Option 1
Biography and story
-Salvador Dali was born on May 11, 1904, in Figueres, Spain. When he was young he was encouraged to practice his art and decided to go to study at academy in Madrid. In 1920s, he went to Paris and started interacting with surrealism artist such as Picasso. Dali tried to express objective and realistic from irrational hallucination which he called ‘Paranoiac critic.’ He influenced various areas which are film, commercial arts.
The Persistence of Memory
Salvador Dalí
(Spanish, 1904–1989)
1931. Oil on canvas, 9 1/2 x 13″ (24.1 x 33 cm)
Salvador Dalí frequently described his paintings as “hand painted dream photographs.” He based this seaside landscape on the cliffs in his home region of Catalonia, Spain. The ants and melting clocks are recognizable images that Dalí placed in an unfamiliar context or rendered in an unfamiliar way. The large central creature comprised of a deformed nose and eye was drawn from Dalí’s imagination, although it has frequently been interpreted as a self-portrait. Its long eyelashes seem insect-like; what may or may not be a tongue oozes from its nose like a fat snail from its shell.
Time is the theme here, from the melting watches to the decay implied by the swarming ants. Mastering what he called “the usual paralyzing tricks of eye-fooling,” Dalí painted this work with “the most imperialist fury of precision,” but only, he said, “to systematize confusion and thus to help discredit completely the world of reality.” There is, however, a nod to the real: the distant golden cliffs are those on the coast of Catalonia, Dalí’s home.
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| Swans Reflecting Elephants (1937) is from Dali’s Paranoiac-critical period. Painted using oil on canvas, it contains one of Dali’s famous double images. The double images were a major part of Dali’s “paranoia-critical method,” which he put forward in his 1935 essay “The Conquest of the Irrational.” He explained his process as a “spontaneous method of irrational understanding based upon the interpretative critical association of delirious phenomena.” Dali used this method to bring forth the hallucinatory forms, double images and visual illusions that filled his paintings during the Thirties. As with earlier Metamorphosis of Narcissus, Swans Reflecting Elephants uses the reflection in a lake to create the double image seen in the painting. In Metamorphosis, the reflection of Narcissus is used to mirror the shape of the hand on the right of the picture. Here, the three swans in front of bleak, leafless trees are reflected in the lake so that the swans’ heads become the elephants’ heads and the trees become the bodies of the elephants. In the background of the painting is a Catalonian landscape depicted in fiery fall colors, the brushwork creating swirls in the cliffs that surround the lake, to contrast with the stillness of the water. |
Landscape with Butterflies,1956 by Salvador Dali
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| Dali was both an art and science connoisseur. He held a particular fascination with the double helix, which appeared in many of his paintings, such as this painting – Landscape with Butterfliese. Although the mere presence of DNA in Dali’s paintings does not hold some deeper meaning, there was a logical reason that the helixes were included in this painting; Contrary to popular surrealism, the painting can be logically interpreted. According to Dali and the Double Helix, written by Elena Guardiola and Joseph E. Banos of the Nature Publishing Company, Dali was interested in everything from quantum physics to the double helix. After reading Watson and Crick’s 1953 article in Nature Magazine regarding DNA, Dali stated, “it is the real proof of the existence of God.” Because Dali associated DNA strands with God, the viewer can assume that his addition of the helix to the otherwise drab landscape suggests the presence of God and creation in the everyday world. According to Guardiola and Banos, the DNA structure symbolizes life from God, the men shooting guns symbolize death, and God symbolizes life, the three stages that Dali believed to be a part of the human process. Dali used cross-cultural symbolism to represent his ideas to the reader in a clear fashion. |
The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory, 1954
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| The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory (oil on canvas, 1952 to 1954) is an oil on canvas re-creation of the Dali’s famous 1931 work The Persistence of Memory, and measures a diminutive 25.4 x 33 cm. In this version, the landscape from the original work has been flooded with water. Disintegration depicts what is occurring both above and below the water’s surface. The landscape of Cadaques is now hovering above the water. The plane and block from the original is now divided into brick-like shapes that float in relation to each other, with nothing binding them. These represent the breakdown of matter into atoms, a revelation in the age of quantum mechanics. Behind the bricks, the horns receding into the distance symbolise atomic missiles, highlighting that despite cosmic order, humanity could bring about its own destruction. The dead olive tree from which the soft watch hangs has also begun to break apart. The hands of the watches float above their dials, with several conical objects floating in parallel formations encircling the watches. A fourth melting watch has been added. The distorted human visage from the original painting is beginning to morph into another of the strange fish floating above it. To Dali, however, the fish was a symbol of life. |
Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening by Salvador Dali
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| In one of Dali’s best-known works from the post-Second World War era, a reclining nude hovers above one of the flat rocks at Port Lligat that in turn floats upon the Mediterranean Sea. This state of immobility and suspended animation can be related to the artist’s newfound interest in nuclear fission and atomic energy, which had replaced his earlier fascination with Freudian Psychoanalysis. As the title of this painting suggests, however, dream imagery was still at the core of his esthetics, as demonstrated by the alarming cavalcade of ferocious creatures and dangerous weapons that threaten the sleeping female figure. In a chainlike succession of images, a pomegranate bursts open to release a giant red snapper that in turn disgorges two raging tigers, whose leaping forms were derived from a Ringling Bros, and Barnum-Bailey, circus poster. Closest to the gravity-defying female nude is a bayoneted rifle that is about to pierce her arm, while in the middle ground, near the horizon, an elephant carrying an obelisk on its back strides across the brilliant blue sea on stilted legs. This hybrid creature, a variation on Bernini’s elephant-monument, was for Dali a symbol of war and destruction, and its presence in this painting helps to convey a mood of terror and confusion appropriate for such a nightmarish vision. The disconcerting image of an enormous fish spewing forth a pair of leaping tigers appears to have been directly inspired by the work of Hieronymus Bosch. |
Melting Watch, 1954 by Salvador Dali
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| The Melting Watch, (also known as Soft Watch at the Moment of First Explosion) is an example of this surrealist movement. Created in 1954, Dali used the presence of a dreamlike quality and ghostly appearance to accentuate the mysterious and unexplainable in his painting. Surrealism rejects logic, reason and natural order. It uses techniques such as dreamlike or ghostly qualities, juxtaposition (a method for rejecting harmony in their work) and incorporates surreal objects and subject matter. Dali uses these same techniques in his painting Soft Watch at the Moment of Explosion to intrigue his viewers and provoke thought. In his painting, Dali assimilates shadowy outlines of objects and uses the dreamlike quality in the way the watch twists and its broken pieces unexplainably float above it. Also, the ghostly way the watch drapes over one edge of the box as if melting. The watch seems to be pulling apart and stretching. It may denote Dali’s belief that time passing brings eventual destruction. In Soft Watch at the Moment of Explosion, Dali incorporates a great deal of color juxtaposition. Most of the background consists of deep browns and gold and is contrasted by the white clock in the center of the painting. Dali’s painting also displays surreal objects, although most of these are in the foreground (a moth, a fly and a bizarre clock). In the background we see a small cluster of mountains. |
The Temptation of Saint Anthony, 1946 by Salvador Dali
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In this picture temptation appears to Saint Anthony successively in the form of a horse in the foreground representing strength, sometimes also the symbol of voluptuousness, and in the form of the elephant which follows it, carrying on its back the golden cup of lust in which a nude woman is standing precariously balanced on the fragile pedestal, a figure which emphasizes the erotic character of the composition. The other elephants are carrying buildings on their back; the first of these is an obelisk inspired by that of Bernini in Rome, the second and third are Venetian edifices in the style of Paladio. In the background another elephant carries a tall tower which is not without phallic overtones and in the clouds one can glimpse a few fragments of the Escorial, symbol of temporal and spiritual order. This painting was painted in the studio that the artist occupied for a few days next to the Colony Restaurant in new York. It is the first and the only time that he participated in a contest. It was an invitational artistic competition for a painting on the theme of the temptation of Saint Anthony, organized in 1946 by the Loew Lewin Company, a movie-producing firm. The winning picture was to figure in a film taken from the story “Bel Ami” by Maupassant. Eleven painters took part in the competition, among them Dali, Paul Delaux, Max Ernst. The prize was given to Max Ernst.
Elephants, 1948 by Salvador Dali
Elephant is also a recurring image in Dali’s works. It first appeared in his 1944 work Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening. The elephants, inspired by Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s sculpture base in Rome of an elephant carrying an ancient obelisk, are portrayed ‘with long, multi-jointed, almost invisible legs of desire’ along with obelisks on their backs. Coupled with the image of their brittle legs, these encumbrances, noted for their phallic overtones, create a sense of phantom reality. ‘The elephant is a distortion in space,’ one analysis explains, ‘its spindly legs contrasting the idea of weightlessness with structure.’ As Dali said:”I am painting pictures which make me die for joy, I am creating with an absolute naturalness, without the slightest aesthetic concern, I am making things that inspire me with a profound emotion and I am trying to paint them honestly.”
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The Madonna of Port Lligat, 1950 by Salvador Dali
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Although the basic iconography of the painting, drawn from the Italian Renaissance altarpieces featuring an enthroned Madonna by Piero della Francesca and Carlo CriveOi, remained the same as the 1949 version, the vibrant blue color scheme of the earlier work was replaced by a darker blue-gray palette, while the increased scale of the final painting required a plethora of new symbols to be added. Some of these were familiar to Dali’s repertoire, such as the basket of bread that is suspended beside Gala. However, other objects represented new obsessions, like the cuttlefish bones that double as angel wings in which the figure of Gala can at times be discerned. Another important feature of the painting is the first appearance of the rhinoceros, a recurring motif in Dali’s late work, which stands in the shadows of the recessed, predella-like space beneath the Madonna’s foot. The shadow of the rhinoceros emphasizes its disconnected, levitating horn, a minor detail that nonetheless signals the genesis of what would become the artist’s quintessential atomic emblem. Once again, Gala was depicted as the Virgin Mary, while Juan Figueres, a six-year old boy from Cadaques, was used as the model for the infant Jesus. Both figures are suspended in midair, like particles of atomic matter, while directly above their heads a symbolic ostrich egg hangs by a thread. This is a medieval symbol of the immaculate conception, based on the myth that the female ostrich hatched its eggs by exposing them to sunlight without being impregnated by the male bird.
Bacchanale, 1939 by Salvador Dali
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Bacchanale received its world premiere as the middle part of a triple bill at the Metropolitan Opera House. It was preceded by Rouge et Noir, with designs byMatisse, and followed by La Boutique Fantasque, designed by Derain. The production went subsequently on an extensive tour throughout the US. Dali chose the Venusherg music from Wagner’s Tannhauser opera as the summit, as he expressed it, of Wagner’s theatrical ascension.
In the program Dali gives an account of his ballet: “The setting represents Mount Venus (the Venusberg near Eisenach), the background showing Salvador Dali’s birthplace, the Ampurdan plain, in the center of which rises the temple as seen in The Marriage of the Virgin by Raphael.
