|
Salvador Dalí
Background on Surrealism and Salvador Dali
In 1924, the French writer Andre
Breton announced the birth of
Surrealism, a movement in
painting that emphasized the
unconscious. Surrealists were
interested in presenting a more
profound reality revealed by the
unconscious mind. They wished to
produce images that went beyond
mere painting to reach a new
level of reality. In their
experiments, dreams became
important sources of
inspiration, and enigma or
mystery played a major role.
The Spanish artist Salvador Dali
was one of the best known
Surrealist painters. He lived
from 1904 to 1989. In 1929, Dali
joined the Surrealist movement.
He was an outrageous and
eccentric personality. For
example, at the opening of a
Surrealist exhibition in London
in 1936, Dali appeared in a
diving suit. Throughout his
lifetime, Dali's extravagant and
humorous behavior generated wide
publicity, eventually securing
him celebrity status. However in
1942 André Breton officially
expelled Dali from the
Surrealist movement because of
this self-promoting activity.
The titles of Dali's two
autobiographies tell us much
about his personality. They are
called
The Secret Life of Salvador
Dali, published
in 1942, and
Diary of a Genius, published in 1965.
Although Dali garnered attention
through his provocative exploits
and theatrical behavior, his
paintings were central to the
development of the Surrealist
aesthetic. Dali's ambition was
to "materialize images of
concrete irrationality with the
most imperialist fury of
precision." Dali painted images
from a dream world in such
exacting clarity and meticulous
detail that viewers feel they
are entering a hallucinatory
landscape. He called these
paintings
hand-painted dream photographs.
They contain strange and bizarre
juxtapositions of objects, and
the transformation of one form
into another form. For example,
objects we know as hard and
solid appear soft and malleable.
Or inanimate objects appear
alive and conscious. It's as
though the normal laws of
physics no longer apply to the
people and objects in Dali's
created world, much like the
irrational and unpredictable
world of the dream. We'll see
many of these strange
transformations in Dali's
painting
The Persistence of Memory,
but first, we
suggest listening to a short
interpretive
sound composition that
evokes the essence of
Surrealism.
Verbal description of
The Persistence of Memory
This painting is a horizontal
rectangle and is only slightly
larger than a piece of printer
paper.
The setting for this painting is
a rather bleak landscape. We see
a sandy beach in the foreground
and middle ground that appears
dark, like it's in shadow. The
beach stretches toward the
background, where it eventually
reaches a body of still water,
probably a lake or ocean. This
body of water meets the horizon
line. The sky above the horizon
is featureless, with no clouds,
sun, birds, or anything. On the
painting's upper-right side,
there are jagged, rocky cliffs
extending down into the water.
In the left foreground, there is
a large rectangular form, like a
solid box, serving as a table.
In the middle ground, directly
in front of us, there is a
strange organic form, which at
first glance appears to be an
animal lying on its side. Then
we realize the form doesn't look
like anything we've ever seen
before. Four pocket watches are
placed in this strange scene,
three of them appearing to melt
into soft, malleable shapes.
The natural illumination in the
painting tells us the time of
day is either late afternoon
around dusk or early morning
around dawn. We know this
because the band of yellowish
light near the horizon line
tells us the sun is just below
the horizon line. The foreground
is relatively dark compared to
the distant horizon line. The
colors in the painting are dark
brown in the foreground sand,
yellow in the rocky cliffs and
horizon line, and aqua blue in
the sky, the thin sliver of
water in the background, and
three of the four watches.
There are very few objects in
this painting. Most of them are
quite strange. This strangeness
contributes to the mystery of
the landscape. Let's consider
these objects. First, there's a
box-like rectangular form in the
lower-left portion of the
painting. On top of it are two
watches and a dark, dead tree
trunk standing straight up. One
of the watches drapes over the
edge of the box. Part of the
watch rests on the top surface
of it, and part of it drapes
down over the right side. The
watch looks as though it's made
of melting wax and is beginning
to lose its solid form. Another
way to describe it is to think
of the round pocket watch as a
limp pancake hanging over the
side of a table. Another watch
is placed on the top of the box
with its face down. This means
we cannot see the numbers or the
hands of the face. Instead, we
see the gold casing of the back
of the watch. This watch is
orange, and black ants are
crawling over the surface of it.
The ants appear to be feeding on
the watch as though it's organic
and edible.
A third watch is draped over a
limb of the dead tree. Like the
melting watch on the box, this
hanging watch is also pliable
and limp. Imagine it as a
pancake folded over the limb and
hanging down. The watch's face
is toward us and its back is to
the limb. We can see the numbers
three through nine. We can see
the hand on the watch and it
points to the number six. But we
cannot tell whether it's the
minute or hour hand.
Behind the tree and near the
water's edge is a flat board.
It's not clear why the board is
there or what it means. In the
center of the painting is a
large, fleshy, animal-like
creature with the fourth watch
draped over it. The creature is
grayish and seems to be lying on
top of a rock. This creature is
stretched horizontally across
the sand. It's a soft, pliable
form. The creature's head is on
our left, and its tail is on our
right. We see its profile, which
faces the painting's lower edge.
The head has a human-like nose
and long eyelashes. The head
appears to be a distorted human
profile. We can recognize a
tongue, which hangs out of its
mouth, eyelashes, and a closed
eyelid. The body of the creature
appears smooth and featureless,
as though it's a cross between a
fish, a dolphin, and a human.
This animal-like form shows no
signs of life. This figure is an
example of metamorphosis, a
device Dali and other
Surrealists used to merge human,
vegetal, and animal forms into a
single unit. It occurs often in
Dali's work.
Insights and analysis
Each object in
The Persistence of Memory
is painted with
exactitude and is very
recognizable. But this scene
would not be found in real life.
Such a combination of objects
comes from the dream world.
Everything looks real in the
painting. Yet we know that it
cannot be real. This deliberate
confusion of real and imagined
is central to the premise of
Surrealism. In earlier periods
of western art it is possible to
find isolated examples of this
kind of imagery. But Surrealism
is the first time these ideas
are cogently expressed as an
attempt to represent the
unconscious mind.
As in a dream, these strange
combinations of elements have
the power to evoke feelings and
psychological states not
normally available to us in
everyday experience. Consider
the experience of this painting.
The viewer must pass through the
more sinister foreground and
middle ground to reach the
serene background of this
painting. In the background, the
cliffs in the water are very
beautiful, but they show no form
of life. There is no movement on
these cliffs. The water is also
absolutely still. There are no
waves in the water, and the
image of the cliffs is clearly
reflected on the water's
surface. It's serene and
peaceful in the background, and
there is no evidence of human
presence.
The foreground and middle
ground, however, do show
evidence of humans. The large
rectangular box-like form. The
flat board at the edge of the
water. And the clocks of course.
But why is the tree dead? Why
are there no plants or grasses
growing in this barren place?
Why has measured time, signaled
by the watches, stopped and
melted? Why do the ants seem to
be feeding on one of the
watches? Why are insects the
only active creatures in this
landscape? And what is the
animal-like or humanoid form in
the center of the painting? Why
are the watches so large in
comparison to the dead tree and
the animal-like, humanoid form?
There are no answers to these
questions. The world of this
painting is ruled by an
irrational order. It is
disquieting and haunting. We
return to the painting again and
again to try to figure out the
puzzle. But, as in a dream, no
solution is offered.
 Art
History Through Touch and Sound
|
