Salvador Dali Analysis

Dali employs a “concrete irrationality” surrealist style giving us the illusion of realism. Design is precise, using symmetrical perspective employing a geometrical figure’s composition. The painting is well balanced. Presence of the light coming from the northeast gives a sense of a natural landscape. The light and shadow relationship “pops the elements out” and creates contrast. The pain of war is expressed by the grotesque mutating human body ripping itself apart with the anguishing facial expression.

Salvador Dali’s painting, La Persistencia de la Memoria (fig. 2), represents the scientific Freudian influence. Everything appears to be in a dream-like state because nothing makes logical sense (Eggener 36). Each clock represents a different time in life, whether it is his past, is current state, or his future. The jagged cracks in the mountains symbolize the rough patches or cracks that one must go through in life and the reflections in the water and platform show how those mistakes reflect who we are. The dead tree shows that eventually we all will grow old and die. Lastly, the white figure is Salvador Dali and how his life is slowly ticking away as well and the eyes are shut because he is reflecting on it in a dream.

The artwork uses many values and shades of colors. There are four different figures in the painting. One that is a baby covered with this transparent material that is streaming throughout the entire thing. There is a pale women that is admiring her beauty and is not paying attention to her surroundings. She has long, wavy hair which she is fixing while looking at her reflection. The next figure is an older version of her. She is darker than the other women with wrinkles that shows the aging of the lady. The last figure is at the right holding an hourglass on the top of the painting. It is a warning of how much time she has left before death. Her body is all scrawny and her bones are showing. It looks like she represents death with her hair being all fallen out. The pale women is dominant in the painting. The rest of the painting is dark and it looks like the artist only used a few colors for the painting.

Dali chooses to incorporate many hectic images into his artwork because he is trying to show the absurdity and the far-fetched ideas that people dream about. In the painting there are multiple different scenes going on, which creates an anti-illusion, and a false and loose sense of perspective. The anti-illusion and impossible perspective of gravity evokes the strange and un-natural sensations people experience in dreams. Many fish are painted human-size, and the sizes of people don’t match in proportion with the rest of the painting. The bodies are painted as mangled with many of the subjects missing limbs or have very intricate wave-like patterns on their neck and shoulder region. Dali also incorporates the depiction of humans as very un-realistic. Therefore many of the subjects in his work are Greek and Roman sculptures or look like a comic strip or pop artwork photo shopped into the painting. The depiction of the bodies helps juxtapose Dali’s goals of surrealism and modernism, compared to the mundane work of traditional artists. Along with that, Tuna fishing integrates the un-realistic image of fire burning brightly on top of an

I remember the painting “The Persistence of Memory” by Salvador Dali that I could see in one of my textbooks back then when I was in Poland taking a history class. I really enjoyed the painting, even though I did not really know what the meaning of the painting was. Now, I got motivated to write a research paper about the piece of art, and to answer the question what the meaning of “The Persistence of Memory” by Salvador Dali is. The painting was created in 1931. Salvador Dali was a Spanish surrealist. Surrealism was a movement in the culture that introduced new techniques of creating visual arts. Surrealism was concentrated on people’ imagination, dreams, subconscious and unconscious minds – on the nonphysical aspects of a human’s body. Surrealists often created their works using dream imagery. Symbols played an important role in the art of surrealism. Symbols expressed ideas and emotions that were held by the authors of the visual arts, and they usually had hidden meanings. Salvador Dali was passionate about the intangible parts of people’ minds and lives. (Stanley Meisler, pp.16-17) The main desire of the Salvador Dali’s painting titled “The Persistence of Memory” was to express the power of people’ memories with the respect to the passing time. However, the painting “The Persistence of Memory” has other significant meanings.

The museum I chose to visit was the Dali Museum mainly because I have been wanting to check it out since I first moved down here to Florida three years ago. My sister has always been a huge Salvador Dali fan and even has a tattoo of his painting titled “The Elephants” on her side. I am looking forward to experiencing more of his paintings other than his most popular works of art. I am also hoping this experience will give me a greater appreciation for him as an artist by seeing the diversity of his works. What I am least looking forward to is trying to find one work of art that really stands out to me enough to write this paper about. I am sure I am going to find multiple pieces of art that I will love.

What do I notice from the paintings is a figure sitting all alone amidst a rainy storm as if he or she awaits change at a turning point in their life. The starkness of the painting shows the figures emotions and feelings are strong and yet there is always sunshine after the rain.

Within the painting there is a landscape of tall sculptures that seem to simultaneously resemble buildings as well as stones so a depiction of modern civilization and previous life is being portrayed. Within the picture there is also african americans who stand elevated alongside the towering buildings with instruments in their hands and bright colors to give their vibe. White ghostly hands reach for the hard working Black figure who is trying to reach for the high altitude where the man who is playing the music has reached. Just this one painting reflected the life of an African American within this time period. It reached a large portion of the nation's hearts and created in influence with other

Directly above his head, yet still connected to his head is a semi-circle of an image of a woman holding a baby. It appears that the image is a memory, perhaps of his mother holding himself or his wife holding their child. The man is surely a representation of the artist and this is “his life”. He seems to be the focus of the painting and the overall theme appears to be memories layered throughout. Right above the original semi-circle is another semi-circle of four small, colorful squares. Each square is red, yellow, and blue in color reminding me of the artists’ Hispanic origins. Moving inward from the darker, gray and white outer portion of the painting seems to be a bookcase with three separate images. Each image is of a man painting on a canvas. These three separate images of a man painting throughout the artwork could be the artists’ memories of his father, or a significant man in his life. The grays, blacks, and white used show the artists’ darker memories, while the vibrant, beautiful colors symbolize the joyous ones. Similarly, the softer, warmer colors that the artist uses represent his love, appreciation, and admiration towards his father. Overall, the painting is a memory timeline that

Birthname: Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dali. Salvador Dali was an artist. January 23, 1989 would be the date of his death.

Salvador Dali is one of the most famous surrealist artists. His artwork is fascinating to look at and analyze. All of his work is very imaginative, rendered at a high level of realism, and is filled with extensive symbolism. First I will talk about the history of Surrealism, then how Dali studied and admired Sigmund Freud's theories which greatly influenced his art, he used Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory of dream interpretation to invent a technique for his work, and then using this technique he painted his bizarre dreams.

As an art student in Madrid and Barcelona, Dali assimilated a vast number of artistic styles and displayed unusual technical facility as a painter. Most importantly, he rejected to follow the rules docilely and appeared a sharp contrast with the conventional painting style. He depicted a dream world in which commonplace objects are juxtaposed, deformed, or otherwise metamorphosed in a bizarre and irrational fashion. One of his previous mentors who had expected

This is rectangular piece, the size of 65.1 x 54.9 cm. Looking from a distance, painting has a uniform color spectrum. Artist uses mostly warm earth tone palette: beige, grey, yellow and burnt umber, with black for creating outline of the forms, and occasional multicolored patches for additional accents. There is no visible source of light, however lighter areas of the painting are focused in the center, while more contrast and darker areas tend to be around the middle section. From a distance, brushstrokes look more unified, but when looking up closer, we can notice that artist, while blending colors, uses distinctive strokes. So even blended, colors create some visual texture. There is no noticeable degree of perspective or depth, painting looks rather flat.

“There is only one difference between a madman and me. A madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad” (Salvador Dali Quotes). Salvador Dali, one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, seemed to be a madman when it came to his art and his appearance, and he absolutely embraced it. Dali went against the grain from a very young age.

Salvador Dali was born into a middle class family on May 11th 1904 in Figures, Spain. During his lifetime, he was an eccentric painter, writer, sculptor and experimental film maker. In Dali’s early years of painting he experimented at first with landscapes, most of which were of his home in Figueres, Spain. Dali also made paintings of the surrounding area of his family’s summer home, in the seaside town of Cadaques. Dali’s transitional period was between 1927 and 1929, these were years of experimentation. In this period gravel, rocks, cork, and other materials can be noted on his canvases. This was more abstract period then others, at this time in Dali’s life he had just been kicked out of the art school he had been attending .