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PUCK DE HAAN<br />
IMAGE AND MEDIA TECHNOLOGY
Inhoudsopgave<br />
Salvador Dali...................................................................................... 4<br />
Surrealism.......................................................................................... 6<br />
The Persistence of Memory................................................................ 7<br />
Apparition of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach ................................... 8<br />
Soft Construction with Boiled Beans.................................................. 10<br />
The Burning Giraffe............................................................................ 11<br />
Napoleon’s Nose................................................................................ 12<br />
Shirley Temple.................................................................................... 14<br />
Illumined Pleasure.............................................................................. 15
1943<br />
Salvador Dalí<br />
Spain, 1904-89<br />
The iconic artist Salvador Dalí was born in Catalonia, in 1904. Artistically<br />
gifted as a child, he attended drawing school and continued his studies at<br />
the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernandoin, Madrid. After being<br />
expelled for causing trouble in 1926, he visited Paris where he met Picasso,<br />
Magritte and Miró, encountering the Surrealist movement for the first time.<br />
In the late 1920s, Dalí worked in his own ‘Paranoiac-Critical’ method and<br />
became a member of the Surrealists. He also met Gala, the striking woman<br />
who would later become his wife and main muse. His overtly eccentric<br />
appearance and behaviour eventually provoked André Breton to oust him<br />
from the Surrealist circle, but he continued to work in the style. Between<br />
1940-55 Dalí lived in America, establishing himself as a celebrity by making<br />
regular appearances on television and courting publicity. An incredibly<br />
versatile and imaginative artist, he worked in a proliferation of different<br />
media, including painting, drawing, film, sculpture, objects, furniture, and<br />
set design. He designed the Dalí Theatre and Museum in 1960, which was<br />
completed in 1974 in his home town.<br />
He died in Figueres, in 1989.<br />
“Dali has endowed surrealism with an<br />
instrument of primary importance, in<br />
particular the paranoiaccritical method,<br />
which has immediately shown itself capable<br />
of being applied equally to painting,<br />
poetry, the cinema , to the construction<br />
of typical surrealist objects, to fashion, to<br />
sculpture, to the history of art and even, if<br />
necessary, to all manner of exegesis.“<br />
Andre Breton<br />
(In a lecture given at Brussels, June 1934)<br />
1953<br />
4 1939<br />
5
Surrealism<br />
SUR•RE•AL•ISM (suh-ree-uh-liz-uh m) n.<br />
A style of art and literature developed principally in the 20th century, stressing the subconscious or<br />
nonrational significance of imagery arrived at by automatism or the exploitation of chance effects,<br />
unexpected juxtapositions, etc.<br />
“Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.”<br />
- Salvador Dali<br />
Surrealism, is the name given to the cultural<br />
movement in visual arts and literature, that<br />
flourished in Europe between World Wars I<br />
and II. The movement represented a reaction<br />
against what its members saw as the destruction<br />
wrought by rationalism which had shaped<br />
history, art and politics; it was characterized by<br />
unexpected juxtapositions in ordinary scenes<br />
that challenge the viewer’s imagination. The<br />
Surrealists sought to channel the unconscious<br />
as a means to unlock the power of the imagination.<br />
Disdaining rationalism and literary realism,<br />
and powerfully influenced by psychoanalysis,<br />
the Surrealists believed the rational mind repressed<br />
the power of the imagination, weighing<br />
it down with taboos.<br />
According to the major spokesman of the movement,<br />
the poet and critic André Breton, who<br />
published ‘The Surrealist Manifesto’ in 1924,<br />
Surrealism was a means of reuniting conscious<br />
and unconscious realms of experience so completely,<br />
that the world of dream and fantasy<br />
would be joined to the everyday rational world<br />
in “an absolute reality, a surreality.”<br />
Dalí’s painting, The Persistence of Memory is<br />
a striking example of a surrealist artwork: the<br />
ants and melting clocks are familiar objects<br />
placed in a strange and odd setting. Dalí wants<br />
to twist our usual ideas about what is ‘normal’<br />
and ‘accepted.’<br />
Dalí was interested in Freud’s writings on psychology.<br />
Freud was an Austrian psychologist<br />
(b.1856, d.1939) who wrote about the theory of<br />
subconscious. According to Freud, dreams are<br />
coded messages from the subconscious and<br />
Surrealists, like Dalí, were interested in what<br />
could be revealed by their dreams.<br />
The organized Surrealist movement in Europe<br />
dissolved with the onset of World War II. Breton,<br />
Dalí, Ernst, Masson, and others, including<br />
the Chilean artist Matta (1911–2002), who first<br />
joined the Surrealists in 1937, left Europe for<br />
New York. The movement found renewal in the<br />
United States at Peggy Guggenheim’s gallery,<br />
Art of This Century, and the Julien Levy Gallery.<br />
Fig.1 Apparition of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach, 1935<br />
6 7
The Persistence of Memory<br />
The Persistence of Memory is aptly named, for the scene is indelibly memorable.<br />
With its strange subject matter and dream-like atmosphere, Salvador<br />
Dalí‘s painting, has become a well-known symbol of Surrealism. Painted<br />
during the Dada-inspired movement, the melting-clocks-masterpiece embodies<br />
the sensibilities that define the experimental and eccentric genre.<br />
To contextualize the iconic piece’s place in art history, one must understand<br />
its unique influences, examine its symbolic content, and appreciate<br />
the artist’s avant-garde approach to its creation.<br />
Art Historical Context<br />
The Persistence of Memory was painted in 1931, at the height of the Surrealist<br />
Movement. During this time, innovative artists explored ideas of automatism and<br />
the self-conscious in their work. This experimental approach to art culminated in<br />
a tendency toward peculiar subject matter that evokes dreams and challenges<br />
perceptions.<br />
As a key figure of the movement, Salvador Dalí delved deep into this artistic<br />
mindset, which he viewed as revolutionary and liberating. “Surrealism is destructive,”<br />
he explained, “but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting<br />
our vision.”<br />
Fig. 2 The Persistence of Memory, 1931<br />
When Dalí painted The Persistence of Memory, his artistic practice was guided<br />
by the peculiar “paranoiac-critical method.” Developed by the artist in 1930,<br />
the technique relies on self-induced paranoia and hallucinations to facilitate a<br />
work of art. This method was particularly instrumental in the creation of Dalí’s<br />
“hand-painted dream photographs,” a collection of works that are stylistically<br />
rooted in realism yet unrealistic in subject matter.<br />
“— 24 —<br />
Salvador Dali, in 1935, is no longer content to make auto-amorphism for you out of the agonising and colossal question<br />
which is that of einsteinian space-time, he is no longer content to make libidinous arithmetic of it for you, no longer content,<br />
I repeat, to make flesh of it for you, he is making you cheese of it, for be persuaded that Salvador Dali’s famous flabby<br />
watches are nothing else than the tender, extravagant and solitary paranoiac-critical camembert of time and space.”<br />
Surrealist Symbolism<br />
Though set in a realistically-rendered landscape, The Persistence of Memory<br />
features bizarre subject matter evocative of a dream. While the actual inspiration<br />
behind the scene is up for debate (art historians recall Einstein’s theory; Dalí<br />
comically mentioned Camembert cheese), the odd iconography of the painting is<br />
characteristic of the Surrealist movement.<br />
Paragraph from the ‘Conquest of the Irrational’.<br />
8 9
Fig. 3 Soft Construction with Boiled Beans, 1936<br />
When Dalí painted his Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War), the Spanish Civil War had not yet begun.<br />
In fact, he completed the painting nearly six months before General Franco’s fascist army unseated the democratically<br />
elected socialist government of the Second Spanish Republic. Though it is likely that Dalí changed the title after the military<br />
coup to add to the seemingly prophetic power of his unconscious mind, a volatile climate of social and political struggle had<br />
existed in the country for years.<br />
Dalí began his studies for Soft Construction with Boiled Beans in 1935, sketching the hideously deformed anatomy of the<br />
colossal creature. The aggressive monster destroys itself, tearing violently at its own limbs, its face twisted in a grimace of<br />
both triumph and torture. Dali described this convulsively arresting picture as “a vast human body breaking out into monstrous<br />
excrescences of arms and legs tearing at one another in a delirium of autostrangulation.” The desecration of the human body<br />
was a great preoccupation of the Surrealists in general, and of Dali in particular. Here, the figure’s ecstatic grimace, taut neck<br />
muscles, and petrifying fingers and toes create a vision of disgusting fascination.<br />
Fig. 4 The Burning Giraffe, 1937<br />
10 11
Napoleon’s Nose<br />
Sometimes the myriad ideas that must have been colliding constantly in<br />
Salvador Dali’s mind at any given time found an echo in certain of his paintings<br />
that featured a disparate and dizzying array of thoughts, reflections,<br />
obsessions, and fetishes.<br />
And while the titles of many Dali paintings were almost annoyingly inscrutable,<br />
others pointed unambiguously to what was in store for us. This latter<br />
case is well exemplified in this extraordinary canvas called “Napoleon’s<br />
Nose, Transformed into a Pregnant Woman, Strolling his Shadow with Melancholia<br />
Among Original Ruins”.<br />
This strange work, which the Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali describes as “meticulously<br />
painted,” was created at a pivotal time in Dali’s career: he was just<br />
about to abandon his purely surrealistic style while on the cusp of his classical<br />
period, the latter portending a very different way of interpreting his thoughts and<br />
observations.<br />
Here we see, as the title tells us, a woman seen through an archway, ambling<br />
along a barren stretch of land, behind which mountains appear that transform<br />
themselves into the eyes of Napoleon Bonaparte, while the woman’s form outlines<br />
his nose, and broken tree branches become his lips. This negative-space<br />
image of the French emperor, military and political leader is repeated in a more<br />
positively formed bust in the middle foreground.<br />
This double-image is surrounded by an undulating art nouveau structure sprouting<br />
elongated appendages supported by crutches – one such structure decidedly<br />
phallic in nature. These phallic like protuberances find an echo in the seductively<br />
writhing female figure at right, whose bright red glove matches her red footwear.<br />
Fig. 5 Napoleon’s Nose, Transformed into a Pregnant Woman, Strolling his Shadow with Melancholia Among Original<br />
Ruins, 1945<br />
“At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily<br />
ever since.” - Opening line of Dali’s autobiography.<br />
The Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali in Figueres, Spain, notes in a book about the<br />
Dali Theatre-Museum, that “Napoleon’s Nose” is “…absolutely structured, with<br />
perfect geometries. The painting is exuberant, full of nuances and iconographic<br />
references: Napoleon, architecture, the double image, crutches, the Emporda<br />
region…and totally theatrical. It is a surrealist work in the Dalinian way, with wide<br />
and desolate spaces and almost academic Freudian symbols.”<br />
12 13
Fig. 5 Illumined Pleasures 1929<br />
Fig. 4 Shirley Temple, The Youngest, Most Sacred Monster of the Cinema in Her Time, 1939<br />
14 15
PUCK DE HAAN<br />
IMAGE AND MEDIA TECHNOLOGY<br />
2018