Visiting the Salvador Dali museum was quite the experience. Although I have been there be for, I got a chance to take my time and really look at each period of Dali’s work. Dali is said to have four periods of his art work, which are his early, transitional, surreal, and his classic periods. Even though my favorite is his surreal period I am going to give you a little sample what art work form each.
The work in Dali’s early period was done when he was a teenager. His work during this period shows a lot of landscape and figures in which he grew up with. One such example of this is “View of cadaques with the shadows of mount Pani. The painting gave the viewer a look of Cadaques from the top of mount Pani. Dali used an impressionist style on top of burlap to give the viewer a feeling of seeing the entire landscape. Another one of his early works was his self portrait.
This painting shows that Dali was starting to care about his image. He also started using less of the impressionistic style and more of a style called chiaroscuro, which was used much by older European painters. During Dali’s transitional period he started to experiment. Paintings of his started to become abstract. One such painting is the “Apparatus and hand.” The style in which Dali painted this work was still the same and before. Dali used abstract art to shock the public or to appall who ever viewed it.
In Dali’s surreal period he began to explore fantasies and fears, as art work reflected this. The paintings during this period look more like photographs. Dali paid very close to Burch am 2 detail in the paintings. Out of this period comes one of my favorite paintings, “Old Age, Adolescence, Infancy.” This painting contained 3 subliminal faces. The first of them is of an old man, the second is a young man, and the third of an infant. In each of the faces Dali incorporated a woman in a dress.
The reasoning behind my liking of this painting I because of the subliminal faces have to go beyond what normal and look for the abnormal. The classic Dali paintings were big switch from his surreal paintings. The reason behind the switch was because of Dali focus on religion and new age science. Dali started to be influenced by the renaissance, and then he combined that with new age science discoveries. One of the paintings that show this is “Morte Vivante.” In the painting Dali uses the renaissance rich colors but also adds a bit of modernism. The painting is supposed to show the idea of how the world has changed since the atomic bomb.
Although my favorite period in Dali’s art work was his surreal, I hope that giving you a little incite on the early, transitional, and classic periods. That you can find period of Dali’s art work that reaches out to you. The time I spent there was enjoyed immensely.