Dali Paper
Directions:
Summarize the following article on Dali in 1 page.
Include and talk about this information in your summary (tell me what the article says)
Success Criteria:
Clear, big headlines
Neat, clean handwriting
All information on hand out is included.
Images are neatly cut out and glued into the process journal.
NO tape or staples. If an image is hanging off the page it will not count
Summarize the following article on Dali in 1 page.
Include and talk about this information in your summary (tell me what the article says)
- The Persistence of Memory
- paste in the image from your PJ next to the writing
- Basket of Bread
- paste in the image from your PJ next to the writing
- The Burning Giraffe
- paste in the image from your PJ next to the writing
- Autumn Cannibalism
- paste in the image from your PJ next to the writing
Success Criteria:
Clear, big headlines
Neat, clean handwriting
All information on hand out is included.
Images are neatly cut out and glued into the process journal.
NO tape or staples. If an image is hanging off the page it will not count
Salvador Dali:
Master of Illusion
Ants swarm over melting watches. Drawers pop out of human bodies. Crutches prop up eyelids and chins. What do these bizarre things mean? The answers are as fascinating as the colorful artist with the huge mustache who painted them: Salvador Dali.
Dali is on the best known and most successful artists of the 20th century. His work helped turn Surrealism into an important artistic and literary movement. Always controversial, Dali was attacked by his critics as a self-promoter obsessed with money and fame. To his admirers, Dali’s art with its symbols and optical illusions was innovative and brilliant. Dali’s art struck a nerve. It made people cringe; it made them laugh. But it also made them think.
Salvador Dali was born in 1904 to well-to-do parents in a small town in northern Spain. He was drawn to art early on. In high school, Dali had his first exhibition, which was met with local acclaim. The praise didn’t surprise the artist, who predicted in his diary: “I’ll be a great genius.”
Dali’s first recognition came with his 1928 painting, Basket of Bread. It shows the highly realistic style Dali would soon use to make his Surrealist paintings. The work’s intensity stems from the placement of the basket against a deep black background. Careful modeling (gradation of light and dark) makes the bread seem to glow. Cast shadows, highlights and perspective (a way to represent three-dimensions on a flat surface) create a sense of deep space. The painting is so detailed and luminous it seems more real than a photo.
Dali’s true genius was not recognized until 1931 when he painted one of the world’s best known Surrealist works, The Persistence of Memory. Struggling to understand his own dreams and inner conflicts, Dali discovered the ideas of Sigmund Freud. Freud felt people were ruled by their unconscious minds and dreams were a link to this unconscious. In this work, hard and soft forms are reversed. The limp metal watches suggest the unreliability of the conscious world. One watch droops over the sleeping amoeba-like head of the painter himself. Here Dali stresses that our unconscious mind exerts more power over us than anything else.
When this painting was first shown, it was hailed as a supreme example of Surrealism, a movement born in Europe after World War I (1914-1918). Artist who had lived through the horrors of war wanted to create a new way of looking at the world-one that rejected reason, tradition and convention. Surrealists (the word means a higher degree of reality) such as Dali turned inward, seeking to create their own fantastic, introspective, dream-laden worlds.
Dali’s Mindscapes
Dali claimed to have been haunted throughout his life by the fact that he grew up in the shadow of his brother (also named Salvador) who died before he was born. Dali’s strict father eventually banished his willful and unconventional son from the family home. In 1921, when he was 17, Dali’s beloved mother died of cancer. After that, the artist began making images that reflected his tormented soul.
Dali struggled for a while. He then met a woman who would become the most important person in his life- a Russian who called herself Gala. She would become Dali’s wife, model, and business agent, carefully managing his career. In the portrait of her, Gala sits on a wheelbarrow like the figures in the painting behind her. She stares fiercely at her “double” in front of her.
In 1929 Dali, joined a group of Surrealist artists in Paris. From 1929-1937, the artist produced what many believe to his most important Surrealist works. He used a process he called the “paranoiac-critical method” to present his themes and obsessions. Dali described his blend of precise realism and dreamlike fantasy as “hand-painted dream photographs”. Symbols from Dali’s nightmare world- crutches, staircases, grasshoppers, ants, and melting watches- became recurring images in his painting.
A good example of Dali’s work during this period can be found in his 1936 The Burning Giraffe, completed at the beginning of the violent and bloody Spanish Civil War. The focal point of the painting is a faceless, skeletal female figure. Her body has been transformed into half-open drawers, symbols of memory and the unconscious mind. Dali was fond of painting burning giraffes, their mains turned into fiery red flames to suggest the ravages of war. The scale of the cropped foreground figure and the low horizon line lead the viewer’s eye into the work’s deep, surreal space. The painting’s bleak, nearly monochromatic (one color- blue) color scheme, give it an even more nightmarish quality.
In Autumn Cannibalism, the figures suggested by the two central shapes are undergoing a complete metamorphosis (forms gradually change into something else). Just about every natural law has been reversed in this painting- objects float, elongate, dissolve, change, decay. The figures scoop and carve at each other with spoons and knives, a terrifying symbolic representation of a country at war with itself. As Dali’s fame grew, so did warnings of a conflict that would be even larger. Fearing World War II (1939*1945), in 1940 Dali went to America and began to search for new ways to express his obsessions.
Double Messages
As he grew as a painter, Dali began using new techniques. His goal, as always, was to jar the viewer with the unexpected. You’ve seen one method-metamorphosis, which involves gradual change. Another method as he double image, in which one images was suddenly perceived in a different way.
What do you see when you look at the work below? Can you make out a row of people sitting in front of a rounded building? This painting was inspired by a photograph. When Dali first viewed it, he saw a rural scene inhabited by African villagers. But when the artist looked at the photo again, he saw something very different. Hard forms became soft, spaces became shapes, dark areas became light. So Dali painted the image, calling it Paranoiac Face. In this work, the stone hut forms a face. The people and cast shadows become eyes, nose and mouth. The trees turn into hair. This optical illusion expresses Dali’s belief what a person sees depends entirely on his or her unconscious mind.
In Old Age, Adolescence, Infancy, Dali again used double images to symbolize life’s three main stages. In this painting, he uses scenes and landscapes from his childhood- something he often did in his paintings- to create his illusions. A ruined wall contains and frames three heads. Glimpses of the town where Dali grew up are seen through these negative spaces. The three faces are formed by the positive shapes seen through the holes. The nose and mouth of the central head is also the figure of Dali’s nurse, sitting on the ground with her back to us. The houses in the hills behind form the head’s two eyes.
Dali’s art was largely devoted to making dreams concrete. In Sleep, Dali created an image that represents the dominance of the sleeping world over the real one. A distorted, sleeping head-huge in scale- is propped up by crutches, favorite Dali symbols standing for emotional support. Help up only by tiny crutches, the giant head appears to float- or levitate- above the ground. To remind viewers that reality lies behind our fragile dream state, the artist has juxtaposed (put together in unusual combinations) a dog (supported by crutch), a person, a small boat, and a large structure In the desert behind. About this painting Dali wrote, “In order to sleep, we need a whole system of psychically balanced crutches.”
As the art world’s expert on the unconscious, Dali was much in demand. He worked in advertising and for Hollywood, designing clothing and jewelry. Despite his showmanship, his gift for revealing the “true” nature of the human condition was recognized and admired by many people. When he died in 1989, at the age of 84, the world mourned the loss of a great personality and painter.
Master of Illusion
Ants swarm over melting watches. Drawers pop out of human bodies. Crutches prop up eyelids and chins. What do these bizarre things mean? The answers are as fascinating as the colorful artist with the huge mustache who painted them: Salvador Dali.
Dali is on the best known and most successful artists of the 20th century. His work helped turn Surrealism into an important artistic and literary movement. Always controversial, Dali was attacked by his critics as a self-promoter obsessed with money and fame. To his admirers, Dali’s art with its symbols and optical illusions was innovative and brilliant. Dali’s art struck a nerve. It made people cringe; it made them laugh. But it also made them think.
Salvador Dali was born in 1904 to well-to-do parents in a small town in northern Spain. He was drawn to art early on. In high school, Dali had his first exhibition, which was met with local acclaim. The praise didn’t surprise the artist, who predicted in his diary: “I’ll be a great genius.”
Dali’s first recognition came with his 1928 painting, Basket of Bread. It shows the highly realistic style Dali would soon use to make his Surrealist paintings. The work’s intensity stems from the placement of the basket against a deep black background. Careful modeling (gradation of light and dark) makes the bread seem to glow. Cast shadows, highlights and perspective (a way to represent three-dimensions on a flat surface) create a sense of deep space. The painting is so detailed and luminous it seems more real than a photo.
Dali’s true genius was not recognized until 1931 when he painted one of the world’s best known Surrealist works, The Persistence of Memory. Struggling to understand his own dreams and inner conflicts, Dali discovered the ideas of Sigmund Freud. Freud felt people were ruled by their unconscious minds and dreams were a link to this unconscious. In this work, hard and soft forms are reversed. The limp metal watches suggest the unreliability of the conscious world. One watch droops over the sleeping amoeba-like head of the painter himself. Here Dali stresses that our unconscious mind exerts more power over us than anything else.
When this painting was first shown, it was hailed as a supreme example of Surrealism, a movement born in Europe after World War I (1914-1918). Artist who had lived through the horrors of war wanted to create a new way of looking at the world-one that rejected reason, tradition and convention. Surrealists (the word means a higher degree of reality) such as Dali turned inward, seeking to create their own fantastic, introspective, dream-laden worlds.
Dali’s Mindscapes
Dali claimed to have been haunted throughout his life by the fact that he grew up in the shadow of his brother (also named Salvador) who died before he was born. Dali’s strict father eventually banished his willful and unconventional son from the family home. In 1921, when he was 17, Dali’s beloved mother died of cancer. After that, the artist began making images that reflected his tormented soul.
Dali struggled for a while. He then met a woman who would become the most important person in his life- a Russian who called herself Gala. She would become Dali’s wife, model, and business agent, carefully managing his career. In the portrait of her, Gala sits on a wheelbarrow like the figures in the painting behind her. She stares fiercely at her “double” in front of her.
In 1929 Dali, joined a group of Surrealist artists in Paris. From 1929-1937, the artist produced what many believe to his most important Surrealist works. He used a process he called the “paranoiac-critical method” to present his themes and obsessions. Dali described his blend of precise realism and dreamlike fantasy as “hand-painted dream photographs”. Symbols from Dali’s nightmare world- crutches, staircases, grasshoppers, ants, and melting watches- became recurring images in his painting.
A good example of Dali’s work during this period can be found in his 1936 The Burning Giraffe, completed at the beginning of the violent and bloody Spanish Civil War. The focal point of the painting is a faceless, skeletal female figure. Her body has been transformed into half-open drawers, symbols of memory and the unconscious mind. Dali was fond of painting burning giraffes, their mains turned into fiery red flames to suggest the ravages of war. The scale of the cropped foreground figure and the low horizon line lead the viewer’s eye into the work’s deep, surreal space. The painting’s bleak, nearly monochromatic (one color- blue) color scheme, give it an even more nightmarish quality.
In Autumn Cannibalism, the figures suggested by the two central shapes are undergoing a complete metamorphosis (forms gradually change into something else). Just about every natural law has been reversed in this painting- objects float, elongate, dissolve, change, decay. The figures scoop and carve at each other with spoons and knives, a terrifying symbolic representation of a country at war with itself. As Dali’s fame grew, so did warnings of a conflict that would be even larger. Fearing World War II (1939*1945), in 1940 Dali went to America and began to search for new ways to express his obsessions.
Double Messages
As he grew as a painter, Dali began using new techniques. His goal, as always, was to jar the viewer with the unexpected. You’ve seen one method-metamorphosis, which involves gradual change. Another method as he double image, in which one images was suddenly perceived in a different way.
What do you see when you look at the work below? Can you make out a row of people sitting in front of a rounded building? This painting was inspired by a photograph. When Dali first viewed it, he saw a rural scene inhabited by African villagers. But when the artist looked at the photo again, he saw something very different. Hard forms became soft, spaces became shapes, dark areas became light. So Dali painted the image, calling it Paranoiac Face. In this work, the stone hut forms a face. The people and cast shadows become eyes, nose and mouth. The trees turn into hair. This optical illusion expresses Dali’s belief what a person sees depends entirely on his or her unconscious mind.
In Old Age, Adolescence, Infancy, Dali again used double images to symbolize life’s three main stages. In this painting, he uses scenes and landscapes from his childhood- something he often did in his paintings- to create his illusions. A ruined wall contains and frames three heads. Glimpses of the town where Dali grew up are seen through these negative spaces. The three faces are formed by the positive shapes seen through the holes. The nose and mouth of the central head is also the figure of Dali’s nurse, sitting on the ground with her back to us. The houses in the hills behind form the head’s two eyes.
Dali’s art was largely devoted to making dreams concrete. In Sleep, Dali created an image that represents the dominance of the sleeping world over the real one. A distorted, sleeping head-huge in scale- is propped up by crutches, favorite Dali symbols standing for emotional support. Help up only by tiny crutches, the giant head appears to float- or levitate- above the ground. To remind viewers that reality lies behind our fragile dream state, the artist has juxtaposed (put together in unusual combinations) a dog (supported by crutch), a person, a small boat, and a large structure In the desert behind. About this painting Dali wrote, “In order to sleep, we need a whole system of psychically balanced crutches.”
As the art world’s expert on the unconscious, Dali was much in demand. He worked in advertising and for Hollywood, designing clothing and jewelry. Despite his showmanship, his gift for revealing the “true” nature of the human condition was recognized and admired by many people. When he died in 1989, at the age of 84, the world mourned the loss of a great personality and painter.