Paola+Duck

=**__SALVADOR DALI __ **= "Each morning when I awake, I experience again a supreme pleasure-that of being Salvador Dali”—Salvador Dali || **Biography** Salvador Dali drew from an early age and grew to become one of the most skillful artists in history. He created over 1,500 paintings during his career, as well as various other works in different mediums. Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dali was born on May 11, 1904, in Figueras, Catalonia, a province of Spain. He was the son of Salvador Dali i Cusi, a middle-class lawyer and notary, and Felipa Domenech Ferres, a loving and encouraging mother. By the age of 17, Dali was already recognized by Catalan critics as a major talent. In 1922, Dali was admitted to the San Fernando Academy in Madrid, where he was involved in a 4-year course of study and experimented with forms of Cubism and Dadaism. There he met Federico Garcia Lorca, his closest friend and the person who helped to fuel his ambitions. During this time Dali began to explore his dreams, obsessions, and cultivate his eccentric personality. Dali was unable to complete his final exams, because he was expelled in 1926 for commenting that the faculty who judged his work was not competent enough to grade him. Short after his expulsion, Dali moved to Paris, France to pursue his career as an artist. There he met many of the most progressive artists of the time, amongst them, Pablo Picasso. Dali joined the surrealists, led by Dadaist Andre Breton. He learned to depict dreamlike landscapes, which reveal a world of illusion and fantasy where objects are set in strange juxtapositions, melt, and metamorphose into each other. An example of such work is his famous melting clocks, “The Persistence of Memory”. In 1929 Dali fell in love with Helena Diakonova, commonly know as Gala, who became his long time companion and his ultimate inspiration. Dali was later expelled from the surrealist movement due to politics and his narcissistic behavior. It is then when he decided to return to Spain in 1955. In 1982 his beloved wife Gala died. After her death, Dali lost much of his will to live and moved from his hometown, Figueras, to the castle he had bought for Gala in Pubol. In 1984, a suspicious fire broke out in his bedroom, where he suffered from sever injuries. He was rescued and moved back to his hometown of Figueres, Catalonia, Spain where he soon died from heart problems on January 23, 1989. || 
 * [[image:salvador_dali_nywts.jpg width="365" height="461" align="center" caption="Salvador Dali"]]

Dali painted The Persistence of Memory in 1931. This specific painting is one of the most celebrated and recognized works of Dali and has managed to intrigue us all, because it translates an idea into symbols when words are not sufficient. The three melting watches placed in the landscape of Dali’s hometown, Port Lligat, have become nearly as prominent as Dali’s name since surrealism was first introduced to American audiences in 1932. The Persistence of Memory, as stated by Dali, is a “hand- painted dream photograph” and can concurrently be read as a landscape, a still-life, and a self-portrait. The oil painting is relatively small in size, measuring only 24.1 cm x 33 cm. While the top third of the painting, is occupied by sharp and rough cliffs, a light sky, and an empty, desert-like region (providing no clues of distance, recognizable landmark, time, nor temperature), the bottom two-thirds feature four larger-than- life watches (one melting over a branch of a dead olive tree, the second melting over a large step, the third drooping over an amorphous shape, and the fourth cover with swarming ants). The Persistence of Memory is filled with significant images, such as, the ants, the fly, the olive tree, the steps, the amorphous shape on the beach, but none of them as appealing as the melting watches themselves. Watches are symbolic of time, but Dali manages a contradiction by making them appear as if they were melting. The resulting effect is a depiction of both time and the machine that measures it, as both ineffective and irrelevant. The painting, according to critics, portrays time standing still and the urge to grasp the moment. It is said, that the watches reveal our obsession with time and memory, and acknowledges the power of the unconscious to preserve memories over time. The interpretation of time and memory, is not achieved only by the watches themselves, but also by the other elements that stress their meaning. The clocks, melting over a vast and deserted beach, resembles the sands of time. The significance of the step and the dead olive tree continues to be debated. Many suggest that they represent the stages in life. The clock on the elevated step, represents an early life. The clock lying on the formless face that is pondering on the sand, shows middle age. Finally, the clock on the dead olive tree portrays death and the end of time. The formless shape in the center of the piece, that appears to have been washed onto the beach is said to be a distorted version of the profile of Dali himself, looking down at the bottom of the painting. Aside from suggesting one of the stages in life, the self-portrait, having closed eye and oversize eyelashes, and a lack of other facial features, seems to imply sleep, which stresses an unconscious world. To emphasize the nervousness and anxiety that is often associated with time, Dali includes a group of crawling ants, with bodies that are shaped like hourglasses. The fly has several interpretations, to some the fly represents time going by fast and others seem to believe that it portrays putrefaction of time, which again suggests the irrelevance during sleep. This beautiful piece is unique and rich in meaning, and continues to intrigue its viewers and maintains its position among one of Dali’s most admirable works of art.
 * "The Persistence of Memory"- Analysis**

Salvador Dali: [|Salvador Dali Art Gallery]  MY INTERPRETATION OF DALI'S STYLE

Sources:

http://www.duke.edu/web/lit132/dalibio.html http://salvadordalimuseum.org/history/biography.html http://www.biographybase.com/biography/Dali_Salvador.html http://www.3d-dali.com/ http://www.youtube.com/watch#!v=FHw9DQHl9B0&feature=fvw Atwater-Rhodes, Amelia. "Persistence of memory". New York : Delacorte Press, 2008 Eprile, Tony. "The persistence of memory". New York : W.W. Norton, 2004. Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition. "Salvador Dali". 10/1/2009, p1-1, 1p Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition. "Surrealism". 10/1/2009, p1-1, 1p