Salvador Dali

It means lost in love

Type your answer here... I am not a professional art critic, but I am a serious Catholic and artist. To me, Dali's painting is an artistic representation of ALL the Ecumenical Councils the Church has had in its 2,000 year history, beginning with the Council of Jerusalem. The Councils are ever-present in time.

If you look closely at the groupings of figures, you see figures wearing the bishops' mitred cap. These figures receed or advance in space and time. In some other groupings, there are figures with tall caps, but flat at the top. I believe these represent the Roman Catholic bishops and the Eastern Orthodox bishops, respectively. In 1274 the Council of Lyons tried to unite the Roman and Greek churches to dispel the Turks from Constantinople. Other Councils, under the authority of Rome, formalized the teachings of the Church, countered heresies, developed the preferential option for the poor, defined the role of the Papacy, and so on. The teachings of the Council are unchanging, ever-present, and over-arching.

Which brings us to the arch from St. Peter's in the center-top. I believe the central male figure is not "God", but Adam or humanity. Adam's sin-- pride, eating of the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, hiding from God, wanting to become his own god--is reflected in the size of Adam under the arch. His pride was so great, Dali represents him as oversize, barely fitting inside the arch, contorted, hand reaching out as if to grasp something, anything that would free him from the constriction of the arch. This is a representation, in my opinion, of mankind forever struggling against the teachings of the One True Church.

At the sides, the left figure and the right figure represent the teaching of the Church on the Incarnarion of Christ at the Annunciation, with the Archangel Gabriel (The Messenger) on the left and the Blessed Virgin Mary on the right. Above Mary is the Holy Spirit represented as a dove. Gabriel is holding a cross and pointing to the heavens because God has sent Gabriel. This is a classic pose in Catholic Annunciation art, except that Dali has substituted the cross for the lily. Mary is also in standard pose with her arms crossed over her chest in humble acceptance. The whole of the Church exists on the teaching of the Incarnation of Christ, there is nothing that does not flow from it. Without the Incarnation there can be no Resurrection. The Rosary has as its First Mystery the Annunciation, to reinforce the importance of this teaching.

In the lower left, Dali has used his wife Gala, holding a book and a cross. Many have interpreted this to depict St. Helena, who found relics of the True Cross. This may have been Dali's intent, but I also think Gala could be representing Mother Church holding the Bible (the Word of God) and the True Cross (the Tradition of the Church).

The rocks on the right surely represents Peter, Cephas, the Rock, "upon this rock I will build my church." And, lastly, Dali himself on the left corner as a signature.

Thank you for your time,

Library Lady

There have been several cultural movements that have influenced America. One huge example is the Progressive Movement of the 1800s, which included the creation of labor laws and standards for food and living. Another movement was the Civil Rights movement during the 1960s, which included the end of segregation and the abolition of institutional racism.

The cover of Boy's Life Magazine, the magazine of the Boy Scouts of America. In that issue was an article on how Dali conceived and executed this illustration.

Over 1500 paintings.

Everything he painted from the late 1920s on is surrealistic. What is Surrealism?: According to the major spokesman of the movement, the poet and critic André Breton, who published "The Surrealist Manifesto" in 1924, Surrealism was a means of reuniting conscious and unconscious realms of experience so completely that the world of dream and fantasy would be joined to the everyday rational world in "an absolute reality, a surreality."

Surrealist artworks are not supposed to be explained in rational terms. They are riddles without an answer.

Yes, if by "full signature" you mean his first and last name. His full signature appears on some (not all) of his oil paintings. He also used his full signature to sign some limited edition books published in the 1940s. Keep in mind that Dali's signature varied over the years--sometimes he used "Salvador Dali", sometimes just "Dali" and at other times Gala-Dali. He also incorporated the crown symbol into his signature at times. In fact, there were so many different variations of his signature that one of his assistants (Capt. John Peter Moore) released a book showing 678 different signatures!

Also, keep in mind that many Dali lithographs/reproductions are reported to have fraudulent signatures.

ahsely dalys

la persistencia de la memoria

He never told us.

Gala Eluard (or Gala Dali) was Dali's wife, he stole her from his friend. She inspired him by taking care of his business matters. She is probably partially responsible that we know Dali and his work today!

Surealism, illusenism

Here is what I think Dali was thinking about in doing this painting: his sister, his wife, his father, and his mother-all from a Freudian perspective.

First, his sister. She is the upper butterfly. The wings are her back and buttocks or buttocks and thighs. Compare them with the shadows on the back and buttocks of his "Figure at a Window" (1925, his sister was the model) and "Figure Climbing a Stair" (1967; he coated the model's back and buttocks with paint and had her lie down on the canvas). The body of the butterfly is her spinal column and his own virile member. Compare with his "Lover" and "Devil" tarot cards. (Unless otherwise indicated, all these images are accessible on the Web.) The shadow of this butterfly forms a phallus pointing at the butterfly, as the rhino horn does in "Devil." He wants to penetrate his sister's anus. A clearer example is his 1954 "Young Virgin Auto-sodomized by her own Chastity," a redoing of his 1925 painting, done in anger at his sister. Even more explicit-too explicit for art sites on the Internet--is his "Untitled," 1966 (also called "Seven Figures," numbered 1281 in Descharnes and Neret, Dali). The butterfly's body is also a turd. See his story "Reverie" (1930, in Descharnes, ed., Oui-the Paranoid-Critical Method) and the buttocks of the lower right-hand figure in "The Lugubrious Game."

Now, Dali's wife. The shadow of the lower butterfly is less phallic and aggressive. In the wings are her buttocks, to be sure, but also two faces in profile kissing. Dali wrote fondly about the first time he kissed his wife on that beach. Compare with his "Diurnal Illusion" (1931). The turd- and phallus-like body of the butterfly adds sexual compulsion and nausea to the scene, complementing its bliss.

In general, butterflies are the elusive object of desire. In Greek the word "psyche" meant a type of moth, and is today popularly considered equivalent to "butterfly" (as well as "soul"). The girl Psyche of the myth of Cupid and Psyche was depicted in statues with moth or butterfly wings. She is also symbol of transformation.

Dali's father is the rock and its shadow, bisecting the painting both vertically and horizontally: between fantasy (the butterflies) and reality, and between darkness and light (on the ground). The line is his father's strong phallus, Dali's superego, drawing clear lines between right and wrong in the traditional sense. Compare to his "Enigma of William Tell," with its giant phallus held up by the crutch of tradition. William Tell is Dali's father, who risked his son's life for the sake of his values. Dali's own clear lines, in reaction to impressionism, are his father's positive contribution to his psyche.

Finally, his mother. Dali's mother died when he was 16, around the same time as his obsession with is sister's and other females' buttocks (she wrote that he would have her pose for hours at the family beach house, always with her back to him) and his father's affair with his aunt (whom his father, like Hamlet's mother, later married). I see Dali's mother very vaguely in the right and bottom of the clouds, reclining in the posture of Velasquez's "Venus at her Mirror," one of Dali's favorite paintings. But this Cupid (i.e. the infant Dali) is not facing her, but reclining on her lap, with a giant golden-tipped erection. Similarly, in some versions of the Venus myth, Venus's son is Priapus.

Dali wrote that he had sex with both his mother and his sister. But all of Dali's work is art and metaphor. Dali did not actually perform such acts, any more than he engaged in anal penetration (he had a horror of infection). He is making the Freudian unconscious conscious, the irrational rational, and the personal universal. omg how long did this take you

The discovery of DNA

If you are looking for more responsibility then taking care of a lawn, then how about taking care of kids (babysitting).

"Where is my clock?"

megalomaniac

Dali slept in a subterranean water salt bed with no light or noise. Sensory deprivation the old fashioned way.

Great question! I own number 132/250 of this one. I have tried to research it but have not found a lot of info on it. I will keep researching this and if I find out anything, I'll return here and share what I find.

Sorry, but there were only 150 made, and I have number 15/150. You can usually find some info on Doubletake.

Click link below for a reproduction and an interpretation!

If you are referring to the famous artist Salvador Dali, he began painting when he was still a child. One of his earliest painting was from 1910, "Landscape Near Figueras." He was only six years old when he painted it.