daliniAN symbolICS

A study of the work of Dalí, reveals some symbols systematically present in all his work. They are fetishes objects that apparently have few common points : crutches, sea urchins, ants, bread…

Dalí uses these symbols so as to return more significant the message of his work. The contrast of a hard envelope and a soft interior is in the middle of his thought and his art. This external/interior contrast agrees with the psychological design according to which the individuals manufacture defences (hard), all around vulnerable “psyche” (flexible). Dalí knew very well the work of Freud and his disciples, even if his iconography does not derive absolutely from the psychoanalytical thought.

ANGELS
They have the capacity to penetrate the vault of heaven, to communicate with God and to thus achieve the mystical union, which worries the painter so much. The figures of angels painted by Dalí, often borrow the features of Gala, incarnation for Dalí, of the purity and the nobility.

ANTS
Symbol of the rot and the decomposition. Dalí met the ants the first time in its childhood, by observing the broken up remainders of small animals devoured by them. He observed them with fascination and repulsion, and continued to use them in his work, like symbol of decline and transitory.

BREAD
Is this by fear of missing some, Dalí represents it in his paintings and is also put to make surrealist objects with bread. In his paintings, the bread generally has, “hard and phallic aspect”, opposed to the “slackness” of the watches. Dalí was always a large admiror of the bread. He will paper Catalan round loafs, the walls of its museum of Figueras.

CRUTCHES
It can constitute the only support of a figure or the support necessary of a form unable to hold upright all alone. Dalí discovers it, during his childhood, in the attic of the paternal house. He seizes some and will be able to never separate some. This object gave him an insurance and an arrogance of which he had never still been able. In the shortened Dictionary of Surrealism (1938), Dalí gives the following definition of it : Drifting wooden support of Cartesian philosophy. Generally employed to be used as support for the tenderness of the soft structures.

DRAWERS
The human bodies that open by drawers find on several occasions in paintings and the objects of Dalí. They symbolize the memory as well as the unconscious one and return to the “thought to drawers”, a concept inherited the reading of Freud. They express the mystery of the hidden secrecies.

EGG
Christian symbol of the resurrection of Christ and the emblem of the purity and the perfection. The egg evokes by its aspect and its minerality an expensive symbolic system with Dalí: the former life, intra-uterine life and rebirth.

ELEPHANTS
The Dalinian elephants are usually represented with the long legs of the invisible desire, with several kneecaps, bearing on their back, the obelisk symbol of power and domination. The weight supported by the frail legs of the animal evokes weightlessness.

LANDSCAPES
Traditional space (founded on the prospect and the painting of the rebirth). Sown realistic landscape of strange and unreal objects located in a natural environment. The background and the way of using them are one of the forces of the art of Dalí.

LIMP WATCHES
Dalí often said, materialization of the flexibility of the Time and the indivisibility of Space... It is a fluid. Unexpected limpness of the watch represents also the psychological aspect by which the speed of time though specifies in its scientific definition can largely vary in his human perception. The idea came to him after a meal whereas he contemplates the remainders of a running Camembert cheese. He then decided to paint on the landscape, which was used to him as background, two limp watches of which one hung lamentably with the branch of an olive-tree.

SEA URCHIN
Its exosquelette (the shell is outside), roughcast spines can return very unpleasant a first contact with the animal to you. The shell contains on the other hand, a soft body (one of the preferred dishes of Dalí, who was known to eat a dozen with each meal of it). The shell of the sea urchin, removed from its spines, appears in numbers of its paintings.

SNAIL
The snail is always related to his meeting with Sigmund Freud. Dalí thought that nothing arrives simply by accident; he had been captivated by the vision of a snail on a bicycle out of the house of Freud. The bond was done then in him enters a human head and the snail, which it more particularly associated the head of Freud. As for eggs, the external part of the shell (lasts) and the body (soft) interior of snail fascinated it and the geometry of its curves enchanted him.