Alright. Well it's been a long time.
I couldn't let this one go. I've been in a fog all day. Couldn't sleep last night. Couldn't sleep. Couldn't sleep then did and dreamt a TON most of which I'll leave out but am still considering. The part that got me though was this. It was a minor teachmare... a dream about not being quite ready to teach. I had to identify the artist of the painting that I knew was Goya's painting, The Third of May 1808 - one I know well as I once completely copied it as part of a large art history tableau for high school. In the dream I saw the man with his hands down and apart, facing his shooters. In my dream I reenacted the scene. I made my arms wide mimicking the man about to be shot, trying to get Into the painting so I could remember. "It's a Daumier." I said, feeling sure and not sure at the same time.
Okay, cut to reality. Drinking my morning coffee. Cup two and still no help, no hope of dispelling the fog. Reading my Graphic Design History book, "The Story of Graphic Design" as I prepared for class. The topic: Pyschedellica of the Sixties: easy enough to improv on, perhaps, but the book is good because in it I learn things like: the designer of the peace sign, Gerald Holtom, (I never thought of someone DESIGNING that in the first place) - "was guided by a more personal motivation [in designing the symbol for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament]. He wanted to symbolize the despondency he felt towards a world that had only relatively recently come through a second, hugely destructive world war and yet with its creation of the nuclear threat, had apparently learned little from the experience. Holtom said, "I drew myself the representative of an individual in despair, with hands palm outstretched and downwards in the manner of Goya's peasant before the firing squad."
The book goes on to say that he had it wrong, as is true; in the painting the peasant's hands are up. Holtom later tried to invert his symbol and grew to prefer it up as looked more hopeful to him. Apparently he wanted his symbol carved in stone - in the the 'hands' up position - on his tombstone.
So. Well. I claim no great abilities (or maybe I claim that we all have great abilities but no clue how to marshal them). Still that I dreamt of the Third of May Painting - exactly - with NO idea or foreshadowing whatsoever that I would read a paragraph about that exact painting first thing in the morning!! AND that the almost-executed man's hands were down in my dream - the shared mis-recollection that was essential in the sketching of the first peace sign! !!??!! I find this pretty amazing.
I wonder, too, what the Daumier bit meant.
Maybe Dormier. A confusion with the French - Dormir?
Anyway. I'm still sleepy. But I think this is cool.
Peace out. or Peace Up!
