Salvador Dalí - ACT 1

 

Dali had an interesting way of messing up someones head. Did his pieces unsettle me? Yes. Did he unsettle me? Yes. Did his moustache unsettle me? Yes.

On further discovery, I did come upon articles that stated that his exploration was more on stripping all the possible facets of a being . I think its quite a journey when you're trying to dissect someone through this aspect. And while I don't really have the talent to truly understand the full potential of an art piece, I get the sense that he's truly finding the essence of madness through art and what that makes us  as humans. I think its like shedding your subconscious to observe yourself. And I do not have a  clue how one would reach to that point. Just a thought: creepy.

Dali was a Surrealist painter, and one of the most celebrated artists of all time. And on the flipside, he was obsessed with Hitler. Right. 

SURREALISM

noun: a 20th-century avant-garde movement in art and literature which sought to release the creative potential of the unconscious mind, for example by the irrational juxtaposition of images

The aftermath of WWI lead to a new cultural movement for artists and literates to express themselves to their true potent, depicting unnerving, illogical scenes to allow unconscious mind to express itself. 

Surrealism consists of elements of fantasy, a metaphysical atmosphere, and uncanny imagery depicting mysterious landscapes and environment. And so to come up with these images from his subconscious mind, Dali began to induce hallucinatory states in himself by a process he described as "paranoic critical" 

This included depicting commonplace objects in deformed states or metamorphosed in a bizarre and irrational fashion. The Persistence of Memory , one of Dali's most acclaimed work does a significant job explaining this.

The limp, bent clocks are known to represent the omnipresence of time. Dali himself referred to them as the "camembert of time". He takes hard mechanical objects and renders them limp, "although time controls society's waking hours, it is often bent in dreams and memory".  Dali did induce the idea that he did not know what his work actually meant, and so, giving art lovers more room to truly perceive it and impose the meaning of the painting. And while I can't really subject this piece to anything but explorative imagery, it still remains a portrait of a great artists unbridles visions.

Dali's work has a natural way of deconstructing and constructing the powerful mechanism of time and brings this nonsensical feel of dreaming. It truly intrudes, without any realization.

“Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought.”