Salvador Dali Background

Inside the Head of Dali
Salvador Dali was a modern master of art. He unleashed a tidal wave of surrealistic inspiration, affecting not only fellow painters, but also designers of jewelry, fashion, architecture, Walt Disney, directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, performers like Lady Gaga, and Madison Street advertisers. Filled with antics of the absurd, Dali fashioned a world for himself, a world which we are cordially invited to experience his eccentricity, his passions, and his eternal questioning nature. Dali’s surreal paintings transport us to fantastic realms of dream, food, sex, and religion. Born on May 11, 1904, Dali was encouraged by his mother to explore, to taste, to smell, to experience life with all of its sensuality. As a boy, Dali often visited the Spanish coastal town of Cadaqués with his family. It was here that he found inspiration from the landscape, the sea, the rock formations, the bustling harbor, with ships transporting barrels of olives and troves of exotic spices. Dali was impressed by the Catholic churches, and their altars with the portrayal of Christ and of the angels and saints gracefully flying overhead, yet frozen in time and marble. It was in Cadaqués that Dali declared “I have been made in these rocks. Here have I shaped my personality. I cannot separate myself from this sky, this sea and these rocks.” It was in

Cadaqués that Dali found not only his inspiration, but also his major themes of food, sex and religion.
Salvador Dali once said “Un hombre se manifiesta tal cual es cuando tiene un tenedor en su mano,” A man manifests himself only when he beholds a fork in his hand. Dali found inspiration, depth, understanding and the fantastic in the most ordinary and mundane of things, food. He considered his passion for food a fetish which he used as a reflecting and refracting device of the mundane and the fantastic in his art. As a child, he developed not only an appreciation for food, but a curiosity and longing to explore the culinary world, using all of his senses. As a boy, Dali would peek through the kitchen door just to see the hot oil and smell the aromas that came from inside the kitchen. The quirky qualities and underlying mysteries of food served as inspiration for Dali. The lobster was another one of Dali’s fetishes, to which he would attribute aphrodisiac and sexual connotations in his work. He enjoyed experimenting with photography where the said crustacean covered the vagina of his female models. Dali made a telephone with a lobster as the receiver, known as Aphrodisiac Telephone, 1936, for the English poet and collector of contemporary art, Edward James. It is said that when Dali went out to eat lobster he would request it to be served to him with a telephone on the side. If his request was not accommodated by the restaurant, he would get extremely upset and storm out.
In the beginning of his career, Dali painted still lives of food, such as Basket of Bread, which he finished in 1926. Later, Dali expanded from that basic style of art and created his own style, greatly influenced by the surrealist movement of Europe. What was mundane in Dali’s work then took on fantastical and transporting qualities. Dali’s most famous food-themed art works are: Portrait of Gala with Two Lamb Chops Balanced on Her Shoulder, 1933, Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War), 1936, Apparition of a Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach, 1938, Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man, 1943, and Dream caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening, 1944.
Dali combined his passion for food in his dream-like worlds with sensual and sexual desires. Dali’s wife, Gala, was his everything. She was his partner, muse, subject, sexual object, and most importantly, his inspiration for much of his work. in Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second before Awakening, 1944, Gala, his wife, is placed naked, in slumber, on a floating rock. Beneath Gala is a pomegranate, the fruit of the underworld, representing the waking realm. Above this pomegranate, is a buzzing bee, the catalyst for waking. The top left corner features a larger pomegranate, symbolizing the realm of dream, in this case, a nightmare of terrible importance. From this unconscious realm bursts forth a gargantuan fish of the abyssal dream waters. From its mouth leap two frightening tigers, ready to pounce, and a gun bayonet, all of which is about to wrathfully descend upon her.
Sex became one of Dali’s favorite subjects.

Overt sex and sexuality can be found in much of his work. In The Great Masturbator, 1929, there is a female figure in an erotic pose. Next to the female figure are the legs and genitalia of a man. The Great Masturbator is a prime example of his admiration for sex. When Salvador Dali was young, he liked to compare his penis with that of his classmates. Upon seeing that his penis was not as big as his classmates, Dali’s insecurities grew. His sexual fears and anxieties can be seen, demonstrated by the bodies and phallic figures he painted over the progression of his

life.
Dali’s inner sexual tensions become apparent in his work, Young Virgin Auto-Sodomized by The Horns of Her Own Chastity. The constitution of this painting is of a woman whose rear is made out of what seems to be two floating Rhino horns. Beneath her is a phallic-shaped horn, ready to penetrate her rear. Salvador Dali often incorporated phallic objects in his paintings to represent his penis. In The Temptation of St. Anthony, Dali portrays Saint Anthony as a naked, homeless man in the desert. Saint Anthony is holding a crucifix in an exorcism gesture. His crucifix is made of twigs that protect him from temptations. The temptations are resembled by a horse and a procession of elephants topped with power symbols of ambition, sex and earthly power over others. This painting represents each of the temptations that mankind must transcend. The horse resembles the foolish ambition of man. The naked woman represents sexual temptation. The avarice of man is represented by two elephants, one who has a pyramid on its back and the other who carries a golden house with a naked female bust.
Religion was a surrealistic delight for Dali. He employed the use of religious imagery in many of his works. In 1949, Dali was granted an audience with Pope Pius XII, which later influenced Dali’s joining the Catholic faith. He showed the pope his first version of The Madonna of Port Lligat, 1950. In this painting, the central figure is the Virgin Mary, but with Gala’s face.
In Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus), Dali portrays Jesus as a trans-dimensional being, suspended on a three dimensional cross, observed by Mary Magdalen, who is ready to wipe clean the blood of Christ, which here, in Dali’s world, does not exist. Here, we see Dali’s interpretation of Jesus’ crucifixion, viewed through the eyes of Mary Magdalen. She beholds a vision of the Christ, semi-attached with three pegs to the three dimensional cross. Here, the Christ is not attached to the cross completely as classic depictions suggest. There is no blood coming from Jesus’ wounds, which suggests the Christ’s immortality, even when crucified. The surreal setting of this work suggests that this is a dream of Mary Magdalen’s, an idealized vision of Christ’s crucifixion. Dali’s obsession with immortality is apparent as the figure of Christ is suspended in a vision, in a higher dimension, free from the pain and suffering that arises from the two dimensional life.