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
<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.