Elements & Principles of Design in Salvador Dalis Works Isaac Valdez A2

Salvador Dals first piece of artwork Landscape Near Figueras which

was rendered on a postage card during his sixth year of life (part of his said
developmental period) displays unity of hue (in calm, green pigmentary
colors) in the representational form of a landscape with grass, trees, clouds,
a sky, and some houses in the background. A repeating motif of a triangle
appears in the piece of artwork: composing the rooftops of the houses,
defining the mountains behind the houses from the clouds, separating the
trees from the trodden-down grasses, and bounding the grasses appearing in
the bottom right corner of the artwork. This piece of artwork would be
classified as impressionist artwork, since it displays brushstrokes to be
interpreted as the passing of time through a given place in space yet, at the
same time, merging the artists rendering of what he or she perceives reality
as being in a directly perceptual sense. The use of many green shades and
tints in this piece of artwork emphasizes the white clouds and red rooftops
near the center of the render plane and subordinates the texturing of the
mountainsides.
One of Salvador Dals most recognizable works, The Persistence of
Memory (also informally known as The Soft Watches or The Melting
Watches, which, contrary to the belief of many that Dal was influenced by
research into relativity of Albert Einstein, Dal claims was inspired by
observing Camembert cheese melting in the sun from a surrealists
perspective, is a surrealists representation of soft pocket watches melting.

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Art I

All three representations of pocket watches which appear in the artwork

display a similar pattern of being set to the time which appears to be 6:50. In
the piece of artwork the clocks appear to be folding under their own weight
thus giving the impression of weight to the clocks. In order to balance this
mass throughout the piece, what appears to be a representation of a
mountain or heavy, rocky crag is depicted in the background to establish
visual balance of mass. Centered in the painting is what some interpret as
Dals representation of himself; interestingly, the creature appears to be
dreaming. This has led some to believe that the melting of pocket watches in
the piece of artwork is a symbol of the perception of timelessness as an
individual would experience in dreams.
Interestingly, about a decade after the demonstration of mass, lowlatency incineration of tens of thousands of humans via nuclear power by the
United States against the Japanese city of Hiroshima, Dalis use of paranoiddelusional brainstorming led him to create a recursively famous painting:
The Chromosome of a Highly-coloured Fish's Eye Starting the Harmonious
Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory. This work displays the pocket
watches from his aforementioned work The Persistence of Memory fallen into
what appears to be a representation of a water-like fluid substance. In this
representation of a fluid also appears a representation of bricks which,
although very similar, are not exactly the same to one another, which
possible symbolizes the arrhythmic nature of equal, but not same quantum
particles. A sense of proportion and depth emerges from observing similarly

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shaped polygons representing planes descending back into space.

Representations of horns appearing to be travelling at fast speeds in the
background is a reminder of the influence of fear in Dalis paranoid-critical
method of surrealist rendering and that mass destruction, which antitypically appears imminent in The Chromosome of a Highly-coloured Fishs
Eye Starting the Harmonious Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory, is
typically reminded of by the nuking of two cities in Japan through the use of
nuclear weaponry. It is probable that Dalis paranoid-critical delusionary
technique influenced the style of The Disintegration of the Persistence of
Memory.
Citations
Brommer, Gerald F. Discovering Art History. 2nd ed. Worcester,
Massachusetts: Davis Publications. Print.
"Salvador Dali Art Gallery." Salvador Dali Art Gallery. Salvador Dali Art
Gallery. Web. 8 Apr. 2016. <http://www.daligallery.com/about/surreal_years.html>
The Dali Dimension: Decoding the Mind of a Genius. Dir. Dali Salvador.
Perf. Salvador Dali. Salvador Dali, 2008. DVD.