Urban Legends - Salvador Dali: Painting the Subconscious
Artistic innovation and the shattering of orthodox methods of expression through one’s work has forever been a path to the abstract. The legendary Catalonian painter Salvador Dali was able to venture down that daring path with great success. But in order to understand such a complex individual, one must first get a grasp of the Bohemian art that preceded and coincided with his rise.
In the early 20th Century, many of the world’s best known painters, poets, writers, film makers, photographers, etc. were heavily involved in the Dada movement. The principals of this movement were anchored by Anti-Art: The rejection of conventional art by embracing chaos and challenging the aesthetics of the time. This avant-garde group of artists included photographer Man Ray, the painter/sculptor Marcel Duchamp, and poet Jacques Baron.
Based out of Paris, France, Surrealism, whose artists completely voided censorship in their works, was naturally a component of and the de-facto successor of Dada. It was founded in 1921 by French writer Andre Breton. This revolution aimed at illustrating - through the various forms of literary and visual arts, alternate/dreamlike realities and merging entities never thought to have belonged together.
Salvador Dali was born on May 11th 1904 in the Figueres section of Catalonia, Spain. As a teenager he attend Municipal Drawing School and during a family summer vacation to the residence of Ramon Pichot, a painter from the same area who traveled to Paris frequently, is when it is believed Dali discovered modern painting (1916). 1919 marked the first time Dali had his work publicly displayed at the Municipal Theater in Figueres. It was obvious from the beginning that the young artist had an immense amount of talent. Word of it had even reached the great painter Pablo Picasso well before they met in person in 1926. In 1929, he officially joined the Surrealists even though his works had already been influenced by the movement.
Two years later Dali completed by far his most well known painting: “The Persistence of Memory (1931).” Here he ventured into a bizarre world of intrinsic symbols and the subconscious. Influenced by Sigmund Freud’s brand of psychology and Einstein’s theory of relativity, Dali was considered omnivorous in the respect that he adopted ideas from many art styles and various natural/social scientific fields. Since 1934, the painting has belonged to the Museum of Modern Art. People were taken by the melting clocks (gravity affecting time) and the cliffs which resembled the Pyrenees Mountain range between France and Spain meeting the ocean.
You can also argue that the 3-dimensional quadrilaterals on the left was influenced by Dali’s interest in Geometry and Cubism art. This is supported by later paintings but particularly the hypercube crucifixion of Jesus in “Corpus Hypercubus (1954).” Here, Dali painted a series of cubes which formed a three dimensional cross suspended in mid air with Christ in a net of a hypercube at the front of the cross. In the lower left of the painting, Gala (Elenais Ivanovna Diakonova), whom Dali married in 1929, stood watching.
The same year, Dali revisited his 1931 masterpiece with “The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory” which much like the title implies, is a disintegrated version of the original with the landscape flooded and separated into rectangular plates, and the mountains floating above the water.
Among the motifs in Dali’s work are elephants with extremely long limbs carrying an obelisks on their backs. This is seen in “The Temptation of St. Anthony (1946)” and “The Elephants (1948).” The obelisks were inspired by the the “Pulcino della Minerva” in Rome, Italy. It was sculpted by Gian Lorenzo Bernini.
Dali also collaborated with Walt Disney in 1945 on the short animated film “Destino.” It wouldn’t release until 2003. He also worked with Alfred Hitchcock on a dream sequence in the film “Spellbound.”
He went on to complete many more paintings that garnered further fame and profit throughout the years. In 1982 he was given the title of Marquis of Pubol by King Juan Carlos of Spain who admired him.
Still, Dali’s eccentric behavior during the second half of his life didn’t sit well with critics and many of his contemporaries. It is believed he could’ve went on to achieve greater goals with his talents. Despite being well documented, there is still, nearly 20 years after his death (1/23/89), an intrigue about Dali as his life remains an enigma.
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