexpected relations between animate and inanimate forms. Chagall often cautioned his audience not to look for symbolic meanings, but to think about the formal qualities instead. Although these formal relationships may seem less remarkable than the gravity-defying figures, they enhance the dynamism of the picture.