Term Paper on "Salvador Dali Was Born on May 11"

Term Paper 6 pages (1959 words) Sources: 5

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Salvador Dali was born on May 11, 1904 in the small Catalan town of Figueras, Northern Spain (Great Masters 1999). His father was a well-known notary but respected his artistic talent, which surfaced at an early age. Dali received his first drawing lessons at 10 years old from art teachers, Spanish impressionist painter, Ramon Pichot, and an art professor at the Municipal Drawing School (Artelino 2007). He studied art at the Royal Academy of Art in Madrid where he was expelled two times and refused to take the final examinations because he believed he was more qualified than those who wanted to test him (Artelino). Having been permanently expelled, he never received formal art training. His supportive father allowed him to stay with the Pichot family, which had a passion for art, and to have his own studio and everything else he needed to pursue his passion. Dali's early works thus reflected the beauty of the Spanish sea resort where he spent his early years. At 13, he experimented with different artistic styles under Moreno Carbonero. In 1925, his father arranged for Dali's one-man show in Barcelona (Great Masters).

In the following year, he participated in an exhibition in Madrid and chanced upon the works of Yves Tanguy, a French surrealist painter, who was to influence his latter career (Great Masters 1999). He met and made friends with the poet Frederico Garcia Lorca and movie director Luis Bunuel with whom he worked on two films, "The Andalusian Dog" and "The Golden Age." Dali gained international fame with his painting, "The Basket of Bread" when it was exhibited in 1928 at the Carnegie International Exhibition in Pittsburgh. He went to Paris in the same year in the hope of meeting Pablo Picasso but he instead met members of the Surrealist movement. In 1929, he also met and instantly fell in love with Gala Eluard, who was both his inspiration for the new Surrealist movement and his business manager. The Surrealist movement was founded by the former Dadaist, Andre Breton. It was in 1929 that Dali produced some of his best works (Great Masters).

Surrealism is a style of art and literature, which developed principally in the 20th century and which stressed on the subconscious, non-rational significance of imagery, attained by automatism or the exploration of chance effects and unexpected juxtaposition (Lexicon Publishing LLC 2007). The Surrealist Movement was a 20th century group, which attempted at expressing the working of the subconscious and was characterized by fantastic images and incongruous juxtaposition of a subject matter. The subject matter represents unconscious thoughts and dreams, which are free from rational control. Dadaism was a style of art and literature, which explored accidental and incongruous effects and challenged established arts, thought and morality. The Dadaist Movement produced works, marked by nonsense, travesty and incongruity to express the challenge (Lexicon Publishing LLC). The Surrealists and the Dadaists agreed that logical reasoning and other traditional tenets of society had failed humanity and that thus a more acceptable interpretation of the nature of reality had become necessary. Dali became the major figure for Surrealists. He introduced his paranoiac-critical method of perceiving the universe solely through an interpretation of dreams and all delirious processes. His declaration that he "spit with pride" on the face of his mother and his relationship with Gala who was then still married to the French poet Paul Eluard led his father to expel him from the family home. This development and accompanying events drove Dali deeper into the great Surrealist period, during which he became a leader among the Surrealists and created masterpieces (Great Masters 1999, Giralt-Miracle 1989).

His best-known Surrealist paintings were created between 1929 and 1939 and these expressed his personal desires and obsessions as among the most startling images of the 20th century (USA Today 2005). His "First Days of Spring" and "the Enigma of Desire: My Mother" moved Andre Breton and the founders of the Surrealist movement to welcome Dali into their ranks. His paranoiac-critical method was an attempt at investigating the mysteries of the subconscious. It evolved from the influence of Freudian psychoanalysis and psychological meanings related to his broken relationship with his father and his deceased mother. His paintings "William Tell" and "Spectre of Sex Appeal" illustrate how he transformed existing myths into his own unique visual images. His paranoiac-critical method also explains the double images of his works in the late 1930s, such as "The Metamorphosis of Narcissus" and "Apparition of a Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach (USA Today)."

His works portrayed an imaginary world of soft watches, boundless perspectives stretching into infinity, elongated staffs, exaggerated representations of human limbs, giraffes bursting into flames, gold coins and other forms, which were suggestive of the unconscious mind as suggested by Sigmund Freud (Great Masters 1999, Giralt-Miracle 1989). Dali claimed that his entire work projected his inner world, his subconscious and his obsessions and fantasies. One of his best known Surrealist works was Persistence of Memory, produced in 1931. In 1934, he was formally expelled from the Movement on account of his fascination with Hitler. But he continued to create Surrealist works and called himself Surrealism itself. He soon went back to his small hometown in order to escape the outside world. In his seclusion or in spite of it, he created wonderful works of arts, among them the much acclaimed Masterworks. Loyal art and academic collectors bought his works and brought him much fame and fortune. In 1974, Dali opened his own Teatro Museo in Figueras. In 1982, Gala died and Dali's own health began to fail fast. He was badly burned in a fir in 1984 and since lived in relative seclusion in the apartments in his Teatro Museo. After a pacemaker operation in 1986, his health dwindled further until his death (Giralt-Miracle).

Salvador Dali tried nearly all known techniques from sculpture to literature to painting and constantly evolved his styles (Giralt-Miracle 1989, Great Masters 1999). He had a huge appetite to create and to use an equally huge range of media. These included oils, watercolors, graphics, drawings, jewels, sculpture, poems and writings and art objects. He remains among the most acclaimed and talented artists of all time. His powerful vision and determination established an entire world of thought and, to this day, continue to set high standards for art. Some believe he should be considered Picasso's equal during the 20th century because of his strange and eccentric personality. He coined his own nickname "Avidadollars," which others interpreted as pointing to his eagerness to make money. It was difficult to understand Dali as a person. His behavior was a deterrent to his work, which should otherwise have been greatly admired. He arrogated himself as a philosopher while others saw him as a ridiculous person. He exerted much effort in promoting himself and did not realize that all he had to do to look as marvelous as his works was to act simply. His eccentricity drew people who wanted to take advantage of him and who eventually almost destroyed his reputation by making him sign blank sheets or marketed products with his label (Giralt-Miracle, Great Masters).

Dali's Teatro Museo in Figueras now stands as Dali's monument. This immensely popular museum is seen as fulfilling the painter's fun-park concept of architecture expressed in his 1937 drawing for the American Weekly (Stuckey 2005). The museum drowns the grandiose design of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. It is more than architecture. Others regard it as "a sublime plastic exercise in autobiography and the persistence of memory." While it legitimately houses Dali's works, the museum as an architecture is viewed more as a giant "found object," which incorporates the ruins of the 19th-century municipal theater, where Daily first displayed his art as a teenager. The Teatre-Museu is now designed to exhibit new and expanded versions of key pieces, such as Rainy Taxi. It serves as a large installation piece with thousands of interrelated and complex works of visual art (Stuckey).

Despite his undisputedly huge popularity, Salvador Daly has been a problem to historians who found him difficult to assess and open to debate (Stuckey 2005). He was an irritating catalyst, rather than a role model. He looked more like a fool to many who saw his smallest gestures as meriting little. A New York dealer and scholar, Timothy Baum, recounted how Dali entered the St. Regis Hotel, wearing a special and weird pair of eyeglasses where he could insert ants and food. He had the genius for looking at things in a vastly different way. In the 1930s, Daly exemplified and personified the international, open-ended and anything-goes viewpoint. His celebrity status as a modern master of art was well established. But by 1941, his standing among contemporaries in the field of art had deteriorated. Breton declared in the May 1939 issue of the Minotaure that Dali was a self-confessed racist. A Surrealist exhibition that year at the New York's New School for Social Research was staged without any work by… READ MORE

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