Salvador+Dali

= Artist: Salvador Dali = = = =Group Members: Isabella Jackson= The Persistence of Memory

FIRST IMPRESSION
When I first looked at this piece, I saw the beige piece in the middle with the silver clock on it. Having already seen that the title of the piece was called //The Persistence of Memory,// I pieced two and two together between the picture and the title. Looking at the colors in the picture, the browns, dark yellows, oranges, and light blues make the mood look gloomy and the sun look like it's either setting or rising, making me wonder if the word "memory" connects with it. I saw that the clocks are almost bent or melted to some degree and the lines look smooth for the most part.

SECOND IMPRESSION
Now that I've looked into more information about Salvador Dali's life, I understand why the background of his paintings are always so calm and bleak. He grew up in his Catalonian homeland that had landscapes with the sun casting off bleak colors onto the land, so most of his paintings include these colors. I also learned that sometimes he painted interesting subjects and dreams, which may explain the picture and why the beige half-face on its side is the main focus of the picture. Also, the melting clocks represent the time passing by and, because this was the place where he grew up, probably how childhood passes so quickly. Dali may have regretted not cherishing his childhood.

The Angelus of Gala MoMA https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79448?locale=en

FIRST IMPRESSION
While looking at this, I notice that the patterns on both the shirts of the man and women are similar. It looks like the man is talking or looking at the women. I also notice the painting in the back and I'm wondering if it's an actually painting that could have been created by one of Dali's role models. The colors look bland and don't look very lively. His technique is smooth at the paint strokes are very flowy and connected. The painting could be of someone close to Dali or maybe he wanted to capture the moment of something he thought was of importance.

SECOND IMPRESSION
After research, I figure out that the women in the picture is actually Dali's wife and that the "man" is actually his wife's mirror image. He uses the bleak colors again because those colors reminded him of where he grew up and could have just been a room in one of his houses, either as a child up to an adult. The painting looks like it's trying to convey that we have two parts of us, the good and the bad, and his wife is looking back with anger or having a flashback to a moment where one of those parts overtook the other. The painting in the back is the exact same painting, just with different people! If you notice the wheel in the bottom left and look at the bottom left of the painting in the back, you will notice that they are the same. Dali re-did the painting in the way that he wanted to and incorporated his wife into the painting.

The Three Ages http://archive.thedali.org/mwebcgi/mweb.exe?request=record;id=120;type=101

FIRST IMPRESSION
When first looking at this picture, I see three faces, one an old man that's made of bark, another who looks like he's pondering on something, and another who looks like a one eyed child. I notice a brick wall in the background that is partly destroyed and the mountains on the right. The colors are once again bland and it looks like the mood is depressed or longing. It looks depressing because you just faintly notice the man between the old figure and the pondering figure, crying or being hard on himself. Maybe this figure is Dali?

SECOND IMPRESSION
After researching that some of his paintings displayed multiple things, I look deeper and notice that instead of seeing just the faces of //The Three Ages,// I see what looks like a mother and her son talking about the view and a couple women with what looks like some sort of silk. I also notice an interesting figure on the right who looks like they're holding something up. Also, closest to us, is a pin that looks like it's barely touching the silk one of the women are holding. After looking at the title, I think that this shows how we grow up and the three main stages we go through; childhood, adolescence, and old age. I still don't know who the figure crying in between the adult man and the older aged man is and if I was correct about it being Dali.

The Basket of Bread http://archive.thedali.org/mwebcgi/mweb.exe?request=record;id=31;type=101 FIRST IMPRESSION When I first look at this picture, I notice that the basket has so many details that it's almost impossible to think how Dali stayed sane while painting //The Basket of Bread//! The colors aren't lively, but he contrasted colors with the black background and the white cloth, really bringing out the bread basket so it's the main object. This simple painting of an object really stood out to me because normally, Dali has extremely complex paintings.The technique on most of the painting is smooth and connected, while the bread basket is extremely detailed and uses lines that stand out. SECOND IMPRESSION I figured out that this was actually one of his first paintings to be seen in America and started to wonder how we thought of it back then. While researching, I came across a fact about the importance of the picture to Dali. He painted the bread because he thought it was a perfect symbol for a certain group called the Catalans in northern Spain. Dali was from Spain, so this makes sense that he'd be symbolizing the culture of his homeland. This painting was said to "mark a turning point in his career"(Dali Museum) and helped him to open up to different types of new ideas and range of things to paint.

Port of Cadaques (Night) http://archive.thedali.org/mwebcgi/mweb.exe?request=record;id=8;type=101 FIRST IMPRESSION When I first look at this piece, I notice that his technique is much more different than any of my other paintings that I chose. You can see the technique best through the broken paintbrush strokes, especially in the sky, and normally for Dali's other pieces, his paint strokes are smooth and connected. I have to admit that I love this picture because it mainly involves different shades of blue and is during nighttime. It looks like there's a community getting ready to head to sleep in the background and to the left outside of the painting is probably a dock for the boats. I couldn't help but notice that the tip of the largest ship is piercing into something that looks like a bird. It almost looks as if it is touching the mountain in the back through these birds. SECOND IMPRESSION I learned that night scenes were actually the hardest for artists because it was so hard to get the right amount of dark to captivate and help the observer understand the scene. Dali makes it look like nighttime because he adds more of those brighter colors to the already dark scene, helping to capture that perfect balance of dark and light. I also learned that he used a lot more paint than normal to help enhance the texture and technique. The place in the painting is actually a real place and he painted the port of Cadaques, Spain.

__//Review Questions //__

The most important thing that someone would need to know would be that Dali grew up in his Catalonian homeland and that influenced the sort of colors he used in his paintings and the background for his most famous piece of artwork, //The Persistence of Time//. If people knew this before looking at his artwork, they'd be able to understand more about Dali and what he might have been thinking about when he created his paintings. Someone in the future would say that Dali was definitely out there in his work more than a lot of other artists because his work causes us to think about why he chose to create that painting and ask questions that help us to understand Dali's life and about life in general. Take his artwork, //The Three Ages//, for example; why would he have multiple images in one painting that at the glimpse of someone's eye would look like three interesting figures? He wanted us to look closer and go deeper into the meaning so that we could have that view on life and be changed by his work. I would ask who the man is weeping in his painting, //The Three Ages//, because I never got to figure out who he was or what he was mourning over. Multiple people were in that painting but I was drawn to the weeping man who looked worse off than everyone else. I have my suspicions that this man could have been Dali or someone close to him, but I don't know for sure. The strongest section is probably //The Angelus of Gala// because I explain my questions and thoughts from my first impression in my second impression and go in depth on who the figures are in the painting. I express how the background connects with the scene, why Dali chose those certain colors, what Dali wanted us to get out of the painting, and the main purpose for the creation of the artwork. I also help the viewer reading my Wiki understand my thinking for how I know that Dali's scene in the painting is based off of the painting in the background. My weakest section would probably be the three ages because I could never figure out and explain who the figures in the paintings were that made up the facial features of the three ages. I also didn't know what the objects, like the pin and cloth, meant in that piece of artwork. I did a good job of explaining what was happening in the picture, but I didn't capture the underlying meaning of the tone of the artwork. Works Cited "Artwork Details." //The Dali Museum//, archive.thedali.org/mwebcgi/mweb.exe?request=record;id=8;type=101. Accessed 12 Jan. 2017. "Artwork Details." //The Dali Museum//, archive.thedali.org/mwebcgi/mweb.exe?request=record;id=31;type=101. Accessed 11 Jan. 2017. "Salvador Dalí." Britannica School, Encyclopædia Britannica, 14 Mar. 2016. [|school.eb.com/levels/high/article/28592]. Accessed 12 Jan. 2017. "Salvador Dali." //National Gallery of Austrailia//, nga.gov.au/International/Catalogue/Detail.cfm?IRN=2607&SiteID=2. Accessed 11 Jan. 2017.
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