The Persistence of Memory
1931 OIL ON CANVAS
24.1 × 33 CM (9½ × 13 IN)
THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK, US
One of the most recognized Surrealist images, the landscape is of Dalí’s native Catalonia. The distortions and juxtapositions are disturbing and threatening. The three limp watches, swarming ants and fleshy distortion of Dalí’s face in profile are full of erotic symbolism. His precise, smooth style depicts his own unrelenting and disturbing memories and plays on paranoia.
Salvador Dalí was technically skilled and a relentless self-promoter. His art was personal and obsessive and its photographic realism appealed to the general public, making him one of the most well-known Surrealists. His personality, combined with his art’s wide-reaching appeal, affected attitudes toward artists in society more than almost any other artist of his time.
Dalí’s life and art cannot be separated. With excellent technical skills and a fertile imagination, he was also an outrageous, egotistical showman. Born in Figueres, Spain, his talent for drawing emerged early on, but at first his father, a prosperous notary, did not approve of his desire to pursue a career in art. However, through his mother’s encouragement, his father built him a studio. In 1919, Dalí published articles on the old masters in a local magazine, showing his understanding of the theory and history of art. After the unexpected, and devastating, death of his mother when he was 17, Dalí attended the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid. In 1925, his father arranged his first one-man show in Barcelona.
Always interested in classical art, Dalí had been annoyed to find his teachers had concentrated only on Impressionist and Fauvist styles. Independently, he studied the techniques of Raphael, Bronzino, Vermeer and Velázquez. He tried various stylistic directions, exploring a wide range of media, including painting, sculpture, film, graphic arts, photography and theater work. Inspired by Miró and Picasso, he began developing a Surrealist style and in 1929, he joined the Surrealist group. His vivid imagination, attention to detail, illusionistic portrayals and photographically realistic technique resulted in highly lifelike, often macabre, fantastic and hallucinatory visions that he described as “hand-painted dream photographs.”
Although he was expelled from the Surrealist Movement in 1934, Dalí continued to produce Surrealistic paintings and to promote himself outrageously. He produced objects, such as a telephone with a lobster as its receiver and a sofa in the shape of actress Mae West’s lips, and made several bizarre black-and-white films. He never painted or portrayed reality. During World War II, Dalí lived in the US with his wife and muse, Gala, where he entered his “classic” phase, in which science and religion recur. Partly due to his provocative lifestyle and self-promotion and partly because of the popularity of his work, his fame continued to grow. He worked prolifically, creating advertising, clothing, stage sets, jewelry and textiles as well as films.
Key Works
The Basket of Bread 1926, SALVADOR DALÍ MUSEUM, ST PETERSBURG, FL, US
Lobster Telephone 1936, TATE MODERN, LONDON, UK
Metamorphosis of Narcissus 1937, TATE MODERN, LONDON, UK
The Endless Enigma 1938, MUSEO NACIONAL CENTRO DE ARTE REINA SOFIA, MADRID, SPAIN
Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate, One Second before Awakening 1944, THYSSEN-BORNEMISZA COLLECTION, MADRID, SPAIN
KAHLO
1907–1954 • PAINTINGS INSPIRED BY PRIMITIVISM, SURREALISM, SYMBOLISM, INDIGENOUS CULTURES
The Bus
1929 OIL ON CANVAS
26 × 56 CM (10 × 22 IN)
DOLORES OLMEDO FOUNDATION, MEXICO CITY, MEXICO
Painted the year Kahlo and Rivera married, this work satirizes the class divisions in Mexican society through travelers on a bus. They include a lower-middle-class woman, a workman in blue overalls, a mother with her baby and child, a capitalist with a bulging money bag and a fashionable young woman at the end of the seat.
Linked to art movements such as Surrealism, Primitivism, Magical Realism and Naïve art, Frida Kahlo’s work emerges primarily from both the events of her life and her Mexican heritage. Like many of the artists in this section, events in her traumatic life shaped her work and the two are inextricably linked.
One of four daughters born to a Hungarian-Jewish father and a Mexican mestizo mother in a Mexico City suburb, Kahlo contracted polio at the age of six. This left her right leg thinner than the left, and she grew up disguising the imbalance with long, colorful skirts. During her childhood, she witnessed violent encounters in the streets of Mexico City as part of the Mexican Revolution and at 15, she entered medical school. Her training was abruptly ended three years later when a bus accident left her a semi-invalid. Her spine, collarbone and ribs were fractured, her pelvis crushed and her foot broken. She spent over a year recovering and underwent more than 30 operations, but remained in constant pain for the rest of her life.
During her convalescence, to help alleviate the physical pain and psychological scars, she began to draw and paint, using bright colors and a deliberately naïve style. Consequently, most of her paintings were autobiographical in some way. Themes she repeatedly included were her miscarriages, her operations, physical and mental pain and her Mexican heritage. In 1922, she met Mexico’s most famous artist, Diego Rivera, and after her recuperation, she took three of her paintings to him for advice. He was 20 years older than her and already married to his second wife, but they fell in love and were married in 1929. Their relationship survived infidelities, divorce and remarriage. Though a self-taught painter, Kahlo was well-educated and her knowledge of art history was extensive. She particularly admired the Renaissance masters and also incorporated elements of modern European painting in many of her works. Encouraged by Rivera, she began to incorporate elements of Mexican folk art in her work. She traveled with Rivera to the US and France, where she met renowned artists and politicians and had her first solo exhibition in New York in 1938, followed by another in Paris a year later. At 47, she finally succumbed to the complications of her injuries, and posthumously, has become something of a cult figure. Her original, poignant, and often bizarre paintings have been regarded as emblems of her strength in refusing to let her suffering crush her spirit.
Key Works
Frida and Diego Rivera 1931, SAN FRANCISCO MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, SAN FRANCISCO, CA, US
My Grandparents, My Parents, and I 1936, THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK, US
Self-Portrait with Monkey 1938, ALBRIGHT-KNOX ART GALLERY, BUFFALO, NEW YORK, US
The Two Fridas 1939, MUSEO DE ARTE MODERNO, MEXICO CITY, MEXICO
Self-Portrait 1940, HARRY RANSOM HUMANITIES RESEARCH CENTER, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS, AUSTIN, TX, US
POLLOCK
1912–1956 • ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM
There were Seven in Eight
1945 OIL ON CANVAS
109.2 × 259.1 CM (43 × 102 IN)
THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK, US
This is one of Pollock’s first Abstract Expressionist paintings. His process of painting became a ritual and an important part of the work. He dripped paint of different consistencies, concentrating on his own inner thoughts. His canvases have no focal areas and his palette is reduced, but as the paint is not blended, colors appear quite vibrant.
Mingling European Modernism with liberal artistic developments in the US, Paul Jackson Pollock pervaded many of the contemporary painting movements and became a major Abstract Expressionist. During his lifetime, he became famous, although he was extremely reclusive and an alcoholic. His celebrated “drip” paintings were chiefly inspired by Surrealist automatism.