What is Surrealism? Exploring the Art of Salvador Dali
“Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself.” – Wikipedia
The European modernist movement of the 20th century was a reaction against the destructive forces of rationalism and war. It sought to revive the power of tradition and to create a new sense of life, art, and identity that would be more in harmony with nature and with human values. The artists of the time did this in response to World War I. Drawing heavily on theories adapted from Sigmund Freud, surrealists were reuniting conscious and unconscious realms of experience so completely that the world of dream and fantasy would be joined to the everyday rational world in “an absolute reality, a surreality.”
The Spectacle of The Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg
You aren’t allowed to take photographs inside the museum so I had to go online to find these but here are some of my favorite Salvador Dali Paintings:
Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea Which at Twenty Meters Becomes the Portrait of Abraham Lincoln (1976) There is a huge ramp that leads you down to the bottom and it is floor to ceiling on the wall. He would have had to use scaffolding or had it on the floor or something to paint it. They invite you to go all the way down to get a close look at it (but not touch – standard for all museums) and then slowly back up to the foot prints on the floor, which indicate that you are 20 meters away. It allows you to see for yourself how it goes from a portrait of his wife to Abe Lincoln, which is so spectacular because you are actually becoming part of the art. It’s a performance piece.
Salvador Dali didn’t just do paintings. He made art installations and jewelry too. There’s a pin that is the melting clocks from Persistence of Memory that I would die for!
No idea on if I’ll wear pants yet 😉
FYI – there are flies in all the shot glasses.
Expressing my personal take on The Dalí Museum and Its Collection
I think one of the reason’s Salvador Dali artwork sticks with me is just how crazy he is as an artist. I mean, all artists whether you are a painter, a musician, a writer, whatever your art may be, you have to be a little crazy. Painters see things inside their head, writer’s live lives that aren’t their own inside their heads and musicians hear things in their heads. All of these people have to expel all these things that don’t naturally occur to other people and then translate them into a tangible object or they’ll go crazy. That’s kind of my theory on how some people are given the OK to be crazy (like artists) and others, who can’t expel these things or express their thoughts are crazy and it’s not OK because they often scare people.
I love the giant ants on the ceiling that replicate ants from one of his paintings. Do you know which one?
I just like eccentric people. I get them. I love reoccurring themes in artists works and I love that he was so into his wife but his wife basically ran him. Salvador Dali had no concept of money. He’d squander every commission he’d ever made. If it wasn’t for Gala keeping him in check he never would have been able to live. Starving artist was all he would have amounted to. So yet again, behind another great man was a great woman. But he loved her enough to include her in his works, didn’t care that she was basically a harlot (he supposedly encouraged her to sleep around because he was terrified of female genitalia and there is a theory that Dali was gay) and basically went insane when she died. Even though, she was apparently senile at the time and was the reason he couldn’t paint in his old age because she basically drugged him so much that he shook. Kind of like Parkinson’s only this was drug-induced. He died of heart failure but I say he was heart broken.
So if you want to know why I like him, know more about him than any other artist even though I don’t really care for art? It’s his story and lucky for those of us who are visual learners there are pictures!
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This post was originally written and posted in 2012 (as indicated by the bracelet) just before I moved back to California. If you’re in the Tampa area I highly recommend going to see this and then to the Columbia restaurant for the best Cuban food of your life.