A current through the archive

Dream states

Overlooked images, strange histories, and visual stories selected for feeling, not fashion.

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A broad mountain valley with a lake, distant palace, high fountain, and small procession ascending steps among palms

A Valley Made from Distance

Robert S. Duncanson’s Vale of Kashmir turns a place known through poetry into a landscape of ceremony, distance, and persuasive invention.

Dream states8 min read
An abstract horizontal image with gridded buildings, roof-like triangles, and overlapping fields of green, red, yellow, pink, and black.

When Architecture Becomes Rhythm

Paul Klee’s small 1920 oil on paper lets gridded buildings and migrating color share one unsettled field.

Dream states6 min read
A dark sailboat with two pale figures and a tall white sail sits beneath blue, tan, orange, and violet pastel marks

The Boat Beneath the Flower Clouds

Odilon Redon keeps a small sailboat legible while worked pastel turns the surrounding sea and sky into a field that will not settle.

Dream states7 min read
Abstract oil painting with a dark green central form, an ocher shape, red and blue areas, and sweeping black and yellow lines.

What the Green Holds Together

In Vasily Kandinsky’s Painting with Green Center, a dark green form gives a crowded field of color and line an order that never becomes still.

Dream states8 min read
Pale vertical forms rise above bands of blue and green beneath a cloudy white field.

Before the World Had Names

In the sixth painting of M. K. Čiurlionis’s Creation of the World cycle, pale forms rise from blue water without settling into plants, ice, or architecture.

Dream states9 min read