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Analysis of surrealist salvador dali's artistic masterpiece the persistence of memory (1931)
Analysis of surrealist salvador dali's artistic masterpiece the persistence of memory (1931)
By Salvador Dali Persistence of Memory Essay
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Way more than time just melting away
This paper will take a look at Salvador Dali’s painting, The Persistence of Memory, painted in 1931. As the viewer can tell, this is a story of time and life. The memories start in the background where all is well and things are straight and calm. Moving on to the cliff, the observer possibly sees a well-behaved teenager. There is nothing horrible here that leads the spectator to gasp, and the viewer knows this person made it through that time in their life. Then the picture moves on to the age of about twenty, the memories are fond but in the distant past. The memories are protected by a white blanket so that they do not just fall into the background. Then something happened where the person had some times in their life that had not been so great. They are there as a reminder, but they are part of a very dead place. The person’s being becomes full of life again as the clock on the shelf seems to be newer. The clock is placed on the shelf and the numbers are able to be read. This tells of a recent time, yet starting to decay by the fly being there. The pocket watch is there to let the observer know the story is not done; there are more wonderful memories on their way.
The first thing one notices when looking at this piece of work is the clock with the gold ring around it slightly off to the left. It is sitting on something that looks like a shelf. The reason the eyes are drawn to this particular clock first is the contrast in color, and it is the biggest clock in the painting however; it is not the only clock. With this particular clock with the gold ring is placed on a shelf painted in a tan color. In comparison to the other clocks, which are painted with silver rings around them, this clo...
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...bly calling out the all the good sayings about blue skies. As one is looking in the back of the picture, there is a shelf also telling the viewer that the person was put high above the bad things. The shelf kept the memories in that part of the life even.
I feel good about this painting because I think it depicts life so well. Most children like childhood and enjoy the pleasure of being taken care of. Many people struggle with the teen years, and in the case of this person, the memories were tough but not horrible. Moving on, I think we all have memories we are fond of, take care of, or try to hold on to. We also have some down times that we would rather not remember, but being part of us they are. Last but not least we all have memories that life holds for us that are yet to be discovered. They can be grand if we make the choices to make them colorful and decorated.
Carol Armstrong begins her essay by pointing out the two main points that come about when discussing A Bar at the Folies-Bergere. These two points are the social context of the painting and its representation of 19th century Paris, and the internal structure of the painting itself with the use of space. She then goes on and addresses what she will be analyzing throughout her essay. She focuses on three main points, the still life of the counter and its commodities, the mirror and its “paintedness”, and the barmaid and her “infra-thin hinge” between the countertop and the mirror.
This book was published in 1981 with an immense elaboration of media hype. This is a story of a young Mexican American who felt disgusted of being pointed out as a minority and was unhappy with affirmative action programs although he had gained advantages from them. He acknowledged the gap that was created between him and his parents as the penalty immigrants ought to pay to develop and grow into American culture. And he confessed that he got bewildered to see other Hispanic teachers and students determined to preserve their ethnicity and traditions by asking for such issues to be dealt with as departments of Chicano studies and minority literature classes. A lot of critics criticized him as a defector of his heritage, but there are a few who believed him to be a sober vote in opposition to the political intemperance of the 1960s and 1970s.
The Merode Altarpiece is a triptych painting that represents the Annunciation of the Virgin Mary. This work displays the main characteristics of the Northern Late Gothic period. There is so much detail in this work of art. Campin utilizes many symbols in this altarpiec. The setting of the painting is in a Flemish middle class house. The Annunciation theme is being depicted in the central panel. A scene of Saint Joseph at work as a carpenter occupies the right-hand panel. The portraits of the donors are depicted in the left hand panel. Campin failed to understand the scientific perspective. To illustrate, there is no focal point in the painting and the table looks tilted. Campin used no aerial perspective. To illustrate, the background is still very crisp when seen from a distance. The most important aspect of the painting is the symbolism. For example, the lilies represent Mary's purity, the candle represents the Holy Spirit, even the mouse traps represent trapping evil. Campin also made use of bright, rich colors. In the central panel, the drapery of the figures are filled with colors of red and white. Campin has also made a good use of illusion of the space by making the town seem to be far away by distance by making them appear blurry. Furthermore, Campin has created figures that are not in proper proportion. To illustrate, the figure’s head is small and the bodies are big and it seems that if they get will hit their head if they get up. They look very unrealistic. Although they are not in proportion, the figures seem to have very sharp edges. The figures also look very stiff and rigid. In Merode Altarpiece, the light is arbitrary and the figures do not cast any...
We know Salvador Dali to be the very eccentric surrealist painter of such paintings as, The Temptation of St. Anthony or The Persistence of Memory. Dali’s painting, Hasty Plum, is quite unlike anything that Dali had painted in the past. Hasty Plum was part of a group of commissioned pieces that were based on 19th century botanical drawings. It was done in the medium of watercolor and gouache in 1969. Recently, because of the rarity or the watercolor paintings, they were sold for 1 million dollars. (Livius, 2014) The theme that connects these two works of art and spans the centur...
Spending time looking at art is a way of trying to get into an artists’ mind and understand what he is trying to tell you through his work. The feeling is rewarding in two distinctive ways; one notices the differences in the style of painting and the common features that dominate the art world. When comparing the two paintings, The Kneeling Woman by Fernand Leger and Two Women on a Wharf by Willem de Kooning, one can see the similarities and differences in the subjects of the paintings, the use of colors, and the layout
The Interpretation/Meaning (III) will be written without any guideline points, the aim of this part will be to determine what the painter wanted to express with his piece of work and what it tells us in a symbolic or not instantly clear way. This part will also handle why the artist drew the painting the way he did it and why he chose various techniques or tools.
This painting of the industrial revolution is very thought provoking, and causes a person to think about of what was happening during the industrial revolution. He shows the horrors of the factories and the serenity of the nature. He makes someone want to go back in time where things were peaceful, and there was just nature. Everything was in it’s own natural state and peaceful. This painting gave viewers a small glimpse into the past of the United States and the industrial revolution. Even though this picture showed a small glimpse of the past, a picture (or painting) is truly worth a thousand
... study for the overall concept they appear rather as abstract patterns. The shadows of the figures were very carefully modeled. The light- dark contrasts of the shadows make them seem actually real. The spatial quality is only established through the relations between the sizes of the objects. The painting is not based on a geometrical, box like space. The perspective centre is on the right, despite the fact that the composition is laid in rows parallel to the picture frame. At the same time a paradoxical foreshortening from right to left is evident. The girl fishing with the orange dress and her mother are on the same level, that is, actually at equal distance. In its spatial contruction, the painting is also a successful construction, the groups of people sitting in the shade, and who should really be seen from above, are all shown directly from the side. The ideal eye level would actually be on different horizontal lines; first at head height of the standing figures, then of those seated. Seurats methods of combing observations which he collected over two years, corresponds, in its self invented techniques, to a modern lifelike painting rather than an academic history painting.
This painting of the industrial revolution is very thought provoking, and causes a person to think about of what was happening during the industrial revolution. He shows the horrors of the factories and the serenity of the nature. He makes someone want to go back in time where things were peaceful, and there was just nature. Everything was in it’s own natural state and peaceful.
Though most works of art have some underlying, deeper meaning attached to them, our first impression of their significance comes through our initial visual interpretation. When we first view a painting or a statue or other piece of art, we notice first the visual details – its size, its medium, its color, and its condition, for example – before we begin to ponder its greater significance. Indeed, these visual clues are just as important as any other interpretation or meaning of a work, for they allow us to understand just what that deeper meaning is. The expression on a statue’s face tells us the emotion and message that the artist is trying to convey. Its color, too, can provide clues: darker or lighter colors can play a role in how we judge a piece of art. The type of lines used in a piece can send different messages. A sculpture, for example, may have been carved with hard, rough lines or it may have been carved with smoother, more flowing lines that portray a kind of gentleness.
Salvador Dali is a master of the art of surrealism and perhaps the world’s greatest Spanish artist. He is well known for his extraordinary bizarre paintings, where he depicts dream worlds that is illogical and irrational. One of Dali’s famous work is The Persistence of Memory, this painting explored the ideas about dreams, fantasies and fears. Most of the Dali’s painting is about his experience and his interests. Sigmund Freud was a big influence to Dali, He was fascinated about his psychoanalysis theories, it inspired him to develop a technique called paranoiac critical method where creating a work of art, it uses an active process of the mind to visualize images in the work and combine these into the final product (Wikipedia). In the early stages of Dali’s career most of his works are created on his hometown of Figueres, Spain on the rocky coastline of the Cadaques here
Dreams. They are successions of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur usually involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. Dreams don’t just leave the individual once they wake up, rather this is when the have the most impact. Dreams have fascinated artists from early civilizations and still to this day. Salvador Dali’s artwork was influenced significantly by the concept of dreams and the utilization of these concepts and ideas are what made him such an influential artist. The images that fill one’s head while they are asleep have the ability to greatly impact ones’ perception of the physical world. These images fascinated Dali and brought him to create some of the most iconic surrealist
They might not be very prominent, but they exist the painting and serve as the base for creation. For starters, the window pane contains lines that highlight its simple design. Simplicity remains as the core of this work. Moreover, sill is roughly represented by a thick brown line underneath the window as a boundary in a quietly brilliant fashion. The work has a wonderful color allocation to express the mood. The color is limited within the muted palette color range. Grey—the intermediate color of black and white, is the dominate color for both exterior view and the interior part, as a matter of fact, the observer notices that nearly all colors are mixed instead of natural this work. The cloudy sky corresponds to the grey color of the wall, yet the brightness is not influenced. However, this consistency has successfully created a cold, grave and silent environment for a crowded place such as New York. The whole environment of this painting seems to be surrounded by the negative and depressive
Figure 2, which is the first historical example, The Persistance of Memory by Salvador Dali. This is said to be the ideal Surrealist image. Surrealist’s often invented new forms to symbolize the unconscious, while in this picture Dali represented his hallucinations with meticulous realism (Brahman et al., 2001: 1). The
The theme I picked out from the paintings in chapters 19-21 is ‘History and Memory’. Each of the three pieces I chose depicts a significant historical event or time period. It is reasonable that people would want future generations to remember what had happened in order to appreciate the sacrifices and achievements of those who came before as well as to avoid the same mistakes in the future. Art can be used to document the existence of a people, the triumphs, the failures, and the passing of people on both a personal and communal level. (Peters) The act of creating art guarantees a subjective interpretation of history. The artist interprets the subject at hand and creates the art piece in his or her own style, it can never be truly unbiased, because the artist has total influence over the result and has human fallibility. With that in mind we can look at an historical art piece and we cannot see as historical fact but as historical likeliness.