Summing up Dali’.
All his life the painter Salvador Dali’ had a desire not just to do the outlandish thing, he wanted to be the outlandish thing.
Many regarded him as shallow, a kind of joker, but he could be serious. It was, he reasoned, by ignoring aesthetic concerns that he could approach true art.
“It is good taste, and good taste alone, that possesses the power to sterilize and is always the first handicap to any creative functioning.”
His surrealism, his famous limp watches, summed up this thought. Which brings us to this week’s prompt, a painting by Dali':
“I am making things that inspire me with a profound emotion and I am trying to paint them honestly."
Picture a young man – Salvador was twenty-one at this time – absolutely dedicated to throwing off the shackles of his education and existence and conventional art training.
What fascinated him? What inspired him with a profound emotion?
In “Venus and a Sailor,” it is eros, the erotic force, that was to be his trademark throughout his life as an artist.
A sailor, after a month or so at sea, seeks a woman. To Dali’, this is that most important life force at work because the person the sailor seeks is not just a woman to nestle with; she is Woman – a girl, a mother figure, a goddess from the classical past, and yes, a prostitute.
Dali’ came at this theme from several different angles.
Here's still one more angle.
This would seem to be the most representational. The sailor has had quite a fall; he has become a mere puppet. The ship is at anchor in the harbor. Young Salvador has inserted a small iconic item from that time – 1924 – a “flapper.”
It’s almost as though he is commenting on class differences. It may be just my imagination but as I understand it the sailor, a common seaman, gets nothing; the man making out with the goddess is an officer, or possibly a petty officer.
To sum up, surrealism opened up infinite possibilities for Dali’s wild imagination.
(Also submitted to Sunday Scribblings)
