Art Master Monday-Salvador Dali

Another one of my early favorites, also introduced to me in high school, is the Surrealist, Salvador Dali. His work is often considered ‘strange’, but it is masterful in detail and technique. It speaks to major influences in his life, as well as the world, at the time. “The Persistence of Memory” with his famous melting clocks is one of the most well known works of Dali. Lesser known is “The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory” that he painted decades later and shows similar images now impacted by the Nuclear Age. It is said that living in his brother’s shadow after his early death was a catalyst to Dali’s drive to be different and individualistic. The observer can see these emotions in the haunting “Portrait of My Dead Brother.”

Salvador Dali was a misfit among misfits, kicked out of traditional school and even the Surrealist movement that he helped gain popularity. Although he strived to remain apolitical, doing so caused him to be labeled and outcast from several groups.

“Surrealism was a cultural movement which developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I and was largely influenced by Dada. The movement is best known for its visual artworks and writings and the juxtaposition of distant realities to activate the unconscious mind through the imagery.” Some of the best known Surrealists are Salvador Dali and Pablo Picasso. Surrealists used symbolism to portray the ideas of the unconscious.

Dalí employed extensive symbolism in his work. For instance, the hallmark “melting watches” that first appear in The Persistence of Memory suggest Einstein’s theory that time is relative and not fixed. The idea for clocks functioning symbolically in this way came to Dalí when he was staring at a runny piece of Camembert cheese on a hot August day.

The elephant is also a recurring image in Dalí’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, multijointed, 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.”[68] “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.” —Salvador Dalí, in Dawn Ades, Dalí and Surrealism.

The egg is another common Dalíesque image. He connects the egg to the prenatal and intrauterine, thus using it to symbolize hope and love; it appears in The Great Masturbator and The Metamorphosis of Narcissus. The Metamorphosis of Narcissus also symbolized death and petrification.

Various other animals appear throughout his work as well: ants point to death, decay, and immense sexual desire; the snail is connected to the human head (he saw a snail on a bicycle outside Freud’s house when he first met Sigmund Freud); and locusts are a symbol of waste and fear.

https://ultimatepopculture.fandom.com/wiki/Salvador_Dali

• Learn more about the Surrealist Movement HERE and HERE
• Investigate the Dali Museum and Dali’s work at The Museum of Modern Art
• Learn more about Salvador Dali’s life HERE

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A few key paintings by Salvador Dali

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Dali’s work is also often the subject of inspiration in pop culture. The Simpsons and Sesame Street pay homage to one of his most famous works, The Persistence of Memory. (original artists unknown)

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Next time you are in central Florida, make time to head to St Petersburg and visit The Dali Museum. It is “home to an unparalleled collection of over 2,400 Salvador Dalí works, including 96 oil paintings, with an additional 200 watercolors and drawings, as well as more than 2,100 prints, photographs, posters, textiles, sculptures and objets d’art. The Museum’s nonprofit mission, to care for and share its collection locally and internationally, is grounded by a commitment to education and sustained by a culture of philanthropy.”

Are you familiar with or a fan of Dali’s work? What kind of emotions does his work inspire?

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