Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali strove to shock people, not only through his art, but with his actions and his words as well. He was a Surrealist in all aspects of his life, so much so that the other members of the Surrealist movement eventually tried to separate themselves from Dali.

Born in Catalonia, Spain in 1904, Salvador Dali showed artistic talent early. His father was very strict but his mother was much gentler and encouraged him to explore his interest in art. In 1916 he began drawing classes. Then, in 1922, Dali went to Madrid to study at the Academia de San Fernando.

While at school, Dali painted in the Cubist style and experimented briefly with Dada. It was also during this time that he developed the first of his many strange styles of dress: He grew his hair long and wore sideburns and he dressed in suit coats, stockings, and short pants that stopped at the knee. After nearly four years of school, his ego had grown so large that he decided he was too good for any of the professors to judge him. When he expressed this feeling, he was kicked out of the academy.

After he left the Academia de San Fernando, Dali began to experiment will Surrealism. He also grew a thin mustache that curved up at either end. Both the mustache and the surrealist style would last the rest of Dali’s life.

I cannot show you paintings here (due to copyright law) but I will direct you to some of Dali’s most famous paintings. First, look at The Persistence of Memory. The melting clocks portray the idea that time is not always steady. That weird shape in the middle of the painting is a face. It was based on a rock formation off the shore of Catalonia, Spain.

Next, look at Swans Reflecting Elephants. It is the reflections that make this painting so fantastic.

Dali included reflections in other paintings as well, including Metamorphosis of Narcissus. Focus hard and you’ll see a hand holding a blooming egg (the flower is a narcissus) and, beside it, a man leaning toward the water. The story of Narcissus tells of a man who was so in love with himself that he drown trying to embrace his own reflection. The gods then created a flower in his memory and named it after him. This paintings is Dali’s interpretation of that story.

Dali not only painted, but created sculpture, worked on films (including one for Disney), made jewelry, experimented with photography, and helped design the Dali Theater and Museum in Figueres, Spain.

In 1989, Salvador Dali died. Some believe that, on his deathbed, he was forced to sign blank canvases. As the rumor goes, paintings were later created on the canvases and passed off as Dali’s work.

There are lots of crazy stories about Dali. Sometime I'll write a post just about his wackiness but for now his art is more important.



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Create Your Own Surrealist Collage

Happy Earth Day! Today we must remember how important it is to care for our planet. Your project today should be made entirely from things you find around your house. Use throw-away flyers, newspapers, or old magazines to create your Surrealist collage. Be sure to ask permission before you cut anything!

Before you begin, look for inspiration at these galleries of Surrealist painters:
Salvador Dali, Rene Magritte, Max Ernst.

Yesterday you learned about Surrealism. When making your collage, keep in mind that your finished artwork should look like a dream. Group unrelated pictures together (like I did) or use strange colors (try coloring black and white images with crayons) to create the effect of a dream. I cut out a bunch of pictures I liked without thinking about how they might fit together. Then I used a glue stick to combine those pictures:
Stretch your imagination but, in honor of Earth Day, only use materials that would have been thrown away or recycled. For another project suitable for Earth Day, check out Recycled Art, Dada Style.

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Surrealism

Dadaism, which you read about on Thursday, led to Surrealism. The same distaste for World War I and for the thinking of the society of the time created Surrealism.

Writers began the Surrealist movement. In 1924, Andre Breton explained Surrealism in his Surrealist Manifesto, and a few years later artists began to paint in the style he described. Surrealists wanted to free their minds of rational thought, to write or paint the ideas that were buried deep in their minds. These artists did not wish their work to make simple, logical sense.

This is why many of the paintings look like scenes from a dream (or nightmare). Many Surrealist paintings, like Salvador Dali’s Swans Reflecting Elephants, include imaginary creatures or real-life creatures shown in unnatural ways. Some paintings, such as Max Ernst’s Seascape, include several seemingly unrelated objects. Others twist realistic images by using strange colors.

In any Surrealist paintings, there is a lot to look at.

This week is Surrealism week so check back for posts about some important Surrealist painters.

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Recycled Art, Dada Style

Look! I made a piggy! I know my pig isn’t really “beautiful.” But I did create something new out of an empty soda bottle and some toilet paper rolls. I’m not going to give you directions to make your own recycled pig. The point of this activity is to use your imagination to create something beautiful (or not so beautiful) out of trash. I will show you some pictures of the process, though:
Now that you’ve been subjected to my attempt, check out this cool roadrunner made completely out of trash.

And have a great weekend!

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Dadaism

You’ve seen a Dadaist work of art, though when you saw it someone was probably poking fun at the silly bicycle wheel posing as art (Bicycle Wheel, by Marcel Duchamp). The joke’s on us, though. The Dadaists meant to turn our world upside, to make it seem crazy and absurd. They meant for us to rethink the items that surround us so that we might rethink our world.
Dadaism began in Zurich, Switzerland and spread to France, Germany, Spain, and the U.S. The movement began around 1916 and continued until about 1920.

The artists known as Dadaists thought that World War I was a terrible thing. They thought it was ridiculous for people all over the world to spend years killing each other. Because the war shaped the world in which these artists lived, this distaste for WWI became a distaste for the state of the world.

The Dadaists protested through their art the war and the current culture. Raoul Hausmann’s The Mechanical Head shows a man who cannot think for himself but accepts everything he is told. He has a wooden head with tight lips and eyes that show no expression. The mechanical man will never argue or share an opinion of his own. Look for yourself:
According to the Dadaists, once the culture had been stripped down it could be rebuilt. So the Dadaists made chaos out of the WWI culture by, for instance, calling a urinal a fountain and putting it on display (shown below, by Marcel Duchamp). The Dadaists took common objects and created art with those objects, thus bringing out the often ignored beauty of the everyday world. Marcel Duchamp also poked fun at the masters by “reworking” the Mona Lisa.
Dadaism paved the way for other art movements such as Surrealism which I’ll post about next week. The movements that follow Dadaism were charged with the responsibility of rebuilding what the Dadaists had stripped away.

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