Inspired by the subconscious: Artists who used their dreams to produce masterpieces

Dreaming is a chance for the brain to invent without the mind’s control, and that inventiveness is the unconscious version of our waking creativity—except one happens a lot easier than the other.

Those images and sensations that appear to us as we sleep have long been a source of inspiration for some of the world’s greatest works of art, even as dreams came to represent different things over time, i.e. divine encounters, erotic subtext, fictional stories, and so forth.

Some of the greatest works of fiction, music, visual art, or film have been inspired by dreams. Click through to see which artists achieved greatness in their sleep.

David Lynch

If you've seen David Lynch's films, like 'Eraserhead' (1977) or 'Mulholland Drive' (2002), this comes as no surprise.

Salvador Dalí

The imagery of melting clocks conveys the way our concept of time is warped and arbitrary in a dream. This fascination with dreamscapes was fundamental to surrealism in the early 1930s and defined Dalí's legacy.

Christopher Nolan

Famed director Christopher Nolan was inspired to create his psychological thriller 'Inception' (2010) after having his own experiences with lucid dreaming. He told the Los Angeles Times that lucid dreams allowed him to see “dream life as another state of reality.”

John Lennon

Well known for being a dreamer, John Lennon wrote '#9 Dream,' one of his most iconic solo works, based on a dream he had. The chorus of the song repeats a nonsensical phrase from the dream, "Ah! böwakawa poussé, poussé," and the lyrics explore the feeling of a dream being real.

Jack Kerouac

The American novelist, famed for leading the Beat Generation, wrote an entire experimental novel called 'Book of Dreams' (1960) in which he tries to continue the plots of his dreams, which he recorded in a journal from 1952-1960.

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe reportedly suffered from nightmares throughout his life, many of which made it into his poems and short stories. He also wrote various poems about dreaming itself, like 'Dream-Land' (1844) and 'A Dream Within a Dream' (1849).

Federico Fellini

The legendary Italian filmmaker's collection of dream notes and drawings over 30 years were published in a collection called 'Fellini's Book of Dreams,' and if you've seen his work it's clear how his dreams shaped his film landscapes, such as in 'I vitelloni' (1953) or '8 ½' (1963).

Stephen King

Stephen King was hit by a minivan in 1999 and suffered a collapsed lung and shattered leg. While he was recovering, he started having vivid dreams. He told the San Francisco Chronicle that the first strong idea that came to him was about four guys in a cabin in the woods, who meet another guy who isn't feeling well, along with a hitchhiker. “I dreamed a lot about that cabin and those guys in it," he said.

Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley is said to have written 'Frankenstein' (1816) based on a nightmare she'd had.

Richard Linklater

Linklater told IGN that he has always been able to lucid dream, naturally, and only when making the film did he confirm his experience through research.

Carl Jung

The famed psychoanalyst was always fascinated with the power of the unconscious mind and dream archetypes. He's even responsible for a book, 'The Red Book' (published in 2009, long after his death), which is a collection of years of his dreams, fantasies, surrealist dialogues, and psychedelic drawings.

Robert Louis Stevenson

'The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' (1886) is one of modern literature's most famous works, and it reportedly came from a fever dream during Stevenson's bout of tuberculosis. He was furious when his wife woke him, but scribbled down what he could remember and built from there.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In the preface for his poem 'Kubla Khan: or, A Vision in a Dream: A Fragment' (1816), Coleridge claims he wrote it after experiencing a substance-influenced dream after reading a work describing Xanadu. He woke up and wrote the poetry straight out of his dream.

Jasper Johns

The artist's most famous work, 'Flag' (1954), which is a recreation of the US flag, was born from a dream he had at age 24. It was two years after being discharged from the US Army, and he had a dream he painted the flag, so he woke up and did it. It was the first of many that were inspired by his dream.

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