Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, 1st Marquis of Púbol (May 11, 1904 – January 23, 1989), was a Spanish surrealist painter born in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain. Dalí was a skilled draftsman, best known for the striking and bizarre images in his surrealist work. His painterly skills are often attributed to the influence of Renaissance masters.[1][2] His best known work, The Persistence of Memory, was completed in 1931. Salvador Dalí's artistic repertoire also included film, sculpture, and photography. He collaborated with Walt Disney on the Academy Award-nominated short cartoon Destino, which was released posthumously in 2003. He also collaborated with Alfred Hitchcock on Hitchcock's film Spellbound.
Dalí insisted on his "Arab lineage", claiming that his ancestors were descended from the Moors who occupied Southern Spain for nearly 800 years (711-1492), and attributed to these origins, "my love of everything that is gilded and excessive, my passion for luxury and my love of oriental clothes."[3]
Widely considered to be greatly imaginative, Dalí had an affinity for doing unusual things to draw attention to himself. This sometimes irked those who loved his art as much as it annoyed his critics, since his eccentric manner sometimes drew more public attention than his artwork.[4] The purposefully-sought notoriety led to broad public recognition and many purchases of his works by people from all walks of life.
La persistencia de la memoria (1931) or The Persistence of Memory is one of the most famous paintings by artist Salvador Dalí. The painting has also been popularly known as Soft Watches, Droopy Watches, The Persistence of Time or Melting Clocks.
The well-known surrealistic piece introduced the image of the soft melting pocket watch. It epitomizes Dalí's theory of 'softness' and 'hardness', which was central to his thinking at the time.
Although fundamentally part of Dalí's Freudian phase, the imagery predicts his transition to the scientific phase, which occurred after the dropping of the atomic bomb in 1945.
It is possible to recognize a human figure in the middle of the composition, in the strange "monster" that Dalí used in several period pieces to represent himself - the abstract form becoming something of a self portrait, reappearing frequently in his work.
In general the tree means life, but, in this case, it has the same function as the rest of the elements in the picture: to impress anxiety and, in a certain way, terror, although it is likely that it was conceived as a functional element on which to drape one of the watches. The golden cliffs in the upper right hand corner are reminiscent of Dalí's homeland, Catalonia, and are derived from the rocks and cliffs at Cape Creus, where the Pyrenees meet the sea.
Although fundamentally part of Dalí's Freudian phase, the imagery predicts his transition to the scientific phase, which occurred after the dropping of the atomic bomb in 1945.
It is possible to recognize a human figure in the middle of the composition, in the strange "monster" that Dalí used in several period pieces to represent himself - the abstract form becoming something of a self portrait, reappearing frequently in his work.
In general the tree means life, but, in this case, it has the same function as the rest of the elements in the picture: to impress anxiety and, in a certain way, terror, although it is likely that it was conceived as a functional element on which to drape one of the watches. The golden cliffs in the upper right hand corner are reminiscent of Dalí's homeland, Catalonia, and are derived from the rocks and cliffs at Cape Creus, where the Pyrenees meet the sea.
Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) was painted in 1954 by Salvador Dalí, and depicts the crucified Jesus upon the net of a hypercube. Gala (Dalí's wife), is the figure in the bottom left, who stands looking up to the crucified Jesus. The scene is depicted in front of the Bay of Port Lligat.[2][3]
On Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening (1944)The painting depicts a woman (Gala) sleeping while sunbathing naked during a calm day on rocks floating over the sea, possibly at Port Lligat.[1] [2] An elephant with incredibly long, extremely thin legs walks across the sea's horizon while carrying an obelisk. Near the woman float two drops of water and a small pomegranate.[1] From a larger pomegranate comes a fish that spews a tiger from which comes another tiger, while in front of that second tiger a bayonet points at the woman.
The bayonet, as a symbol of the stinging bee, may thus represent the woman's abrupt awakening from her otherwise peaceful dream. This is an example of Sigmund Freud's influence on surrealist art and Dali's attempts to explore the world of dreams in a dreamscape.[2]
The bee around the smaller pomegranate is repeated symbolically. The two tigers represent the body of the bee (yellow with black stripes) and the bayonet its stinger. The fish may represent the bee's eyes, because of similarity of the fish's scaly skin with the scaly complex eyes of bees.
The elephant is a distorted version of a well-known sculpture by Bernini that's located in Rome.[3] The smaller pomegranate floats between two droplets which may symbolize Venus, especially because of the heart-shaped shadow it casts.[3] It may also be used as a Christian symbol of fertility and resurrection.[1] This female symbolism may contrast with the phallic symbolism of the threatening creatures.[3]
The bee around the smaller pomegranate is repeated symbolically. The two tigers represent the body of the bee (yellow with black stripes) and the bayonet its stinger. The fish may represent the bee's eyes, because of similarity of the fish's scaly skin with the scaly complex eyes of bees.
The elephant is a distorted version of a well-known sculpture by Bernini that's located in Rome.[3] The smaller pomegranate floats between two droplets which may symbolize Venus, especially because of the heart-shaped shadow it casts.[3] It may also be used as a Christian symbol of fertility and resurrection.[1] This female symbolism may contrast with the phallic symbolism of the threatening creatures.[3]
It has also been suggested that the painting is "a surrealist interpretation of the Theory of Evolution."[4]
In 1962, Dalí said his painting was intended "to express for the first time in images Freud's discovery of the typical dream with a lengthy narrative, the consequence of the instantaneousness of a chance event which causes the sleeper to wake up. Thus, as a bar might fall on the neck of a sleeping person, causing them to wake up and for a long dream to end with the guillotine blade falling on them, the noise of the bee here provokes the sensation of the sting which will awaken Gala." [1]
A short, alternate title for the painting is "Sting Caused by the Flight of a Bee."[2] The painting and the phenomenon of sleep paralysis inspired the Dredg album El Cielo.[5]
La desintegración de la persistencia de la memoria or The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory (oil on canvas, c. 1952 to 1954), is a painting by the Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí. It is an oil on canvas re-creation of the artist's famous 1931 work The Persistence of Memory, and measures a diminutive 25.4 × 33 cm.
In this version, the landscape from the original work has been flooded with water. Disintegration depicts what is occurring both above and below the water's surface. The landscape of Cadaqués is now hovering above the water. The plane and block from the original is now divided into brick-like shapes that float in relation to each other, with nothing binding them, the tree from which the soft watch hangs being similarly segmented. The hands of the soft watches float above their dials, with several pointed objects resembling rhinoceros horns floating in parallel formations encircling the watches. The distorted human visage from the original painting is beginning to morph into another of the strange fish floating above it. However, to Dali, the fish was a symbol of life.[citation needed]
To Dalí, this image was symbolic of the psychological effect that the advent of the atomic bomb had on humanity.[citation needed] It will be noted that the imagery of The Persistence of Memory can be read as a representation of Einstein's Theory of Relativity, symbolizing the warping of time by gravity; Einstein's equations lay at the core of the science of nuclear reaction, which presumably inspired Dali to revisit this particular work.
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