Salvador Dali’s paintings skills are mostly characterised with the Renaissance period. Dali was born in May 11 th 1904 in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain. Dali died in January 23 rd 1989 at the age of 84 years. His father known as Salvador Dali y Cusi was a lawyer and a notary. He was also very strict regarding discipline which was how he raised Dali. On the other hand, Dali’s mother who was known as Felipa Domenech Ferres was a loving, caring and affectionate and she regularly helped Dali with his art when he was starting. However, Dali was treated badly by his classmates and his father who was always punishing him. Dali’s older brother died and at the age of five, he was led to believe that he was the reincarnation of his brother by his parents. When Dali started creating more complicated drawings his parents made a studio for him where he could perform his artwork. Later, Dali’s parents took him to art school which was located in Colegio de Hermanos Maristas, then to Institutio in Figueres, Spain during the year 1916. He was later enrolled in Academia de San Fernando in Madrid. During 1920 Dali went to Paris where he had interactions with other famous artists like Magritte, Picasso, and Miro (Etherington-Smith, 1995).
Therefore, these interactions are the reason why Dali started his Surrealist period. In addition, the interactions influenced various artistic styles such as Cubism and Metaphysics. Dali’s work was expanded to films, photography, sculpture, and collaboration with other artists in different media. Dali was a very imaginative, inventive and inspired artist who loved getting involved with weird and grandiose activities. Dali was known to be the founder of Surrealism. He was also known for his subconscious paintings which he used in his artwork. Dali often regarded these images as “hand-painted dream photographs” (Dali, 2013). However, when the fascist president of Spain known as Fransisco Franco started ruling, Dali changed his work from the movement of Surrealism. Nonetheless, the expulsion from this movement did not make him stop painting (Etherington-Smith, 1995).
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Dali’s early memoirs are astonishing and erratic and his works of art. This can be seen in his photographs, sketches and drawings. His work collectively includes self-adoration, snobbishness, comedy, fanaticism, seriousness, among others. Dali’s ostentatious portraits started with the earliest memories he had and ended at the peak of his earliest achievements. He had enticing and proving titles for his chapters and footnotes which includes, “Permanent Expulsion from the School of Fine Arts”, “I am Disowned by my Family”, “Intra-Uterine Memories”, “Dandyism and Prison”, and “My Participation and my Position in the Surrealist Revolution”, among others (Dali, 2013).
However, Dali loved controversial art which led to many people presuming that he was insane and crazy. This ignited a lot of media conversations and debates. Dali’s public escapades and adventures of grandiose activities arouse more discussions than his work of art. His work of art was bizarre but still striking and involved a lot of symbolic meanings. However, most of his controversial and despicable paintings are what led to his fame and stardom (Dali, 1998).
One of the pieces of art that made Dali Salvador famous during his time was the Galacidalacidesoxyribonucleicacid. This painting was done in 1963 and the title is portmanteau of his wife’s name, Gala Dali. This piece of art was created with oil paints on a huge canvas on a roller that would move up and down as he worked on it. Dali’s work on this painting was influenced by science and genetics which started in the 20 th century. Dali used Surrealism which was a stylish and trendy movement that started in Paris in 1920-1940. This movement was inspired by the psychologist Sigmund Freud studied the intertwining of dreams and subconscious which inspired a lot of artists such as Dali (Guardiola, 2003).
In Galacidalacidesoxyribonucleicacid, Dali uses many neutral colours such as; tan, brown, yellow and grey which are able to calm the viewers as they try to comprehend the meanings behind the images of the painting. In the foreground of Galacidalacidesoxyribonucleicacid, a person can see the double helix DNA which was at the time recently discovered in the science world. The painting also shows the molecule for the salt symbol representing life and death as well as Dali’s wife Gala portrayed as Mother Mary (Guardiola, 2003).
Dali’s work on Galacidalacidesoxyribonucleicacid was influenced by science and genetics arising in the 20 th century. The painting was based on the discovery of the double helix DNA by Crick and Watson as a respect and honour to Crick and Watson. Dali was so passionate about science and how it is used and he believed that science was the only connection between man and God. He painted a cloud which is actually a picture that shows God reaching out of the sky and picking up His Son from earth. He added this to the painting to demonstrate the Christian belief that Jesus died for mankind sins and He is the connection between God and man (Smith, 2016).
In addition, Dali uses death as an artistic statement in this painting. This is demonstrated in various ways such as showing Jesus dying for mankind sins, the death molecule as men holding guns to each other’s head to resemble a chain reaction. Death is also depicted in his famous symbol of the peasant woman had just buried her dead infant together with her dead husband. In this painting, Dali is trying to communicate the different ways that death can affect us as human beings. At one point the painting depicts that death can save us, while on the other hand, it depicts that death could unexpectedly end all human beings (Smith, 2016).
Another famous painting of Dali Salvador is The Persistence of Memory. This piece of art was painted in 1931 and is very recognized around the world. This painting is generally regarded as the “Clocks” and it is also surrealism artwork. The painting shows four melted clocks on a desert. The painting depicts a state of dream where the melted clocks illustrate how inconsistently time passes when we are dreaming. This depicts how time has no meaning in our dreams and we cannot control it like we do while we are awake. In addition, this painting was a mockery of humans obsession with pocket watches that was so common during the time the painting was produced. However, various scholars believed that the melting clocks depicted the revolutionary and innovative theory of Albert Einstein in 1930s. This was the theory of relativity where Einstein suggested that the new notion and conception of time is comparative and intricate. Einstein proposed that time is not as simple as most people think it is and cannot be easily followed and tracked using a simple and rudimentary device such as a pocket watch (Machado, 2015).
Although modern artists do not use surrealism, they can learn from Renaissance period artists. Modern artists can make their paintings literal with representations that are realistic. They can also make their painting symbolic in a way that they can be interpreted.
References;
Etherington-Smith, M. (1995). The persistence of memory: A biography of Dali. Boston, Massachusetts: Da Capo Press.
Dali, S. (2013). The secret life of Salvador Dali. New York, NY: Dover Publications.
Dali, S. Finkelstein, H. (1998). The Collected Writings of Salvador Dali. United Kingdom, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Guardiola, E., Banos, J. (2003). Dali and the double helix. Nature. 423(6943), 917.
Machado, J., Lopes, A. The persistence of memory. Nonlinear Dynamics. 79(1), 63-82.
Smith, W. (2016). The double helix proves the existence of God. Art and science in dialogue with Salvador Dali’s religious imagination. 6(2), 72-73.
