The Persistence of Memory

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 522.

The Persistence of Memory (1931) ranks as one of the most famous paintings of the 20th century. A surrealist, Dalí referred to his work as “hand-painted dream photographs,” and claimed that his imagery often came directly from his own dreams. The strange form in this painting's foreground, however, is based on an image from Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights (about 1505-1510). Dreams, according to Freud, were the royal road to studying the unconscious, because it is in dreams that our unconscious, primal desires manifest themselves.

What feelings and emotions do these pictures evoke in you?

III. Let us trace back the life and shaping of the creative mind of one of the greatest and most eccentric painters of all times.

Salvador Felip Jacint Dalí Domènech (May 11, 1904 – January 23, 1989) was an important Spanish painter, best known for his surrealist works. Dalí's work is noted for its striking combination of bizarre dreamlike images with excellent draftsmanship and painterly skills influenced by the Renaissance masters. Dalí was an artist of great talent and imagination. He had an admitted love of doing unusual things to draw attention to himself, which sometimes irked those who loved his art as much as it annoyed his critics, since his eccentric theatrical manner sometimes overshadowed his artwork in public attention.

Dalí's politics

Dalí has sometimes been portrayed as a fascist supporter, especially by his enemies in surrealist groups. The reality is probably somewhat more complex, especially in light of the fact that he was an acquaintance of famed architect and designer Paul Laszlo. In his youth Dalí embraced for a time both anarchism and communism. His writings account various anecdotes of making radical political statements more to shock listeners than from any deep conviction. When he fell into the circle of mostly Marxist surrealists who denounced as enemies the monarchists on one hand and the anarchists on the other, Dalí explained to them that he personally was an anarcho-monarchist.

With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Dalí fled from fighting and refused to align himself with any group.Dalí became closer to the Franco regime after his return to Catalonia after World War II. Some of Dalí's statements supported the repression of Franco's Fascist regime, congratulating Franco for his actions aimed "at clearing Spain of destructive forces". Dalí sent telegrams to Franco, praising him for signing death warrants for political prisoners. Dalí even painted a portrait of Franco's daughter. Dalí's eccentricities were tolerated by the Franco regime, since not many world-famous artists would accept living in Spain. One of Dalí's few possible bits of open disobedience was his continued praise of Federico García Lorca even in the years when Lorca's works were banned.

Dalí produced over 1,510 paintings in his career, in addition to producing illustrations for books, lithographs, designs for theater sets and costumes, a great number of drawings, dozens of sculptures, and various other projects, including an animated cartoon for Disney.

Dali`s quotations

· "The only difference between myself and a madman is that I am not mad."

· "The only difference between me and the Surrealists is that I am a Surrealist"

· "At the age of six years I wanted to be a chef. At the age of seven I wanted to be Napoleon. My ambitions have continued to grow at the same rate ever since."

· "Every morning when I wake up, I experience an exquisite joy – the joy of being Salvador Dalí – and I ask myself in rapture: What wonderful things this Salvador Dalí is going to accomplish today?"

· "I tried sex once with a woman and that woman was Gala. It was overrated. I tried sex once with a man and that man was the famous juggler Federico Garcia Lorca [the Spanish Surrealist poet]. It was very painful."

· "What is important is to spread confusion, not eliminate it."

July 2004: Salvador Dalí: a Genius?

	By Sabrina Laurent July 2004 Table of Contents | July 2004 Cover   As we celebrate the 100th anniversary of Salvador Dalí's birth, it seems important to put an end to the controversy that has surrounded his work for the past decades. While Dalí remains one of the most famous painters of the 20th century, some people have been wondering whether or not he was really a genius. They see him as a fraud, a pseudo-artist who received more attention than what he deserved, thus questioning the artistic value of his work. This idea, which may shock those who have always considered Dalí a great painter, is often reinforced by the fact that most of us do not understand the meaning of Dalí's work. Some find it profound and original, others firnd it too extravagant and ridiculous. The artist himself is often seen either as a genius, a master of Surrealism or, on the other hand, as an eccentric, ego-centered man on the verge of madness. In any case, Dalí does not leave anyone indifferent. In order to fully understand the works of Dalí, it is necessary to understand the life and personality of the artist. It is only in the light of certain facts that we can truly judge Dalí's genius and deliver it from the many prejudices and clichés that have spoiled it. Context and Facts Salvador Dalí was born on May 11th, 1904, in Figueras, a small Catalan town in northeast Spain, in a bourgeois family. He grew up surrounded by the affection of women: his mother, his sister Ana Maria, his aunts and his grandmother all spoiled young Salvador who soon developed phobias (such as his phobia of crickets) and a certain feeling of culpability towards his brother, also named Salvador, who died at the age of two, nine months exactly before the birth of the Salvador we know. Click Here to Order Dalí's Optical Illusions As an adolescent and a young adult, Salvador accumulated more phobias and anxieties, particularly related to his sexuality. In the meantime, Salvador also revealed an incredible talent for drawing and painting. An anarchist, he read many books on psychology, philosophy and politics. Rejected by his schoolmates because of his intellectual, precocious interests and his dandy-like attitude, Salvador reacted by emphasizing his originality and became more and more extravagant. Another event profoundly shocked young Salvador; his beloved mother died of cancer when he was only 17, a trauma from which he never recovered. Salvador was also disturbed by the remarriage of his father with the sister of his deceased mother. This combination of events profoundly marked his work as an artist. Was Dalí a Surrealist? First a Cubist, Dalí officially joined the Surrealist group in Paris, in 1929. If one ever wondered whether Salvador Dalí was truly a Surrealist or not, it is important to point out that Dalí fully represented Surrealism, and not only because of the peculiar elements that populate his compositions. In fact, each of those elements has a signification and appears in the composition for a particular reason. Those elements are symbols, they are the pieces of a puzzle - Salvador's psyche. Dalí was a Surrealist because he used his dreams as a source of inspiration, which was a famous Surrealist technique. As such, Dalí's Surrealism was even more profound than that of some other Surrealist painters (such as René Magritte, for example) who relied more on peculiar combinations of elements and visual effects. It is essential to take into account the psychological symbolism and influence of Freud, which made Dalí's work particularly original and more profound than it may appear at first sight. Click Here to Order Dalí His surrealist power is reinforced by the realistic, classic shape of the elements depicted while combined in unexpected ways. Dalí used his gift for drawing to offer a pictorial representation of his psyche: memories, phobias, dreams, obsessions and more or less conscious feelings were all combined in an almost fantastic, unique composition. Many contemporary artists have tried to imitate Dalí's style, but very few have the artistic talent, vision and substance of the Spanish artist, and their work often results in a gloomy, fantasy style depiction of banal feelings, with very little to do with Surrealist technique and spirit.