Salvador Dali

2009-10-22T10:33:00.002-04:00

GLI Fahrenheit Oakleys

2009-10-20T13:40:00.002-04:00

This has nothing to do with Salvador Dali, but I needed someplace to post a picture.

2004-12-05T15:54:00.000-05:00

****MOST EXPLANATIONS OF THE PAINTINGS COME DIRECTLY FROM THE INTERNET****

2004-12-04T15:53:00.000-05:00

Classical influences are again most prevalent in this Masterwork. Dalí had many times painted still life works such as tabletops filled with fruit, fish or bread. But this work is particularly important because it shows some of these objects in motion, suggesting Dalí's themes of Nuclear Mysticism.
The knife in the center of the painting divides the work into several perfect sections, another reference to Dalí's obsession with classical methodology. The fruits in the upper right hand portion of the work are all in nuclear motion, as are one of the fruit bowls and the water spilling out of the decanter. A hand holds a rhinoceros horn on the left hand side of the work, while a cauliflower floret dominates the upper right hand section. All of these objects suggest the natural spiral shapes with which Dalí had become so obsessed.
The small, colorful bits in the lower center of the work represent, according to Dalí, the bits of matter that are left over from when he painted this work. Taken as a whole, this piece is an in-depth examination of the tenets expounded upon Dalí in his theories of Divisionism and Nuclear Mysticism. Dalí asserted that all matter was not at all like it seemed, but instead had attributes that even he was only able to guess at. As nuclear physics continued to mature, Dalí was somewhat 'vindicated' in these beliefs, once the true nature of matter began to be unveiled.

2004-12-01T15:49:00.000-05:00

Lapis-lazuli Corpuscular Assumption repeats several of the images seen in Raphaelesque Head Exploding (1951). The outline of the Pantheon can be seen, the top of which acts as a halo to Gala's head. Like the Madonna, Gala is exploding, her body delineated by the rhinoceros horns that swirl about the painting.
Above an altar is the figure of the crucified Christ. The model for Christ was a boy from Cadaqués called Juan whom the Dalís were very close to, treating him like an adopted son. The boy's body forms a triangle, a shape repeated by Gala's arms and head above. Dalí had a glass floor put in his studio so that he could look up or down on his models in order to recreate this perspective.
Dalí saw this painting as an interpretation of the philosopher Nietzsche's idea of natural strength, although here we have Gala as a "superwoman", ascending to heaven through her own innate force. In a later explanation of the work, Dalí wrote that Gala was rising to heaven with the aid of "anti-matter Angels". The painting can be interpreted as Gala's body either disintegrating or integrating.

2004-11-26T15:44:00.000-05:00

This painting can be considered as a companion piece to another work that Dalí had done many years before, namely The Persistence of Memory in which Dalí initially created the scene on which this painting is based.
The ochre colored plain of the ground, has been divided up into cubic shaped blocks, and the addition of the rhinoceros horns in the upper left-hand portion of the painting also refers to Dalí's fascination with the molecular world. The melting watches and landscape of Cadaqués make another appearance herein, and the addition of the fish serves as a witness to the event.
Dalí created this painting as a continuation of his themes of Nuclear Mysticism by applying a perspective of Divisionism to the original painting. Dalí painted this work to explore the effects of nuclear weaponry, asserting that the invention of such weaponry had a profound effect upon everyone on the planet, even those in the small fishing villages along the coastline of Spain.

2004-11-20T15:36:00.000-05:00

Dalí painted the portrait of his genial compatriot in California. It is interesting to compare it with his own Soft Self-Portrait with Grilled Bacon, painted six years earlier in the same place.
This portrait might be entitled Official Paranoiac Portrait of Pablo Picasso, because Dalí has assembled here all the folkloric elements that anecdotally depict the origins of the Andalusian painter. His renown is affirmed by his bust mounted on a pedestal, symbol of official consecration; the breasts depict Picasso's nutritious aspect while he carries on his head the heavy rock of the responsibility for the influence of his work on contemporary painting. The face itself is a mixture of a goat hoof and the headdress of the Greco-Iberian marble bust, the Lady of Elche, which brings to mind Andalusian and Malagan origins of Picasso. The Iberian folklore is finished off with a carnation, a jasmine flower, and the guitar. Speaking about the work of this Titan shortly after his death, Dalí said: "I believe that the magic in Picasso's work is romantic, in other words, the root of its upheaval, while mine can only be done by building on tradition. I am totally different from Picasso since he was not interested in beauty, but in ugliness and I, more and more, in beauty; but ugly beauty and beautiful beauty, in extreme cases of geniuses like Picasso and me, can be of an angelic type."

2004-11-19T15:33:00.000-05:00

Jour de la Vierge (Day of the Virgin) was painted in 1947, while Dalí and Gala were still living in the USA. Although the Second World War had been over for two years, they did not return to Spain or France until the following year. Under the dedication, Dalí has signed the painting as Salvador Dalí of Figueras.
In keeping with his religious subjects of the Forties and Fifties, this painting is of the Virgin Mary, this time in a traditional pose and holding baby Jesus in her arms. The Virgin Mary's face has also been painted in a traditional manner, with a calm, peaceful expression on her face, her eyes closed, smiling down at the baby Jesus. The traditional techniques and pose employed in Jour de la Vierge contrast with the later painting of The Sistine Madonna (1958).
The background of the painting is drawn in brown ink, a medium that Dalí often used. The landscape is that of Port Lligat, Dalí's home for many years. The Virgin Mary is painted in watercolor, her face, which reflects the colors of the stones that she stands upon, contrasts with the vivid blue of her dress, while this is mirrored in the one childlike cloud above her.

2004-11-17T15:28:00.000-05:00

Intra-Atomic Balance of a Swan's Feather, painted in 1947, like the painting Dematerialization Near the Nose of Nero, also painted in 1947, marks Dalí's interest in the emerging field of nuclear science and physics. This new interest was combined with his reawakened religious beliefs to produce what he termed "nuclear mysticism". The atomic bombings of Japan at the end of the Second World War had catalysed his conversion to this "nuclear mysticism". Since then, Dalí had been subscribing to scientific journals to ensure that he was aware of new developments within the scientific community. He wrote that since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, "the atom was my favorite food for thought".
Intra-Atomic Balance of a Swan's Feather is Dalí's interpretation of the splitting of the particles within atoms, and the forces of attraction and repulsion. In the painting, ten objects, some related some not, appear frozen, suspended in the air in front of a stone background. The swan's feather of the title floats down the painting, while above is the swans' head and to the left, its foot. The central image of the hand is painted realistically, the fingers reaching toward an inkwell beneath it.

2004-11-15T15:24:00.000-05:00

Dematerialization Near the Nose of Nero, while a good example of Dalí's "nuclear mystical" period, also evinces a more Classical style. With typical irony, Dalí wrote that "the two worst things that can happen to an ex-Surrealist today are, firstly, to become a mystic and secondly, to know how to draw. Both these forms of vigour have lately befallen me at one and the same time".
Against an Ampordan plain, a huge pomegranate has been spliced, like an atom, into two parts. Seeds spill out from the pomegranate, floating in the air between the two halves. A bust of Nero hovers above the dissected cube that houses the pomegranate. The bust itself has split into four parts, (or alternatively, the four parts are coming together to form a whole). Dalí's use of a Classical theme such as Nero is emphasized by the Classical architecture that hangs over Nero's head. However, it is not just the content that marks this painting's Classical style; the brushwork is meticulous, the depiction realistic and the balance within it also evokes the Classical style, while being at the same time Dalí's interpretation of atomic force.

2004-11-14T15:20:00.000-05:00

In this picture temptation appears to Saint Anthony successively in the form of a horse in the foreground representing strength, sometimes also the symbol of voluptuousness, and in the form of the elephant which follows it, carrying on its back the golden cup of lust in which a nude woman is standing precariously balanced on the fragile pedestal, a figure which emphasizes the erotic character of the composition. The other elephants are carrying buildings on their backs; the first of these is an obelisk inspired by that of Bernini in Rome, the second and third are burdened with Venetian edifices in the style of Palladio. In the background another elephant carries a tall tower which is not without phallic overtones, and in the clouds one can glimpse a few fragments of Escorial, symbol of temporal and spiritual order. The elephant theme appears several times in Dalí's works of this period: for example, in Atomica Melancholica of 1945 and Triumph of Dionysus of 1953.
This picture was painted in the studio that the artist occupied for a few days next to the Colony Restaurant in New York. It is the first and only time that he participated in a contest. It was an invitational artistic competition for a painting on the theme of the temptation of Saint Anthony, organized in 1946 by the Loew Lewin Company, a movie-producing firm. The winning picture was to figure in a film taken from the story "Bel Ami" by Maupassant. Eleven painters took part in the competition, among them Leonora Carrington, Dalí, Paul Delvaux, Max Ernst, and Dorothea Tanning. The prize was given to Max Ernst by a jury composed of Alfred Barr, Marcel Duchamp, and Sidney Janis. All these works were shown at an exhibition in Brussels and in Rome during 1947.

2004-11-13T15:13:00.000-05:00

This painting is dedicated to the Marquis de Cuevas, who was a patron of Dalí's for many years. The marquis was married to a Rockerfeller millionairess, so had plenty of available funds to back Dalí's projects. Saint George and the Dragon is painted in oil on ivory. This rather expensive form of canvas could be the reason for the diminutive size of the work, measuring only 3" x 4" (7.5 x 10 cm).
The frame is made from gold encrusted with seed pearls, and the corners are decorated with baguette-cut diamonds. Dalí regularly used precious jewels and metals in his work. He also liked to find unusual frames for his paintings, such as the gilt frame of Messenger in a Palladian Landscape.
A naked St. Georges is gripping on to the haunches of his horse while he is thrusting his lance into the open mouth of the dragon. The horse is lying on top of the dragon so that only the head of the beast can be seen. Around the horses neck is the dragon's tail, its claws digging into the side of the horse. The horse looks fierce, taking on some of the dragon's features as it grimaces in pain.

2004-11-11T15:06:00.000-05:00

"The two most energetic motors that make the artistic and superfine brain of Salvador Dalí function are, first, libido, or the sexual instinct, and, second, the anguish of death," affirms the painter; "not a single minute of my like passes without the sublime Catholic, apostolic, and Roman specter of death accompanying me even in the least important of my most subtle and capricious fantasies."
This painting was done in California at the end of the year 1940; the horrible face of war, its eyes filled with infinite death, was much more a reminiscence of the Spanish Civil Was than of the Second World War, which, at the time, had not yet provided a cortege of frightful images capable of impressing Dalí. He himself wrote in The Secret Life: "I was entering a period of rigor and asceticism which was going to dominate my style, my thoughts, and my tormented life. Spain in fire would light up this drama of the renaissance of aesthetics. Spain would serve as a holocaust to that post-war Europe tortured by ideological dramas, by moral and artistic anxieties... At one fell swoop, from the middle of the Spanish cadaver, springs up, half-devoured by vermin and ideological worms, the Iberian penis in erection, huge like a cathedral filled with the white dynamite of hatred. Bury and Unbury! Disinter and Inter! In order to unbury again! Such was the charnel desire of the Civil War in that impatient Spain. One would see how she was capable of suffering; of making others suffer, of burying and unburying, of killing and resurrecting. It was necessary to scratch the earth to exhume tradition and to profane everything in order to be dazzled anew by all the treasures that the land was hiding in its entrails." The horror of this picture is further increased by the brown tonalities which dominate its atmosphere. On the anecdotal sire, Dalí has stressed that it was the only work where one could see the true imprint of his hand on the canvas (at the lower right).

2004-11-10T15:04:00.000-05:00

This beautiful still life, depicting three slices of bread, a few crumbs, and a chess pawn, is a remarkable example of the way in which Dalí succeeds in adding an epic dimension to the most ordinary of everyday things. This picture was painted in Arcachon in the spring of 1940. Dalí has said about the "intervention, from an anecdotal point of view," of Marcel Duchamp in this oil: "Gala and I used to play chess every afternoon, at the same time that I was in the process of painting the slices of bread. I was trying to make the surface on which the rough crumbs of bread were placed very smooth. Often there were things scattered about on the floor for instance, the pawns. One day, instead of putting them all back in the box, one of them remained placed in the middle of the model of my still life. Afterwards we had to find another chess set in order to continue our games, because I was using this one and would not allow anyone to remove it." Pictures of bread occupy an important place in Dalí's work, not only in painting but also in objects, such as Retrospective Bust of a Woman. He himself has explained the presence of bread in his works when writing about one of his paintings of 1945, Basket of Bread, in the catalogue of an exhibition at the Bignou Gallery in New York: "My aim was to retrieve the lost technique of the painters of the past, to succeed in depicting the immobility of the pre-explosive object. Bread has always been one of the oldest subjects of fetishism and obsession in my work, the first and the one to which I have remained the most faithful. I painted the same subject nineteen years ago, The Basket of Bread. By making a very careful comparison of the two pictures, everyone can study all the history of painting right there, from the linear charm of primitivism to stereoscopic hyper-aestheticism."

2004-11-08T15:01:00.000-05:00

The concept of a still life placed in front of an architectural structure through which one glimpses a fragment of the landscape is one that Dalí has made use of frequently to show to advantage the bust of Voltaire by the sculptor Houdon, which disappears to give place to a group of people. This work was done in the United States at Arcachon in 1940, in which we find again the compotier of The Endless Enigma and Gala, who "by her patient love protected me from the ironic world crawling with slaves." Dalí means by this that he attributes to Gala's gaze the magic power of annihilating the image of Voltaire in order to protect him from any vestige of the skeptical French philosophy of the eighteen century and its consequences. Scientific American magazine in the December 1971 issue used a detail from the Slave Market with Disappearing Bust of Voltaire to demonstrate the physical structure of the perception system of sight in which the optical neurons reverse the images. While painting this picture, Dalí related in Dalí de Gala: "I kept reciting without ever stopping the poem of Joan Salvat Papasseit, 'Love and War, the Salt of the Earth.'" Salvat Papasseit was a Catalonian anarchist whom Dalí greatly admired. In Barcelona he was accused of having become an extreme rightist because the only thing he did was to apologize for the war at a time when everybody else had become pacifists.
This work exemplifies the caliber of paintings that Dalí was creating during this period. It is a perfect example of an instantaneous paranoiac-critical transformation. Dalí had long been experimenting with the idea of double imagery, and this work so perfectly exemplifies it that it was used by the cover of Scientific American in 1971 to illustrate the concept.
This work lets us experience Dalí's paranoiac-critical transformations in a unique and personal way. Any change in head position, or time itself, is expressed as a switch between the shifting images of the Dutch traders or the bust of French philosopher Voltaire.
The shirtless slave girl in the foreground is surmised to be Gala herself, overseeing the transaction. The faces, collars, and midriffs of the two Dutch merchants become the eyes, nose, and chin of the bust of Voltaire. Although the brain is unable to focus on both images simultaneously, they are blended together perfectly, and in such a way as to suggest a more subtle level of interaction.
The landscape of Catalonia makes another appearance here, and parts of it are made into a more subtle double image on the left side of the painting. Notice the gently downward sloping hill, nearest the building on the right, and how it also becomes a pear sitting in a fruit dish propped up on the table at which Gala is sitting. This is particularly interesting, since like many other double images, it incorporates parts of both background and foreground. Additionally, a plum sitting to the left of the pear also becomes the buttocks of one of the men who is standing there watching the scene.

2004-11-07T14:58:00.000-05:00

Another work which stands on the edge between Dalí's periods of Surrealism and Classicism. This painting is also very important for several other reasons, namely that it was the very first work to be purchased by Mr. and Mrs. A. Reynolds Morse, the renowned collectors of Dalí's art who founded the Salvador Dalí Museum, in St. Petersburg, Florida. When the Morses saw the painting at auction, they decided to purchase it, and felt that they had gotten quite a bargain. However, when they went to purchase the painting, they found that Dalí refused to sell the work without the original frame along with it. Apparently, Mr. Morse had only purchased the work itself, and actually had to pay more for the frame than for the painting! This anecdote is a good example of the way Dalí had matured, with Gala's help, into a shrewd businessman who was keenly aware of his value.
However, rather than being sour about the experience, which would have been understandable, the Morses instead started buying more and more works, and eventually became lifelong traveling companions and friends of the Dalí's. It was their efforts that gathered together nearly 100 oil paintings, hundreds of watercolors and drawings, and a vast archival library that now comprise the museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Each of the objects in the work itself is done in stunning detail. The scene is set upon an apocalyptic plain, and one immediately seems to get a feeling of dread or misgiving. Because Dalí intended this work to be an examination of the horrors of World War II that had now begun in earnest, Dalí fills the scene with allegorical references to that event.
In the upper left hand corner of the painting stands a cannon, propped up by a crutch which here symbolizes death and war. Out of the mouth of the cannon spill two distinct objects, the lower being a 'soft' or somewhat fluid biplane, and the other a white horse, galloping at a mad pace, its muscles and facial contortions suggesting power, speed and control.
The horse may symbolize one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and the events of 1940 in Europe could have certainly appeared Apocalyptical, especially to one as sensitive as Dalí. The soft airplane, and another nearby object, the winged victory figure, are symbolic of "victory born of a broken wing" as Dalí described it. Salvador felt that the use of air power would be the decisive element of the war, the very key to victory itself. History has shown that this is at least partially true.
Nearer the center of the painting is another soft figure, what Dalí calls a 'soft self-portrait', an image from other works long since past. Its decaying body is drooped over a dead tree, it has two inkwells propped on it, and it's holding a violin. The ink wells are symbolic of the signing of treaties, although Dalí also occasionally used them to express sexuality as well. There are ants quickly devouring the soft head, and though we have not seen very many Dalínian ants to this point, they are another common symbol for Dalí. In general they represent decay and decomposition, as it is they (and many other insects as Dalí might point out) who eventually devour everything in the ground, and return it to its chemical components. For this reason Dalí often included ants as symbols of death, decay, and purification, all of which he was obsessed with.
In the lower left hand corner, a cupid figure looks on the scene, holding its face in one hand, and reaching out the other towards the destruction he sees before him. This agonized cupid almost seems to verbalize its horror in overlooking the terrible scene being played out before it. Remember that Dada, and eventually Surrealism were born out of the rebellion against the mindless destruction of World War I. In reality, none of the issues that caused that war were ever rectified, and this led to World War II, which shocked and outraged Dalí and many others, prompting these sorts of works that seem to say "Dear God not again!"
However, in the midst of such pain and terror, there is always hope, and this is symbolized by the daddy longlegs spider resting in almost the exact center of the painting, near the ants on the soft self portrait. The daddy longlegs, when seen in the evening, is a French symbol for hope. Thus, Dalí is offering us solace, even in the middle of such terrible devastation. This dualistic nature of his is slowly starting to shift more and more towards the positive, and towards themes and subjects that are more in the conscious realm of things. This predates his entering his Classical period in 1941, but shows the same tendencies nonetheless.

2004-11-06T14:48:00.000-05:00

The figure of the woman leaning her elbow on a night stand symbolizes the Spanish Civil War. Dalí wrote in his Secret Life: "Throughout all martyrized Spain rose an odor of incense, of the burning flesh of priests, of spiritual quartered flesh, mixed with the powerful scent of the sweat of mobs fornicating among themselves and with Death." The torso and the face of the female figure are made up of groups of Renaissance warriors, of condottieri, inspired by a combat of horsemen done by Leonardo da Vinci. Although signed in 1938, this picture was probably started sooner. The other very remarkable works of this series are The Great Paranoiac, Paranoia, Perspectives, and Head of a Woman Having the Form of a Battle. Dalí exhibited nearly all these paintings together in a one-man show that he, aided by Gala, organized in February 1939 in the studio where the couple was living on the rue de la Tombe-Issoire in Paris. Friends and society people came to see this exhibition of paranoiac-critical activity, and Dalí remembers that the first to arrive and the last to leave was Picasso, who asked especially to see Spain.

2004-11-05T14:41:00.000-05:00

This composition is probably the best example of paranoiac-critical activity in operation in the paintings done by Dalí. He is not satisfied with pursuing a double image but succeeds in accumulating and making rise simultaneously, or one after another according to the particular capacity of the viewer, six different subjects, thus justifying the title The Endless Enigma which he gave to this picture.
The subjects are in succession: a reclining philosopher; a greyhound lying down; a mythological beast; the face of the great Cyclopean, Cretin; a mandolin; a compotier of fruits and figs on a table; and finally a woman seen from the back mending a sail. One can perceive here, besides, appearing in the corner at the right, the upper part of Gala's face with a turban on her head and at the bottom left, balanced on a stick, the skeletal remains of a grilled sardine. Several times during the same period Dalí depicted grilled sardines, placed in dishes, together with telephones, such as : Beach with Telephone, The Sublime Moment, Imperial Violets, or The Enigma of Hitler, in all of which this instrument symbolizes the period of great political tension in Europe which preceded World War II, particularly at the time of Munich, when the telephone played such an important role in the negotiations between the Allies and Hitler. Most of these pictures, including The Endless Enigma, were started - indeed, almost all were painted - at the estate of Coco Chanel, "La Paula," at Roquebrune on the Cote d'Azur.

2004-11-04T14:36:00.000-05:00

Mountain Lake, also called Beach with Telephone, was painted using oil on canvas. The telephone was a key image for Dalí during the late Thirties, as seen in his famous Lobster Telephone in 1936. Dalí believed this painting was a premonition of the Second World War. In Mountain Lake, as with The Enigma of Hitler (1936), the telephone can be interpreted as referring to the telephone negotiations between Chamberlain and Hitler to seal the Munich Agreement made in 1938.
The telephone handle is hanging by a crutch, signifying the fragility of the peace that the telephone negotiations have created. To stress this point further, there are snails crawling up the crutch and on to the handle of the phone; Dalí was fascinated with all creatures that have their own shell, with their protected softness and their hidden vulnerability.
The mountains in the background are reflected in the lake beneath the phone to give a double image: the lake can also be seen as a fish with the ripples on it forming the scales and the jagged rock to the left forming a tail. Some have seen the image as phallic, with the solitary rock to the right suggesting a female counterpart.

2004-11-03T14:31:00.000-05:00

Sleep was painted for Edward James, a British millionaire who was Dalí's patron from 1936 to 1939. Sleep deals with a subject that fascinated the Surrealists: the world of dreams. They believed that the freedom of the subconscious within sleep could be tapped into and then used creatively.
Sleep is a visual rendering of the body's collapse into sleep, as if into a separate state of being. Against a deep blue summer sky, a huge disembodied head with eyes dissolved in sleep, hangs suspended over an almost empty landscape. The head is "soft", appearing both vulnerable and distorted; what should be a neck tapers away to drop limply over a crutch. A dog appears, its head in a crutch, as if half asleep itself.
The head is propped above the land by a series of wooden crutches. The mouth, nose and also the eyes are all held in place by the crutches, suggesting that the head might disintegrate if they were removed. Crutches were a familiar sight in Dalí's work. In The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, the artist wrote that he had imagined sleep as a heavy monster that was "held up by the crutches of reality".

2004-11-02T14:16:00.000-05:00

Dalí believed that both The Burning Giraffe and The Invention of Monsters were premonitions of war. Both of these paintings contain the image of a giraffe with its back ablaze, an image which Dalí interpreted as "the masculine cosmic apocalyptic monster". He first used this image of the giraffe in flames in his film L'Age d'Or (The Golden Age) in 1930.
The Burning Giraffe appears as very much a dreamscape, not simply because of the subject but also because of the supernatural aquamarine color of the background. Against this vivid blue color, the flames on the giraffe stand out to great effect.
In the foreground, a woman stands with her arms outstretched. Her forearms and face are blood red, having been stripped to show the muscle beneath the flesh. The woman's face is featureless now, indicating a nightmarish helplessness and a loss of individuality. Behind her, a second woman holds aloft a strip of meat, representing death, entrophy, and the human races capacity to devour and destroy. The women both have elongated phallic shapes growing out from their backs, and these are propped up with crutches Dalí repeatedly uses this symbolism for a weak and flawed society.

2004-11-01T14:24:00.000-05:00

The Invention of the Monsters was painted by Dalí between 1935 and 1940. This painting reflects the troubled times before World War II. In The Invention of the Monsters, Dalí has painted his premonition of World War II. Dalí began the picture in 1937, in Paris, in his studio on rue de la Tombe-Issoire and resumed work on it at the winter-sports resort of Semmering, south of Vienna. When Dalí learned that the Art Institute of Chicago had acquired this work, he sent a telegram with the following explanation: "Am happy and honored by your acquisition. According to Nostradamus, the apparition of monsters is a presage of war. This canvas was painted in the mountains of Semmering a few months before the Anschluss and it has a prophetic character. The women-horses represent the maternal river-monsters, the flaming giraffe the male cosmic apocalyptic monster. The angel-cat is the divine heterosexual monster, the hour-glass the metaphysical monster. Gala and Dalí together the sentimental monster. The little lonely blue dog is not a true monster." The theme of the women-horses that one sees here in a herd bathing in a pond is the same as in Invisible Sleeping Woman, Horse, Lion. Here the shapes have changed completely: three years later they will give birth to a series of pictures entitled The Marsupial Centaurs. About the double figure seen in the foreground, holding a butterfly and an hourglass in his hands, the painter has stated precisely that it was the Pre-Raphaelite result of the double portrait of Dalí and Gala painted right behind it.

2004-10-29T13:06:00.000-04:00

Interested in smelling like a true artist; don't know how or where to get that special fragrance that smells like success. Well look no further for I have found it for you. Now you too can smell just like Dali or like Dali wanted you to smell like. While I do find this interesting it just seems like another way to make money, and since Dali is no longer breathing the sweet breaths of life any more it would appear that someone is making money off of him.

2004-10-26T11:31:00.000-04:00

In this painting,The Three Ages, Dali expresses the three stages in a persons life. From the order in which they appear from left to right they are Old Age, Adolescence and Infancy. Starting with Infancy, the depiction of the child doesn't seem to be totally cut out of the solid brick. This depicts the infants youth and fragileness. It appears as though out of the mountain side there is a sillouhette of what could be seen as a mother figure watching over the child. Moving to Adolescence, the portrait is composed of the face cut out of the solid stone, which represents the growing strength his mind. He is made up of eyes from a mountain and his nose, mouth and chin are made up of what looks like a maid. This represents the still slight vulnerability of the boy. He may have more of a stronger will then before but still need someone to watch out for him. Within Old Age, the man is cut out of completely solid brick. His mind is solid and cannot be changed. His face is composed of trees which represent wisdom.

2004-10-24T11:31:00.000-04:00

In this picture, Music-The Seven Arts, Dali portrays what he believes to be one of the seven arts, music. He does this by depicting an old man playing a piano and what appears to be a person with no characteristics playing a chello type instrument that is in the shape of a woman. There is also water flowing from the inside of the piano maybe to say that the music is flowing like water.

2004-10-22T11:30:00.000-04:00

In this picture, Melancholy, Dali seems to be saying something about WWII. It appears as though there are three faces within the painting. One being composed of what appears to be clay with a plane transfixed to make the facial features. The tail wing of that plane appears to form a mustache on the face making think that this represents Hitler. There is another face directly above that and another to the direct right of that one. The plane inside the first one is dropping bombs and it appears as though the face above that one is looking on that scene with a sense of content. I also think Dali is making a statement of our past times during the war with his inclusion of baseball players.

2004-10-20T11:30:00.000-04:00

In this painting, Debris of an Automobile Giving Birth to a Blind Horse Biting a Telephone, it seems as though Dali is trying to say how the horse and carrage are being taken over by the age of the automobile.

2004-10-18T10:52:00.000-04:00

In this painting, Dionysus, Dali depicts the God Dionysus through visual representations of the woman and the man in the foreground, and the workers of the fields in the background. Dionysus was the God of wine, agriculture and fertility. Dionysus is depicted as the man who is comprised of the wine bottle. The cherries in his pelvic region obvious are symbolic of the testicles of men which are essential in reproduction. The woman next to him symbolizes fertility. Within her womb region, which is exaggerated extremely, there are many different pictures of fruit all which symbolize the fertility of her womb, and the ability of her to bear "fruit". Next, in the background, the workers tending to the fields represent agriculture.

2004-10-15T10:51:00.000-04:00

This is another installment of Dali's Seven Arts series of paintings called Modern Rhapsody. I really have no idea what Dali is trying to say with this one but he seems to be using some familiar images. Of course one of the most prominent images is the eye, which seems to be fixated on the woman. The eye is resting on top of what appears to be an old telephone receiver and the eye lashes eventually turn into phones. Another common image within Dali paintings are the burning giraffes.

2004-10-12T10:51:00.000-04:00

In this painting, Wine Glass and Boat, Dali uses perspective and depth perception to paint an image that seem surreal. Obviously, no wine glass would be as big as a boat (unless it is a pretty tiny boat or extremely large glass) but Dali makes it appear that the two object are the same size. Lets assume that each object is of normal size. The way at which we are looking at them; the positions in which they are, the perspective and the use of depth, it appears as though they are of equal size. Dali acheives this by using depth. When we look at two objects; one of which is in the distance and large, the other which is very close and small, if we look at them the right way they apppear to be the same size. This has to do with physics and how our perspective and perception of objects can skew what they really are.

2004-10-09T13:56:00.000-04:00

Interrested in buying works from Salvador Dali? Can't find a good site on the internet to buy hard to obtain material from the master of Surrealism? Look no further! This site is one of the best sites I found on the net to buy Original Dali Works. It has a large selection of authentic art from the artist throughout his many stages. This site showcases many of his works including some works from the Divine Comedy as well as many mythological creations. These works include paintings, drawings, printings, engravings, etchings and lithographs. To my knowledge all of the works come with notices of authenticity. The only downfall to the site that I can see is that you have to log in in order to see the price of the works. This could just be a deterent for people who arent' really serious about buying Dali material.

2004-10-08T13:55:00.000-04:00

In this picture, Cannibalism in Autumn, Dali uses two equally elastic and melting figures to portray the cannibalism. The colors that he uses are all common to the colors you would see trees producing in fall; I suppose this is where the autumn part comes in.

2004-10-07T13:49:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure what this painting, Poetry of America, is trying to say but it is very pleasing to the eye so I have included it on my blog as one of my posts.

2004-10-06T13:38:00.000-04:00

In Meditative Rose, Dali uses a common image in some of his earlier paintings to be the dominant, almost overpowering object in this one. To Dali, the rose symbolized as dealing with female sex, sexual organs and menstruation. Also, red is used as a color of passion and can also be association with death. I do believe though, that this within this particular painting, Dali had the idea of using it to symbolize the couples love below. All roses are a symbol of love and the color of red just intensifies that meaning. The contrast of the red against the blue sky really signifies the intense passion of the couples relationship. And I would guess that the realistic drop of water on the petal symbolizes the reality of the the intesity of the relationship. Possibly this painting was to show Dali's love for Gala.

2004-10-04T13:57:00.000-04:00

Salvador Dali, the great Spanish Surrealist, is known worldwide. His artwork has passed through many hands and have travelled far distances. This Dali Museum, which can be found in Florida is a realization of that. It is a fairly quick loading site and has lots of information. According to the site, "The Salvador Dalí Museum is the permanent home of the world's most comprehensive collection of the renowned Spanish artist's work".

2004-09-27T14:19:00.000-04:00

While Dali is most widely known as a painter this is not all he did. In this sculpture/ready-made/Earthware, Debris Christ, Dali captures the pain and torment of Jesus as he was crusified. It is plain to see that this resembles a human. The rooted tree as the head, the boat as the body, tree limbs as the arms and a combination of trees and tiles as the legs. But this is supposed to resemble more than just any human, it depicts christ while he is crusified. The body is in a crusifixion pose, with the arms out to the side. Very subtle hints that this is christ also are the roots of the tree that makes the head. They appear to resemble a crown of thorns. As for the meaning behind the actual objects used to make this, it is a small mystery to me, but I do have my theories. The use of the rooted trees could represent the death and decay of christ on the cross. The boat could symbolize that christ is a vessel for all the sins of mankind which he was crusified for. As for the tiles, well, thats anyones guess. I do like this piece and the way that Dali created and depicted this tragic event. His use of objects is ingenious and his vision is truely amazing.

2004-09-23T10:51:00.000-04:00

In this painting, Swans Reflecting Elephants, Dali employed his "Paranoic-Critical Method" to produce the double images of the swans reflecting the elephents. As one can plainly see, the bodies, necks and heads of the swans are reflected in the lake to produce the heads and trunks of the elephants. Likewise, the island behind the swans and the fall-inflicted trees reflect the bodies and legs of the elephants. I've always been stumped on this painting. It seems to me, though, that this painting could represent the falsities of modern society. Swans are associated with beauty and elephants are associated with wisdom. It could be saying that beauty imparts wisdom. Of course we know that that is a false statement. I believe that is why Dali, who is pictured in the left corner, has his back turned on it. He knows this to be a flase statement therefore does not wish to partake in viewing such an attrocious concept. There are other elements in this painting which I am unsure of. First, the thing that has always stumped me is what looks like a piece of red cloth dangling from the tree to the far left. Second, the two cloud formations. One appears to be that of a person pondering something. It seems as though this could reflect the viewer of the painting as they look on in unknowing wonder at what this picture is trying to say. The last thing that stumps me about this painting is the creature that appears in the foreground before the lake. It seems as though it is an underdeveloped swan or maybe the "ugly duckling". It seems as though it is trying to be a part of the "group". This could represent the struggle that some people go through in order to "fit in". In the background there is a Catalonian landscape, common to Dali's paintings.

2004-09-22T10:45:00.000-04:00

This site is yet another great site to view some of Dali's famous works of art. It has a wide variety of his works. It also has some of his lesser known works. It offers a short explanation of his phases as an artist. The thing I liked the most about this site though, is that for all the works of art that can be viewed, it has some of the shortest loading times. It really is a great site if you wish to browse his works at a speedy pace.

2004-09-15T10:23:00.000-04:00

This painting, Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of a New Man, is from Dali's classical phase. This painting reflects the newfound importance America held for the Dali. The man emerging from the “egg” (world) is rising out of the “new” nation, America, which was in the process of becoming a new world power. Africa and South America are both enlarged, representing the growing importance of the Third World, while Europe is being crushed by the man’s hand, indicating its diminishing importance as an international power. The draped cloth below (above?) the egg represents the placenta of the new nation. An androgynous figure points to the emerging man, acknowledging the importance of this new world power. The cowering child at her feet represents the spirit of this new age, and the child casts the longer shadow indicating that he will replace the older age.

2004-09-13T14:12:00.000-04:00

This link is good to look at if you want to learn about the movement that evolved into Surrealism. Dadaism was a form of anti-art, if you will, that was created to oppose everything that art stood for. It came into being around the end of World War I. It was to represent and express the confusion still left in peoples minds post-war. Dali dabbled within the realm of Dada but was never widely recognized as a Dadaist. This site has many links which will direct you to other sites which you may use to view some of the artists works. It also gives full explanations of selected works by the artists.

2004-09-09T10:08:00.000-04:00

This painting Young Virgin Auto-Sodomized by Her Own Chastity is probably one of my favorite by Dali. As simple as it looks there is a lot going on in this picture. The title of this painting correlates well with it. As you can see by looking at the painting a woman is leaning over a rail with horned shaped objects being pointed at her. One of these "horns" has seemed to set itself up as the "sodomizing" one. These "horned shaped objects" also take on the shape of a phallus. The "horns" in this painting are symbollic. According to Robert Redford in his book "Dali", these "menacing" forms that take on the role of sodomizing the woman are indeed rhinoceros horns. It is explained that a rhinoceros is a very forceful animal as well as a very dangerous one. The one thing about a rhinoceros, though, is that they do not attack unless provoked. This adds another element to the painting. If the woman is being sodomized, is it because she brought it upon herself? Maybe thats where the title of the painting comes into play. It could be that because of her own chastity she has brought about its breaking. I also love the way the breaking of her chastity is pictorally shown. The railing which she is bent over takes on the sort of chastity belt. But the prominent phallus has seemed to shatter it.

2004-09-07T09:37:00.000-04:00

I found this site and was actually quite pleased at how much information was given. It gives a nice detailed biography of the artist and some other good information as well. There are many nice links to be found on this page. They deal with the other time periods and artistic styles in which Dali studied or was exposed to. There is also a nice timeline which can be found here. The timeline displays, starting with the early Greek settlements, the path in which art has travelled. It shows the changes in the styles, when they took place, and what other movements they paved the way for. Also, on the timeline, there are some links which could not be found on the Dali page.

2004-09-03T10:52:00.000-04:00

The Persistence of Memory is one of Dali's most famous and memorable works. He makes a disturbing statement with his use of dreamlike objects dispersed throughout a scene of reality. First off, his statement made with his recurring melting watches, is to say that time must lose all meaning. Another recurring theme in Dali's works are the ants. They represent decay, and when they are attacking a golden watch they become organic. The melting face draped across the center of the piece is a profile of Dali's face. Another real image in this piece are the distant cliffs and coastline which is the coast of Catalonia, Dali's home. One year before this was painted Dali created his Paranoiac-Critical Method, which was formulated by self-induced psychotic hallucinations. According to Dali, "The difference between a madman and me is that I am not mad."

2004-09-02T09:12:00.000-04:00

Another good place on the web to learn about the Surrealist movement is right here. This site gives a good account of what the surrealist movement was about. It also explains how its origins can be found within the Dada movement. It goes on to explaine by who and where the movement was found. It also gives a good list of Surrealist painters. Within the list there are links to a biography of each of the artists. Salvador Dali is included in this list. It is possible to view works from each of these artists as well.

2004-08-31T10:12:00.000-04:00

This site is good to get to know and view some of Dali's works. It has links that direct you to the museums in which some of his works are being exhibited. There are links to galleries, art museums, articles and multimedia such as interviews and biographies. You may even purchase some Dali posters while visiting the site. There are also links that direct you to auctions for Dali matterial.

2004-08-26T10:11:00.000-04:00

This Dali Gallery is a great site to visit to view some of Dali's works. It has all his paintings, drawings and oil works. It divides each into the years in which they were produced. This is good because it lets you see how his work progressed over the years. This site also gives good biographical information on Dali. It seperates his works into the different categories; his early years, surrealism years and classical years. It also explains in detail the style in which Dali created himself, the Paranoiac-Critical Transformation Method.

2004-08-25T23:56:00.000-04:00

This painting, Metamorphosis of Narcissus, is one of Dali's more popular ones. It is called this after the mythology about Narcissus. The myth goes that Narcissus would fall in love with no woman, and had love for no one. But one day he was directed toward a pond, saw his own reflection and fell in love with himself. He eventually leaned too close to the water and drowned. The flower which is named after him bloomed where he laid dead. This painting clearly depicts the myth with the double images of the persons looking in the pond, one which is decayed symbolizing his death, and the other which has the flower growing out of it.

2004-08-25T01:58:00.000-04:00

This is a link to a site that explains in detail the origins and History of Surrealism. Dali is most widely known as a Surrealistic painter/sculptor and it is important to understand where his style derived from. This site will help you to understand how and why the movement came to be. It is important to know this in order to understand Dali. In this site Dali is realized as one of the masters of the Surrealistic movement. He is also widely known for his work as a Classical artist. After his Surrealistic years, Dali advanced his style to that of Classical. *Sorry for the inconvenience but the link for Dali isn't working!!*