Three works that symbolize the dark and macabre in the life of Salvador Dalí

2022-05-10 22:28:27

This is ‘Dues figures’ (Two figures). It is the first work that Dalí did in Spain, in 1926, after he had passed through Paris.

Three ghostly white figures stand out against a gray background. But who are these “ghosts”? Let’s find out ????

The one in the center is Salvador Dalí himself. We know this from a very characteristic feature used by the author to portray himself: the notch on the head. The same occurs in other works, such as ‘Arlequí’ (Harlequin).

The “ghost” on the right is Lorca. He is recognizable by the hat and moon-shaped face, so important in his poetry.

The poet from Granada has his head turned towards Dalí. This gesture is also typical of other paintings by the painter: it means that there is significant affection between the two figures. And this, as we will see, is not trivial.

Before we stop at the last ghost, the one on the left. Here are different interpretations. Some say that it is the shadow of Dalí himself. Others bet on someone who was already around the group of friends at that time: Luis Buñuel.

Dalí’s work cannot be understood without his biography and this painting is no exception. Lorca and Dalí met at the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid and became close friends. Later, as the letters made clear, that friendship turned into unresolved sexual tension.

In the middle of everything was Buñuel, which caused the relationship between them to cool down even more. There are anti-Lorquian overtones even in ‘Un perro andaluz’, whose title already gives clues as to what position it left the poet from Granada in.

But Lorca’s was not the only relationship that marked the life and work of Dalí.

This other work is ‘Face of the Great Masturbator’, made only three years after the previous one, in 1929. But the protagonists are others: Dalí and Gala.

Gala was invited along with the poet Paul Éluard, her partner at the time, to the painter’s house in Cadaqués (Catalonia). She but she ended up getting divorced and falling in love with Dalí, a relationship that the artist’s father would not approve.

He kicked him out of the family. And that’s what the painting talks about.

The large head resting on the ground, as can be seen by the protruding nose, is Dalí. It also has a flaccid texture, something recurring in his imagination to express ideas as in his mythical painting known as ‘The soft watches’.

There is also the grasshopper. Dalí recounted that when he was little he saw a fish with a grasshopper in its mouth that was enough to create a lifelong trauma. He ended up having zoophobia, especially towards insects.

But there is more. The grasshopper is full of ants, a symbol of putrefaction and death as is well known by ‘An Andalusian dog’. Insects even crawl into his mouth, preventing him from speaking.

The painter’s face also has two types of eyelashes: black and colored. Seriousness is contrasted with the joy of when he dreams, which is when he imagines and can be happy.

About Dalí there are a series of elements related to his childhood in Cadaqués: stones, wood, shells, shells…

And a hook. Which is precisely related to the duality between the life he wants to have with Gala and the one her father wants, who wants to “catch” him.

About the two figures below there are different theories. Some say that it is the same Dalí and Gala, embracing. Others who are Dalí’s parents, since his mother died and the female character appears petrified.

But, without a doubt, the great protagonist of the painting is Gala. She emerges from Dalí’s head, with a long neck and bare shoulders. As if she were an art deco sculpture.

It really is a source of desire, which is why she is performing fellatio on Dalí and a water lily appears, with a clearly erect pistil alluding to coitus.

Or the lion, which is the representation of virility and strength, also with an erect tongue.

It is a representation of both sexual desire and wanting to develop a life according to its own rules. But the situation could become even darker…

¡BUM!

This is ‘Melancholic atomic and uranic idyll’, a work created by Dalí in New York the same year that the US dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki: in 1945. If the previous painting was passion, this is horror.

It is a black curtain from which different stories emerge, but there is one that stands out above all: the representation of what is North American.

Dalí decided to reproduce baseball because, according to him, the idea of ​​the game and the fun is related to North America. The balls thrown by the players become bombs.

These balls hit different parts of the painting, including Dalí’s face composed from the plane that dropped the atomic bomb.

Above him is Gala, again with the same relationship as the first painting: with her face turned to the side as a sign of affection.

The clock, like the previous grasshopper, is full of ants and has a soft texture. It speaks of putrefaction and death, as it is shown as a rotten mechanism.

Furthermore, there is a monstrous relationship between architecture and the human body. Baseballs also sprout from these forms, much like bubonic plague-like skin diseases.

Another ball protrudes from the throat of a man, visibly sick and dying. He is expectant because he contemplates how the catastrophe is about to come to him.

Outside the dark curtain are the elephants representing Hitler. They have elongated legs as a consequence of the critical paranoid method that the author developed. “We pretended to be crazy. He was really crazy,” said the painter about the German dictator.

It should be said that Dalí had no qualms about establishing links with fascism. He returned to Spain from the US in 1948 and, in addition to receiving Franco in Cadaqués, he proposed some projects to him.

One of them, according to Luis Buñuel himself in his autobiography ‘My last breath’, consisted of a commemorative monument of the Falange built with the fused bones of all the dead of the war. The idea was rejected.

“I am surrealism”, Dalí came to say of himself. Egocentric, “thirsty for money”, as the writer André Breton or defender of fascism called him. Not all the words he received were admiration.

But even so, he is one of the great avant-garde painters and understanding his work is, in short, reading one of the most important pages in the history of both Spanish and international art.