РефератыИностранный языкOnOn Salvador Dali Essay Research Paper Salvador

On Salvador Dali Essay Research Paper Salvador

On Salvador Dali Essay, Research Paper


Salvador Dali, was born Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dali i


Domenech at 8:45 a.m., Monday, 11 May 1904, in the small


town, in the foothills of the Pyrenees, of Figueres, Spain,


approximately sixteen miles from the French border in the


principality of Catalonia. His parents supported his talent


and built him his first studio, while he was still a child,


in their summer home. Dali went on to attend the San


Fernando Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid, Spain, was married


to Gala Eluard in 1934 and died on 23 January 1989 in a


hospital in the town he born.


Dali did not limit himself to one particular style or


medium. Beginning with his early impressionistic work going


into his surrealistic works, for which he is best known, and


ending in what is known as his classic period, it becomes


apparent just how varied his styles and mediums are. He


worked with oils, watercolors, drawings, sculptures,


graphics and even movies.


Dali held his first one-man show in Barcelona in 1925


where his talents were first recognized. He became


internationally known when some of his paintings were shown


in the Carnegie International Exhibition in Pittsburgh in


1928. The next year he joined the Paris Surrealist Group


and began his love affair with Gala who became more than


just his lover, she was his business manager, muse and


greatest inspiration.


Surrealism emerged from what was left of Dada in the


early 1920?s and unlike Dada, a nihilistic movement,


Surrealism held a promising and more positive view of art


and because of this won many converts. It began as a


literary movement in a Paris magazine. What they held in


common was their belief in the importance of the unconscious


mind and its manifestations, as was stressed by Freud. They


believed that through the unconscious mind a plethora of


artistic imagery would be unveiled. Both of these movements


were also anti-establishment and they rejected the


traditional Western Judeo-Christian beliefs and moral values


and believed that reason and logic had failed man?s quest


for self-knowledge. The Surrealists differed from Dada in


one other, ideological aspect. The Surrealists believed


that man could indeed improve the human condition, the major


difference between the two movements.


A few years before his marriage to Gala in 1934, Dali


emerged as a leader of the Surrealist Movement. Although


Dali was intrigued with the Surrealist technique of


automatism, in which the artist with pen and ink let his


hand move quickly over the paper and let their thought


through to the paper without allowing their minds to control


those thoughts, he had already laid his foundation for his


own Surrealistic art in his youth through his


paranoiac-critical method. This contribution of his was an


alternate manner in which to view or perceive reality. It


was no new concept; it could be traced back to Leonardo da


Vinci and his practice of staring at stains on walls,


clouds, streams, etc. and seeing different figures in them.


Everyone who goes cloud watching uses this technique. Dali,


however gave this method a different twist.


Dali linked his paranoiac-critical method, the ability


to look at any object and see another, with paranoia, which


was characterized then by chronic delusions and


hallucinations. Dali himself was not paranoid but was able


to place himself in paranoid states. In one of his more


famous statements he said, ?The only difference between


myself and a madman is that I am not mad.? He was able to


look at reality and dream of new ideas and paint them, which


he called his ?hand-painted dream photographs.? Through his


paranoiac-critical method, Dali was able to look at everyday


objects and attach a subjective meaning based on his


obsessions, phobias and conflicts. The result was a new,


imaginative visual presentation of reality.


By the forties, however, Dali began his move from


Surrealism into what he called his classic era. This is the


area I will be focusing on in paper when discussing several


of his artworks. Just before World War II, Dali and his

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wife fled from Europe to the United States. They spent the


next decade in the States where Dali went through a


metamorphosis of sorts. He gave his first major


retrospective exhibit at The Museum of Modern Art in New


York and soon afterward he published his autobiography, The


Secret Life of Salvador Dali. He began his series of


eighteen large canvasses.


One of the better known of these works is The


Hallucinogenic Toreador. In this work Dali incorporated


many elements from his Catalan culture, the toreador himself


and the bull, his Catholic upbringing, the angels in the


back of the arena, some of his artistic influences, the


sculptures of the Venus de Milo found throughout the work


and the face of his wife floating in the upper left hand


corner. There are also allusions to earlier works, the bust


of Voltaire is present which alludes to The Slave Market


with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire, the little boy in


the right hand corner is a recurring theme in his works and


is representative of his own childhood, another recurring


theme is the dog found beneath the veil that is formed by


the surface of the lake. This painting is full of double


images, the sculptures becoming the toreador, the dog in the


lake, the blood on the bull?s back becoming the flies, the


rock face serving as the banderillas that pierced the bull.


This work is full of Dali and he himself referred to it as


?All Dali in one Painting.?


Another work I wish to speak of is an earlier one,


which I mentioned earlier, The Slave Market with the


Disappearing Bust of Voltaire. This painting, as did The


Hallucinogenic Toreador, displays a variety of double


images. His wife Gala is the woman sitting at the table


on which sits the bust of Voltaire. The background allows


the bust to be seen as a pair of women from the seventeenth


century with a pair of beggars at their side. The bowl too


shares the same kind of phenomena. It appears empty now,


the pear that was in the bowl is now a part of the mountain


in the horizon in the background. Again, this work proves


how powerful the hallucinatory force is. Dali?s


paranoiac-critical method proves to be very effective but it


also proves to be what ultimately led him away from


Surrealism and into his new form of classic art.


The third and final artwork I will touch upon is Old


Age, Adolescence, Infancy (The Three Ages). This work was


completed around the same time as The Slave Market with the


Disappearing Bust of Voltaire. This painting as well is a


primary example of shift away from Surrealism. There are


the three ages depicted, old age on the left, adolescence in


the center and infancy on the right. Again the dualism is


rampant in this work. Everyday objects and people are


perceived different than what they really are; they become


something or someone totally different. There are also


recurring themes present such as the little boy, Dali in his


childhood. This particular work is officially considered a


work of surrealism but Dali?s shift from Surrealism through


the very means that got him into surrealism,


paranoiac-critical method, are apparent.


Around the time Dali was working on his eighteen large


canvases, he returned to his Catholic upbringing and renewed


his vows with Gala in Spain. In 1974 Dali opened the Teatro


Museo Dali in the town in which he grew up, Figueres. Gala


died in 1982 and Dali?s health began to fail. There was


later a fire in Gala?s castle in which Dali was severely


and consequently his health deteriorated further. Two years


later he had a pacemaker implanted and spent his life almost


in total seclusion. On 23 January 1989, Salvador Felipe


Jacinto Dali i Domenech died in a hospital in Figueres


because of heart failure and respiratory complications.


Bibliography


Dali, Salvador. English translation by Haakon M. Chevalier. The Secret Life of


Salvador Dali. New York, NY: 1942.


De La Croix, Horst, Richard G. Tansey, Diane Kirkpatrick. Art Through The Ages.


Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers; New York, NY: 1991.


Moorhouse, Paul. Dali. Brompton Books Corporation; New York, NY: 1993.

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