SALVADOR DALI - the man, the genius, the marvel

The Persistence of Memory (1931)

Salvador Dali is one of the most celebrated artists of all time. The Spanish painter was one of the best-known surrealist artists (artists who seek to express the contents of the unconscious mind). Blessed with an enormous talent for drawing, he painted his dreams and bizarre moods in a precise way.

His fiercely technical yet highly unusual paintings, sculptures and visionary explorations in film and life-size interactive art ushered in a new generation of imaginative expression. From his personal life to his professional endeavors, he always took great risks and proved how rich the world can be when you dare to embrace pure, boundless creativity.

Salvador Dali

The artist, author, critic, impresario, and provocateur Salvador Dalí burst onto the art scene in 1929 and rarely left the public eye until his death six decades later. The auspicious occasion was the debut in Paris of Un Chien Andalou, a film Dalí made in collaboration with Luis Buñuel. Filmed in Paris, Un Chien Andalou strung together free-associative vignettes and made full use of the avant-garde technique of montage, including, most famously, a scene of a razor slicing into a woman’s eye. Shocking the viewer was his style and he made them feel his creation in their gut.

Diffidence was not in his vocabulary. “Compared to Velázquez, I am nothing,” he said in 1960, “but compared to contemporary painters, I am the most big genius of modern time.” Dalí spent much of his life promoting himself and shocking the world. He loved creating a sensation, not to mention controversy, and early in his career exhibited a drawing, titled SacredHeart, that featured the words “Sometimes I Spit with Pleasure on the Portrait of My Mother.” This meant that he had more than his own share of critics – art critic Robert Hughes dismissed Dalí’s later works as “kitschy repetition of old motifs or vulgarly pompous piety on a Cinemascope scale.” Dawn Ades of England’s University of Essex, a leading Dalí scholar felt “He had a reputation that was hard to salvage. I have had to work very hard to make it clear how serious he really was.” Dalí’s antics, however, often obscured the genius.

Early childhood:

Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dalí Domènech was born May 11, 1904, in the Catalonia n town of Figueres in northeastern Spain. His authoritarian father, Salvador Dalí Cusí, was a well-paid official with the authority to draw up legal documents. His mother, Felipa Domènech Ferres, came from a family that designed and sold decorated fans, boxes and other art objects. Although she stopped working in the family business after marriage, she would amuse her young son by molding wax figurines out of colored candles, and she encouraged his creativity. But she was surely not prepared for his unique style. She died when he was 16 and that left him heartbroken.

Training:

The precocious Dalí was just 14 when his works were first exhibited, as part of a show in Figueres. Three years later, he was admitted to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid but, once there, felt there was more to learn about the latest currents in Paris from French art magazines than from his teachers, whom he believed were out of touch. When it came time for his year-end oral exam in art history at the academy, Dalí balked at the trio of examiners. “I am very sorry,” he declared, “but I am infinitely more intelligent than these three professors, and I therefore refuse to be examined by them. I know this subject much too well.” Add to this he was briefly imprisoned for political activities against the government. Academy officials had enough of him and expelled him without a diploma.

He was strongly influenced by the dreamlike works of the Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978). He also experimented with cubism (a type of art in which objects are viewed in terms of geometry—the science of points, lines, and surfaces).

Surrealism and the Paranoic-Critical method

The Great Masturbator (1929)

The surrealists believed in artistic and political freedom to help free the imagination. Dali's first

contact with the movement was through seeing paintings; he then met other surrealist artists when he visited Paris, France, in 1928. Dali created some of his finest paintings in 1929. He introduced the Paranoic-Critical method in which he trained himself to possess the power to look at one object and "see" another. This did not apply only to painting; it meant that Dali could take a myth that was interpreted a certain way and impose upon it his own personal ideas. Thus he took surrealism to a whole new frontier where nobody had ever been before.

A key event in Dali's life during this time was meeting his wife, Gala, who was at that time married to another surrealist. She became his main influence, both in his personal life and in many of his paintings. Toward the end of the 1930s, Dali's exaggerated view of himself began to annoy others. André Breton (1896–1966), a French poet and critic who was a leading surrealist, angrily expelled Dali from the surrealist movement. Dali continued to be very successful in painting as well as in writing, stage design, and films, but his seriousness as an artist began to be questioned. Dali however became the most influential Surrealist artist; and perhaps the most renowned twentieth century painter after Pablo Picasso.

His famous works:

The most famous paintings of Salvador Dali include The Persistence of Memory, Galatea of the Spheres, The Great Masturbator, Swans reflecting elephants and Christ of Saint John of the Cross. 

The Great Masturbator is thought to reflect the erotic transformation that the artist underwent due to the arrival of his wife Gala in his life. 

Christ of Saint John of the Cross is based on a drawing by the 16th-century Spanish friar John of the

Galatea of the Spheres (1952)

Cross. The composition consists of a triangle, which is formed by the arms of Christ and the horizontal of the cross; and a circle, which is formed by the head of Christ. The triangle might be seen as a reference to the Holy Trinity while the circle may represent unity. This was voted Scotland’s favorite painting in a 2006 poll and it is considered by many to be the greatest religious painting of the twentieth century.

Galatea of the Spheres is one of the most renowned paintings from Dali’s Nuclear Mysticism period after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This painting is again a portrait of Gala Dali, her face is composed of densely populated spheres, representing atomic particles, which give a marvelous three dimensional effect to the canvas. 

The Burning Giraffe is seen as an expression of the personal struggle of Salvador Dali with the civil war going on in his home country. 

Swans Reflecting Elephants is considered a landmark painting in Surrealism as it enhanced the popularity of the double-image style. It is the most famous double image created by Salvador Dali; his greatest masterpiece using the paranoiac-critical method; and one of the most well-known works in Surrealism. 

Swans Reflecting Elephants (1937)

The Persistence of Memory has been much analyzed over the years as Dali never explained his work. The melting watches have been thought to be an unconscious symbol of the relativity of space and time; as a symbol of mortality with the ants surrounding the watches representing decay; and as irrationality of dreams. 

There’s no better surreal imagery for Dalí than the equally bizarre tale of Alice in Wonderland. In 1969, Random House asked the artist to illustrate a limited edition of the Lewis Carroll classic and the results are as good are you’d think. Only 2,700 copies were created, but luckily a new reissue ensures that the work will live on.

His life inspired his work

When Dalí was 5 years old, his parent took him to his brother’s grave, a brother who died when he was not even born,  and told him that he was his brother’s reincarnation. It was a concept that Dalí himself believed, calling his deceased sibling “a first version of myself but conceived too much in the absolute.” His older brother would become prominent in Dalí’s later work, like the 1963 Portrait of My Dead Brother.

While Dalí’s surreal artwork and eccentric behavior led many to believe that he was into drugs, he once famously stated, “I don’t do drugs, I am drugs.” One way he kept himself in a dreamlike state included staring fixedly at a particular object until it transformed into another form, sparking a sort of hallucination.

The Burning Giraffe (1937)

Elena Ivanovna Diakonova, known as Gala, was ten years older than Dalí and married to Surrealist

poet Paul Éluard when she first met him in 1929. A love affair quickly developed, with Gala eventually divorcing Éluard—though they remained close. The couple married in a civil ceremony in 1934, despite Dalí’s family’s unease with him marrying an older Russian divorcee. She had a pivotal role in the artist’s career, becoming his business manager and muse but most importantly, a very vital inspiration for his creativity.

Fashion and jewelry designer

When we think of Vogue covers, photographs of supermodels come to mind. But Dalí created four covers for the legendary fashion magazine. He moonlighted as a fashion designer and worked closely with Italian designer Elsa Schiaparelli, who created designs based on his artwork. In 1950, he collaborated with close friend Christian Dior on a project about fashion inspired by the future. Dalí’s contribution was “A dress for 2045.”

The Royal Heart is a dazzling masterpiece crafted from 18k gold and covered with 46 rubies, 42 diamonds, two emeralds, and other precious gems. And that’s not the most impressive part. An internal mechanism causes The Royal Heart to beat as though it were a live human heart. The Royal Heart is the centerpiece of the Dalí-Joies collection now located at the Dalí Museum in Figueres, Spain.

Dali created his own museum

Dalí not only created his own museum, he’s also buried there. Located in his hometown of Figueres, the project started in the 1960s when the mayor of the small Catalan town asked Dalí to donate a piece of art to the city museum. Dalí decided to do much more than that, transforming the town’s theater—which was nearly destroyed during the Spanish Civil War—into the Dalí Theater and Museum.

The museum officially opened in 1974, but Dalí continued to expand the museum and even lived there during the final years of his life. After his death in 1989, he was buried under the stage of the theater. Today, the museum draws more than 1 million visitors a year, who flock to see the largest collection of Dalí’s artwork.

RESERVATION – NOW IN ‘Y’ AXIS….. BUT NOT WITHOUT QUALITY EDUCATION

The tug of war is between social justice and meritocracy. Reservation quotas, also known as affirmative action, have generated much anxiety around the world. At the same time, it has also eased social tensions and economic problems, bridging the gap between the elites and the underprivileged to some extent.

At the time of India’s independence, untouchability against Scheduled Castes was a major problem that had existed for centuries. The practice of untouchability accompanied social exclusion for the community and they continued to exist in isolation from other classes. The lawmakers while debating the Constitution wanted to correct this evil by creating a provision to address this social and economic gap. A close study of the Constitution Articles 14, 15(1), 15 (2), 15 (3), 16 (1), and 16 (2) reveals that the basic objective was ‘equality for all’ on the basis of ‘non-discrimination’. The word ‘caste’ was completely avoided from any reference, however, there was a provision in Article 16 (4) to provide for reservation in favour of backward 5 classes. So, we have come to live with this inherent contradiction in the Constitution which on one hand offers ‘equality for all’ without discrimination, while on the other, offers ‘reservation in jobs’ for the backward classes as a tool of social upliftment against centuries of oppression.

History:

In the United States till 1970s it was thought that the African-Americans were inefficient and ineffective. However, with the state's affirmative action this underprivileged section has caught up with the country's white coloured people to large extent. Although collective backwardness is still there, from Oprah Winfry to Barack Obama, individual success stories of the African-Americans are literally incalculable. The single important reason for this is opportunity of good quality education for all.

Singapore and Malaysia is a classic case as far as meritocracy versus reservation policies is concerned. Amid racial tensions and ideological conflicts Singapore was expelled from Malaysia in 1965. It was widely believed that the new born country could not survive on its own, due to scarcity of land, water, markets and natural resources. However, in less than four decades Singapore has transformed itself from a third world to a first world country with a thriving economy and an enviable quality of life for its citizens. Meritocracy has been one of the guiding principles of the city state which ensures that the best and brightest, regardless of race, religion and socio-economic background, find a level playing field to develop their fullest potential. On the other hand, Malaysia's affirmative action programmes, also known as the Bumiputera policy, that favoured its local Malay community is generally identified as the reason behind the country's failure to overcome the middle-income country trap.

In South Asia no country has probably experienced more social tensions over the issue of merit versus reservations than India. Dr Ambedkar, the key architect of reservation policy in the independent India, raised his voice in the parliament in 1927 to address the extreme economic and social backwardness of the Dalits (untouchables), originated in the Hindu social order. Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, advocated affirmative action to overcome the country's social and economic disparities. In 1990 India's higher education institutions, public sector units and government bodies kept 22.5 percent of available seats reserved for scheduled caste and scheduled tribes which was raised to 49.5 percent in 2008 by including reservation for other backward category. Sensing that meritocracy was being critically threatened the Supreme Court of India stepped in and ruled that the pie can be diced no more and the remaining 50.5% will remain unreserved.

While the global experience on the merit versus quota based development discourse is at best mixed, there is a tendency for countries to move from an affirmative action to a meritocratic system with their economic and social progress.

Quality of affirmative action:

Over the years, several constitutional amendments have been made to protect the weaker and underprivileged sections but have failed to bring about the desired results. This is because very little was done for the upliftment of scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and other backward classes and our efforts were misdirected. Even after seven decades of Independence and we still have large pockets of communities that have very little access to ‘quality’ education and therefore have very little chance to compete with other privileged sections to improve their economic status. So increasing the quota, as is often advocated by our self centred and myopic politicians with an eye on electoral politics, is not the answer. The noble objective of ‘Reservation’ was that the government would extend special attention to education and infrastructure to enable the backward classes to bridge the knowledge gap and therefore, the social and economic gap with the rest. This unfortunately did not happen. So it is not the quantity of affirmative action but the quality that is important.

Do we need an alternate plan?

The Constitution was written to prevent discrimination of any kind with ‘equal opportunity for all’ to improve social, economic and political development. However, what we see today is a perverse interpretation of what comprises SC/ST and OBC classes. All communities are now fighting to be included into one of the above categories. Whether it is the Jats or the Patidars or the Marathas everyone is running after the reserved quota! A system, which has not given dividends, which has not reached the last person in the social ladder in seven decades, is a mirage which everyone is chasing! There has to be a course correction. There has to be an alternate plan.

The first step to remove backwardness and poverty for ALL classes is ‘education’. The next is ‘opportunity’. The Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) talks of an alarming learning deficit year after year. In 14-18 years age group, only 43% able to do a simple division correctly, while 47% of 14-year-olds could not read a simple sentence in English, says the ASER study. Learning deficits seen in elementary school in previous years seem to carry forward as young people go from being adolescents to young adults. When your secondary level students are not learning like the elementary students, the problem becomes bigger. It is because of two reasons—one, this 14-18 years age group are ready to enter the workforce and thus has a direct bearing on the economy; second, the families depend more on this young cohort for doing free work. What good will ‘reservation’ do to acquire this standard of education? There has to be a course correction. There has to be an alternate plan.

Quality of education and not just reservation

Today, the gap in quality of education imparted in some of the best schools and those in semi-urban and rural areas is wide and therefore this creates an ‘unequal’ opportunity rather than an ‘equal’ opportunity. This is about urban-rural divide and not a ‘class’ divide issue. The poor quality of educational infrastructure, especially in government run institutions, has been a major hindrance to the overall socio-economic development and opportunity for its people. Education is a state subject and therefore, all states must take the blame for the poor state of education in schools and colleges. Besides, poor quality of education delivered through poorly trained teachers, ‘language’ remains a major barrier.

Thanks to electoral priorities and chauvinism, all states have promoted their own languages as the medium of instruction; as a result, today’s generation struggles to communicate when they travel outside their respective states and reduces their chance for employment. Andhra Pradesh and Telengana have 400 engineering colleges, everyone abiding with our reservation policy, and churning out at last 40,000 engineers every year, but are they getting employment? ‘Quality’ and ‘inability to communicate’ is the biggest drawback for most of these engineers and this has nothing to do with their caste but is a planning error. They are not unemployed but unemployable.

Now, with this quality of education in offer, how does ‘caste’ based reservation for this quality of education help? And where is the need for it? One can understand if a student from an economically weaker section who is qualified but cannot afford the fees of say a good school or college, but this can be easily addressed by financial scholarships or loans. Reservation alone has not helped him/her in the past and cannot be expected to do any better in future too!

My plan:

No, I am not against ‘affirmative action’ and I am not an anti-reservationist by any standards but my humble submission is that our reservation is misdirected and reservation alone will not do any good to anyone. I have in one of my previous blogs http://surajitbrainwaves.blogspot.com/2015/09/reservation-for-me-too-my-answer-to.html?showComment=1443347729585#c2452465957907146685 suggested three years back that I would prefer Economically weaker section (EWS) to get the fruits of reservation and those how have had one or two pieces of the pie should not be greedy but should be prepared to share it with their poorer cousins. Towards this direction I welcome the government’s new 10% reservation for EWS but this effort is incomplete. It should be 10% across the board – 10% of General, SC, ST, Backward Classes every category, excluding none. If the caste based reservation was in X axis, let the EWS reservation be in Y axis. This will allow the poorest in every caste, creed and religion to avail the same opportunity which their creamy layer has enjoyed till date. This along with education reforms is the only way forward to strike a balance between meritocracy and social justice.

MONA LISA – THE BEAUTY AND THE MYSTIQUE

Five centuries after Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa(1503–19), the portrait hangs behind bulletproof glass within the Louvre Museum and draws thousands of jostling spectators each day. It is the most famous painting in the world, and yet, when viewers manage to see the artwork up close, they are likely to be baffled by the small subdued portrait of an ordinary woman. She’s dressed modestly in a translucent veil, dark robes, and no jewelry. Much has been said about her smile and gaze, but viewers still might wonder what all the fuss is about. Along with the mysteries of the sitter’s identity and her enigmatic look, the reason for the work’s popularity is one of its many conundrums. Although many theories have attempted to pinpoint one reason for the art piece’s celebrity, the most compelling arguments insist that there is no one explanation. The Mona Lisa’s fame is the result of many chance circumstances combined with the painting’s inherent appeal.

This beautiful Madonna has her own room in the Louvre, designed specifically for her protection. She has captured the heart of art-lovers and the general public alike world over. So what is it that made this seemingly simple portrait so captivating? Let’s start with the woman herself, seen sitting amidst a landscape, with a center of calmness and quiet about her. The Mona Lisa, also known as La Gioconda, depicts the wife of one Francesco Del Gioconda, Lisa Gherardini. No records of such a commission from Francesco exist, and the sitter has never been conclusively identified. The word “Gioconda” itself in Italian translates literally to the happy one. Therein lies the beauty of Mona Lisa’s smile, the simplest sign of the ideal of happiness and contentment. Da Vinci’s most famous work strived to bring out the soul of the fair Lady through her eyes and her smile, making her a living enigma, with a soul you can see but never get close to.

Now let’s look into the background. Behind her is a hazy and seemingly isolated landscape imagined by the artist and painted using sfumato, a technique resulting in forms “without lines or borders, in the manner of smoke or beyond the focus plane. At the chest level of the Mona Lisalies a winding road, leading into a distant bridge with greenery all around. These landscapes have been painting in bright and warm colors to depict the world of Man, places of familiarity. However, as you move further back, the landscape changes, into rockier mountainous terrains, and never-ending streams of water. The artist began this landscape at the eye-level of the sitter, and used heavier and thicker strokes, to shown the wilderness beyond the worlds we know and inhabit. For added fun, if you take the closest of close looks at this enigma’s right eye, you will see the artist’s initials.     

The figure is shown seated in a loggia, or a room with at least one open side. She sits with her arms folded as she gazes at the viewer and appears to softly smile—an aesthetic attribute that has proven particularly eye-catching over centuries. The halfhearted or even ambiguous nature of this smile makes the iconic painting all the more enigmatic, prompting viewers to try to understand both the mood of its muse and the intention of its artist. In addition to its mysterious appearance, her expression has resonated most strongly with art historians for its possible symbolism, as many believe it to be a clever “visual representation of the idea of happiness suggested by the word ‘gioconda’ in Italian.”

The subject’s softly sculptural face shows Leonardo’s skillful handling of sfumato, an artistic technique that uses subtle gradations of light and shadow to model form, and shows his understanding of the skull beneath the skin. The delicately painted veil, the finely wrought tresses, and the careful rendering of folded fabric reveal Leonardo’s studied observations and inexhaustible patience. And, although the sitter’s steady gaze and restrained smile were not regarded as mysterious until the 19th century, viewers today can appreciate her equivocal expression. Leonardo painted a complex figure that is very much like a complicated human.

The Mona Lisa is renowned for both its curious iconography and its unique history. Before finding a permanent home at the Louvre, she originally had a place with King Francois I for over a century. It was then that King Louis the XIV removed her from her previous owner's possession and placed her in the Grand Palace of Versailles. It was just before her shift to the Louvre that the Mona Lisa also sat in the boudoir of Napolean Bonaparte. 

Since entering the Louvre in the late 18th century, it has famously faced theft and vandalism. In 1911, it was stolen by Louvre employee Vincenzo Peruggia—though modern artist Pablo Picasso was first falsely accused—who believed the piece rightfully belonged in Italy, the home of Leonardo. Since her arrival to the Louvre in 1815, the Mona Lisa has been the recipient of numerous flowers and love letters. In 1956, both acid and a rock were thrown at the painting in separate attacks and all that kept her in the news. Her mysterious and aloof demeanor still continues to seize the attention and hearts of people all across the world!

Due to both its tumultuous past and its contemporary fame, today, the Mona Lisa is exhibited behind a layer of bulletproof glass. Even in such a unique and controversial display, the painting remains one of the most popular pieces in the Louvre and, unsurprisingly, one of the most viewed and visited paintings in the world.

So what makes Mona Lisa so famous? That the painting’s home is the Louvre, one of the world’s most-visited museums, is a fortuitous circumstance that has added to the work’s stature. It arrived at the Louvre via a circuitous path beginning with Francis I, king of France, in whose court Leonardo spent the last years of his life. The painting became part of the royal collection, and, for centuries after, the portrait was secluded in French palaces until the Revolution claimed the royal collection as the property of the people. Following a stint in Napoleon’s bedroom, the Mona Lisa was installed in the Louvre Museum.   

As interest in the Renaissance grew in the 19th century, Leonardo became more popularly seen not only as a very good painter but also as a great scientist and inventor whose designs prefigured contemporary inventions. The myth of Leonardo as a genius has continued well into the 21st century, contributing to the Mona Lisa’s popularity.

The theft of the painting in 1911 and the ensuing media frenzy brought it worldwide attention. When news of the crime broke on August 22 of that year, it caused an immediate sensation. People flocked to the Louvre to gape at the empty space where the painting had once hung, the museum’s director of paintings resigned, accusations of a hoax splashed across newspapers, and Pablo Picasso was even arrested as a suspect! Two years later the painting was found in Italy after an art dealer in Florence alerted the local authorities that a man had contacted him about selling it. The man was Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian immigrant to France, who had briefly worked at the Louvre fitting glass on a selection of paintings, including the Mona Lisa. He and two other workers took the portrait from the wall, hid with it in a closet overnight, and ran off with it in the morning. Unable to sell the painting because of the media attention, Peruggia hid it in the false bottom of a trunk until his capture. He was tried, convicted, and imprisoned for the theft while the painting toured Italy before it made its triumphant return to the Louvre. By then, many French people had come to regard the work as a national treasure that they had lost and recovered.

A tour of the painting to the United States in 1963 and to Japan in 1974 elevated it to celebrity status. The Mona Lisa traveled to the United States in no less than a first-class cabin on an ocean liner and drew about 40,000 people a day to the Metropolitan Museum in New York City and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., during the portrait’s six-week stay. Large crowds greeted the portrait in Japan about ten years later. And with air travel, more and more individuals have been able to visit Paris and pay their respects in person to the genius of Leonardo.

Over the decades, as technology improved, the painting was endlessly reproduced, sometimes manipulated and sometimes not, so that the sitter’s face became one of the most well known in the world, even to those who had little interest in art. All this has worked together with the painting’s inherent appeal to make the Mona Lisa the world’s most famous painting ever.