Salvador Dali stands outside of history in relation to his surrealistic legacy and versatile art produced within the 1930s and 40s. Within his professional carrier he made a name for himself in sculpture, printmaking, photography, fashion, advertising, writing and film making. Making a very successful leap forward in the art movement and filming making with collaborations with famous directors such as Alfred Hitchcock. us. Through the use of realistic painting mixed with surrealism allows for the audience to question how and why Dali, the artist, has decided to partake on a surrealistic painting style. It hovers around the idea of what Dali can make the audience see and to create a new world, a new reality Dali presents works where he aims to challenge the audience with a new concept, expose the truth behind the Spanish War and the effects it has on the front line and at home. He aims to address issues within his world and society and casts to provide an avenue and a method in which he can communicate with his audiences subconscious planting ideas and thoughts on the ramifications and impacts of world events such as the war.
Within bodies of works such as Swans reflecting Elephants, Persistence of Memory and Soft Construction of Boiled Beans Dali is able to exploit the surrealistic art movement. Surrealism is the art of writing or painting unreal or unpredictable works of art using the images or words from an unrealistic or imaginary world. Dali’s artistic practices is a perfect definition of surrealism through his juxtaposition of object, disposition and distortion of shapes and objects and morning of objects and ideas. In simplistic language surrealism is painting in a dream like state allowing for the artist to interact with the audiences subconscious. Salvador Dali uses subjective, cultural and postmodern artistic frames to convey these ideas. Through his works he is able to convey his ideas surrounding his works through the distortion of figures within his work, he is able to aid to his culture through references and his involvement in the Spanish Civil war and his families involvement in particularly within the war. Through his cultural perspective Dali is able to combine his subjective frame within due to his connection with family and finally he uses post modern frames within his works to combine his works and present cohesion and fluency.
Swans reflecting Elephants
The double images were a major part of Dalí’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.” Dalí used this method to bring forth the hallucinatory forms, double images and visual illusions that filled his paintings during the Thirties. As with the 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’ necks become the elephants’ trunks and the trees become the legs of the elephants. In the background of the painting is a Catalan landscape depicted in fiery fall colours, the brushwork creating swirls in the cliffs that surround the lake, to contrast with the stillness of the water.
Persistence of Memory
Dali’s well-known surrealist piece the persistence of memory introduces the image of the soft melting pocket watch. These could be suggestive of the fluidity of time as a series of melting watches, their forms described by Dalí as inspired by a surrealist perception of Camembert cheese melting in the sun. The distinction between hard and soft objects highlights Dalí’s desire to flip reality lending to his subjects characteristics opposite their usually inherent properties, an un-reality often found in our dreamscapes. They are surrounded by a swarm of ants hungry for the organic processes of putrefaction and decay of which Dalí held unshakable fascination. Because the melting flesh at the painting’s centre resembles Dalí, we might see this piece as a reflection on the artist’s immortality amongst the rocky cliffs of his Catalonian home. It epitomises Dalí’s theory of “softness” and “hardness”, which was central to his thinking at the time. As Dawn Adès wrote, “The soft watches are an unconscious symbol of the relativity of space and time, a Surrealist meditation on the collapse of our notions of a fixed cosmic order”. This interpretation suggests that Dalí was incorporating an understanding of the world introduced by Albert Einstein’s theory of special relativity. Asked by Ilya Prigogine whether this was in fact the case, Dalí replied that the soft watches were not inspired by the theory of relativity, but by the surrealist perception of a Camembert melting in the sun.It is possible to recognise a human figure in the middle of the composition, in the strange “monster” (with a lot of texture near its face, and lots of contrast and tone in the picture) that Dalí used in several contemporary pieces to represent himself – the abstract form becoming something of a self-portrait, reappearing frequently in his work. The figure can be read as a “fading” creature, one that often appears in dreams where the dreamer cannot pinpoint the creature’s exact form and composition. One can observe that the creature has one closed eye with several eyelashes, suggesting that the creature is also in a dream state. The iconography may refer to a dream that Dalí himself had experienced, and the clocks may symbolise the passing of time as one experiences it in sleep or the persistence of time in the eyes of the dreamer. The orange clock at the bottom left of the painting is covered in ants. Dalí often used ants in his paintings as a symbol of decay. The Persistence of Memory employs “the exactitude of realist painting techniques” to depict imagery more likely to be found in dreams than in waking consciousness.
Soft Construction of Boiled Beans
This painting expresses the destruction during the Spanish Civil War. The monstrous creature in this painting is self-destructive just as a Civil War is. This painting is not meant to depict choosing sides although Dalí had many reasons to choose sides in the Spanish Civil War. His sister was tortured and imprisoned by communist soldiers fighting for the Republic and his good friend from art school, the poet Federico Garcia Lorca, was murdered by a fascist firing squad. Dalí also made this painting look very realistic and yet continued to bring in surreal concepts. Although humans do not have the potential to look like the creatures in this painting, it retains a realistic feel, reminding the viewer of the gravity of the ideas behind it. Dalí also brought ideas of tradition to this piece with a beautiful Catalan sky, creating a contrast to the idea of revolution. There are quite a few boiled beans in this painting. Dalí is quoted as saying the reason he included boiled beans was “one could not imagine swallowing all that unconscious meat without the presence of some mealy and melancholy vegetable.” By this he meant that there were many hardships in the war so the Spanish citizens had to do their best to deal with their problems. He played with themes of love, eating, and the war and how they are all related. The work also references the connection felt between a mother and son, an ideology heavily present within war time. This is alluded to through the nipple and the connection between a mother and her son, Dali comments that the war is tearing families apart similar to his own. Allowing for his art to connect with a wider population due to the overwhelming support from women within society towards his works due to their ability to connect, sympathise and be given a sense of support through his body of works.
Originally published 15.10.2019