Salvador Dali, Art, College Term Papers.com


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Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali Salvador Dali was born in Spain in 1904. Just 9 months before he was born, his older brother died, so his parents found ways to convince him that he was a reincarnation of him. Apparently, Dali even told people that the terrifying memory of this dead brother haunted him for the rest of his life. It’s been heard that one of his favorite pastimes was walking around his house in a blue emperor's costume. Because his parents felt like Dali was actually his dead brother, they treated him like a king because they feared his death once again. Because of the way his parents treated him, and since he always trying to be as wonderful as his dead brother, made him have a gigantic personality change. Since he had to put up with so many strange thing at such a young age, I guess that somewhat explains why Dali had such an odd and amazing personality, which is highly shown in his paintings. I learned that he even said in one of his journals that the stress he had to deal with when he was little, trying to live life as his dead brother and himself, made him really fascinated with death and body decay. He started painting at the age of 10, which disturbed his parents. They were not used to seeing such strange pictures, especially from their little boy. They brought him to many psychiatrists, but they could not understand what was wrong either. Neither him or his parents would tell them about his dead brother, so of course, they wouldn’t know enough information to diagnose him with anything. Eventually his parents just got used to his ways, and overlooked them. After some time went by, he was still obsessed with death and dark things, and continued to used those as factors in some of his art. In his paintings, he uses many different symbols to represent his feelings. In “The Persistence of Memory” and the “Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory” , the main points of focus are the melting and dripping clocks. I feel that these symbolize his feelings about how time was just slipping away from him, and no matter how hard he tried, he wouldn’t be able to grasp it. Also, some of the clocks are placed on certain objects, be it a tree, or a box. I think that it represents how he perceives the notion of time to be. As in the fact that time can not be harnessed by any one, individual being, but actually controls everything in the universe. In the Persistence of Memory, one is on the tree, and it is showing that no matter what nature throws at time, it will persist. In the Disintegration of Memory, floating spikes are tying to puncture it. I think he is trying to express the fact that if nature decides to change the weather, and therefore killing the tree, time does not care. It will still go on. It might be warped and out of control, but it is still constant. Also, Salvador Dali tends to use insects a lot in his work. A few years ago, at the Dali museum in Tampa, I learned that when he was young the other children used to torment him by throwing bugs, especially huge grasshoppers at him. These became symbols of horror in his paintings. The insects depicted his agony and torment, and when he put them in his paintings, it was as if was letting go of some of the pain. They would crawl around infesting and projecting their evil onto everything they came in contact with. As in Persistence, there were tons of ants on top of a clock. I feel that he is once again projecting the message that even though time can be corrupt and vile, that it goes on. As for his pain and constant fear of the insects, they always kept coming back, and there was always more pain to release. In Persistence as well as other paintings, such as “Sleep” and “Le Grand Masterbateur” he seems to like to use strange, disorientated faces with gigantic eyes. In many of them, the eye (or eyes) are closed. I feel this is his way of expressing that old saying, “the eyes are the windows of the soul.” And because of the enormous size of the eyes, the window would appear to be very large, and closing the eye is the only way to keep people from seeing his soul, or who he really is. Also in Persistence, the strange face seems to be fading away at the end which represents once again the fact that nothing, even himself, is immortal. There are many other symbols Dali frequently uses in his paintings, such as monsters, birds, elephants, and nude women. Many of the things he uses in his art are things that make him angry, make him sad, even on occasion make him happy. In everyday life we all need to try to express our feelings. Many of us, myself included, tend to keep them bottled up and hidden away so no one else can get to know the real us. It is basically just a defence mechanism for us in fear of getting hurt. If we could just find some sort of emotional outlet, such as Dali and his paintings, I feel that we all would be better people. It is possible for everyone to find a way, even if it happens to be unknown at the present time. If all of us take some time, maybe a day, a week, a month, maybe even longer, and we search deep within ourselves, we can find that creative aspect that will free us from our everyday turmoil. If someone finds it impossible to see anything inside them that could better them as human beings, I suggest they try a little harder. Bibliography:

Word Count: 983