Salvador Dali and Surrealism - Research Paper Example

assignment is due Salvador Dali is one of the greatest artists of all periods. Hewas a skilled artist who created extraordinary paintings that were Surrealist works. His paintings contained weird and striking images that have hidden meaning. His paintings highlighted one or more themes that are generally not easy to comprehend. His skills and works appear to have influence from the Renaissance artists. He was a good photographer too. He had fellowship with artists of different media. The Persistence of Memory is considered as the masterpiece of Salvador Dali Salvador Dali is a well known Surrealist artist. Surrealism is a typical artistic movement that made researchers, thinkers and artists explore the expression of the unconscious. Surrealism attempted to establish a new social order, giving a new definition for mankind. Surrealism is an artistic style and a cultural movement. It makes use of the visual imagery hidden in the subconscious mind to prepare art works that is not associated with logical comprehensibility. Surrealism is related to the psychoanalytical works of Sigmund Freud and Jung. Giorgio de Chirico, René Magritte and Man Ray are few of the famous artists who were part of the Surrealist movement. Salvador Dali is the advocate of Surrealism. His works like The Persistence of Time and Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening are typical examples of his works. The Persistence of Time is a celebrated painting of Salvador Dali. This seminal work of surrealistic art was created by Dali in 1931. The Persistence of Time is deemed as one of the most recognizable icon of the Surrealist movement. This painting is an excellent exhibition of the artist’s deep thoughts on hardness and softness, which was the topic of his works during those periods. The Persistence of Time is otherwise known as The Persistence of Memory, Melting Clocks, Droopy Watches and Soft Watches. The imagery of this painting is often recognized as an illustration of General Theory of Relativity of Albert Einstein in which gravitational force attempt to distort time. The image of the soft melting pocket watch predicts the artist’s transition into the scientific phase that happened after the atom bomb incident of 1945. In The Persistence of Time the orange clock at the bottom is covered by ants. The artist often includes ants in his paintings to symbolize death. A clock is hung on a tree. The idea for this painting appeared in Dali’s mind as an intuition while he was at home on a hot summer day. As he has had his meals his eyes got struck in some leftover half eaten Camembert cheese, which was got melt because of the heat of the day. This made him think for a theme for a painting when he saw a strange dream of clocks melting on a landscape. Dali was already working on a painting of plain landscape with an image of a tree on a platform and rocky mountains in the background. Dali the highly gifted painted the melting pocket watches in the painting. This made the painting acquire a strange meaning that made it the iconic image it is today. The Persistence of Time speaks of the eternal theme of time and the morality of everything else. The painting expresses the limitation of existence of the world with regard to the boundary of time. This beautiful theme made the painting famous even though it doesn’t involve any complex figures. The meaning of time, how we use time, what is actually means and where it busily runs is a mystery till today. The ants crawling over the watch highlights the theme of death and decay, the non-stop cycle of life and death. The decaying clocks and the strange theme it conveys make the painting extraordinary. The clocks appear to melt over branches and rigid surfaces, ants attack a pocket watch, and a vague face hovers in the background. The background of painting resembles the rocky landscape of Port Lligat in Catalonia, Spain, which is the native place of the artist. The Persistence of Time is a well-crafted hallucination, with the fascinating yet distorted details of a dream. The Persistence of Memory has been subjected to various types of interpretation related to its symbolic theme. The components, especially the decaying watches, of the painting have been given numerous symbolic interpretations. The face in the background is said to be Dalí himself, and the ants are interpreted as death, destruction and decay. The melting clocks speak out that the regimented time is a non-original concept that is unable to withstand the real power of the universe behind. The decaying shapeless watches refer to Einsteins theory according to which the world is a spatio-temporal continuum with the concept of time and space constantly changing. The three open and vulnerable watches, which show the past, present, and the future are within orthogonals which point to the top center of the painting that indirectly represents the eternal world. The fourth watch, which is hard and closed, has been recognized as a feminine symbol. The watch in the foreground is vital red, while the middle ground watch is softened to orange and the one in the background is a lifeless gray. The hands on the flaccid watches are the traditional medical-scientific sign for male. Ants often represent putrefaction and decay. In The Persistence of Memory, the rigid watch is attacked by scavenger ants. This shows the gradual changes of the inorganic into organic; inorganic materials are also vulnerable. However the watch is closed and red with life which shows that the ants are not successful in attacking and destroying it. This shows the triumph over death and decay through procreation or immortality, which is a theological concept. Christian symbology would interpret the The Persistence of Time as a manifestation of death, decay and future resurrection and immortality. The painting otherwise represents the world of mortality and the world of immortality. Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening is yet another eye-catching work of Salvador Dali. This work is an oil on canvas painting prepared in 1944. The long title of the painting helps us understand the content and subject of the painting. The theme of the painting originated from a dream. According to Dali, the painting is an illustration of the theory of Sigmund Freud which says that an external stimulus is the chief cause of a dream. The painting shows a naked woman (Gala) sunbathing on rocks that float in sea. An elephant with thin long legs moves to the scene carrying an obelisk. A pomegranate and two drops of water float near the woman. From the big pomegranate a fish comes which delivers a tiger. A second tiger also jumps into the scene. Near the second tiger e find a bayonet pointed to the woman. According to Dali his painting explains Freud’s concept of a dream with a lengthy narrative in which sudden events makes the sleeper get up. Suddenly a bar will fall on the sleeping person, making her get up. The painting illustrates the idea of Freud. The painting is also considered as a surrealist interpretation of the evolution theory. References Dawn Ades, Dali and Surrealism, N.Y., 1982. Whitney Chadwick, Myth in Surrealist Painting, 1929-1939, Ann Arbor, 1980. Read More