Analyzing the Symbolism and Style of Dalí’s ‘The Great Masturbator’
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Name
: El Grito (The Scream)
First Hopeless / Author
: Munch
Clients
: –
Date
: Late nineteenth century
Rel. a conj
: Part of the Frieze of Life collection, a collection of work which reflects on love, illness, loneliness, and death. There is a first version of the painting with the name of Hopelessness. There are also several copies of The Scream.
Style
: Expressionism
Ubi origin
: It was presented in Paris
Ubi Act
: National Gallery of Oslo
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Medium
: Tempera and oil
Size
: Small
Short descr
: Set on a bridge, the painting features a figure that does not quite look human while calling out with their hands. In the background, two people are indifferent to this scene. The landscape looks like a last sunset, with some ships on the horizon.
Support
: Cardboard
Fig / no fig
: Fig
AF
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Drawing / color
: Color
Colors
: Flat colors without mixing. Mixing hot and cold. The predominant use of unreal shades of red, blue, and white enhances the feeling of pain.
Light
: Chiaroscuro not used, uses colors for lighting effects.
Brushwork
: Lightweight, fast
EDC
: Asymmetry, disorder as a feeling as well as spatial distribution, vertical and horizontal lines. Great strength of the diagonals as shown in the railing. Also, sinuous lines that help strengthen the feeling of unease in the life of the protagonist.
Compo lines
: –
Centre pictorial
: The man who calls out. Coincides with the physical center.
Vista (theological, linear, aerial, etc.)
: Very strong linear perspective with regard to the railing. But the absence of aerial perspective: the background is more blurred than the rest.
Plans
: Two plans very clear: the foreground with the protagonist and other men, and the background. If desired, the latter elements can be placed in a second and third plane respectively.
Anatomy and proper
: Not interested in anatomical drawing, it is only a hint of man with disproportionate features such as the hands, eyes, or winding body. Nature is painted with the same sinuosity.
Clothing
: The clothing cannot place them in any specific time or situation. Should serve as a universal value.
Expression
: Hopelessness, anxiety, loneliness.
Mov
: Small, balanced.
Time
: Medium.
Rhythm
: The lines of the bridge.
Real / il.lusi / cash
: Sensationalism, and inspires the viewer.
Detail / child elements
: Not much detail or child elements.
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Rel other copyright works
: Other works from The Frieze of Life such as Melancholy, Voice, Dance, Life, or Vampire. Also, other works such as The Sunset ride with Karl-Johan with strong diagonals, the figures slightly human, and a feeling of loneliness despite the presence of other people.
Rel period style with other works
: The paintings of Matisse as Fauvist or post-Impressionists like Gauguin and Van Gogh, especially for the use of color.
Style Depth
:
- Deformation, especially human figures.
- Use of strong and pure colors.
- Interest in emotions and not by objective representation of reality.
- Issues such as loneliness, illness, and death.
- Using the line and curve to convey feelings.
Innov
: He is considered the initiator of Expressionism.
Influencing
: Goya’s Black Paintings both for technique and pictorial themes.
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Gender
: Human figure.
Sign inconograf
: Munch himself tells us that the subject comes from an experience that took place one day while walking with two friends through their city: “…a heaven of blood and fire. I heard a howl that penetrated all the infinite nature.”
Sign iconology
: Now it describes a personal experience but the hopelessness of man in the world of loneliness, lack of meaning of existence. Munch was very much influenced by personal circumstances such as illness and death of several people in the family. It seems that the inspiration for the main character comes from a Peruvian mummy that he saw in Paris.
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Purpose
: Expressive, showing their inner angst and beauty, find new ways in techniques.
Rel work with time
: Theoretical philosophers like Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and the playwright Ibsen’s plays. In addition, Paris at the time was dominated by constant boycotts, general strikes, and terrorist sabotage, a very troubled situation.
Provide
: Determining influence on the constitution of the German expressionist group Die Brücke (Bridge) and all Expressionism (up to even film).
FC
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Name
: The Great Masturbator
Author
: Dalí, Salvador
Clients
: –
Date
: 1929
Rel. a Conj
: The painting is in itself a world created by the author which represents hidden aspects of everyday life.
Style
: Surrealism, dream
Ubi orig
: Teatre-Museu Dalí (Figueres)
Ubi act
: Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid)
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Medium
: Oil
Size
: Small
Short descr
: This painting is part of one of Dalí’s obsessions, and from here he wants to communicate his fascination for Gala.
Support
: Cloth
No fig-FIG
: Fig
AF
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Drawing / Color
: Drawing, detailed and accurate
Light
: Focus of light to the right. Arbitrary.
EDC
: –
Compo Lines
: –
Perspective
: Linear
Anatomy and propor
: Surrealism, distorted anatomy. The proportions between the different objects are unreal.
Expression
: Expression of a sexual nature, Gala.
Time
: Medium
Color
: Bright colors that are used to set another world. Mix bright colors with precise drawings and objects to paint realistic landscapes; Shades of warm colors typical of the Mediterranean.
Brushwork
: Precise drawing / painting
Centre
: Self-supported by a large nose. Different objects are adhered to the face.
Plans
: The work center is in the foreground. (The figure is treated as impossible).
Clothing
: –
Mov
: Looking for balance in the elements of the painting.
Pace
: –
Real-excites cash
: Illusionism (surrealism)
Details elem-secondary
: The lobster, the figure of the woman, the bait, the lion, and two figures embracing a lonely figure.
IMCI
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Rel works with other authors
: The Persistence of Memory (1931), The Endless Enigma (1938)
Rel with other period pieces like
: Outside the Netherlands and, Miró and Guernica, Picasso
Depth style
:
- The mind has no control.
- Sex is shameless.
- Plasma through the abstract shapes of the subconscious.
- Hidden and forbidden thoughts as a source of inspiration.
- Paranoiac-critical (Figures, tubes, and hard).
Innov
: He showed that daily life and personal experiences can be art; Dalí, through this painting, set the relationship between new members.
Influencing
: Influenced by pointillism, cubism, and futurism, soon evolved into surrealism; also influenced by the School of Fine Arts of Madrid, Vermeer, and Meissonier in the way of expressing space and the development of a miniaturist technique.
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Genre
: Surrealist
Sign inconograf yet distinguish which costs, what it wanted Dali represented in this table, we see that a mixture of several images, among them we see some shells and stones, a broken rope a gall installation, a lion, a lobster, a person, a couple hug and a lily.
It is said that the theme of the painting draws on the desire Dalí had for Gala (before their relationship began, the two walked together to the beach. In the painting, we can see elements that remind us of coastal scenery, for example: shells).
Sign iconology
: Dalí used this painting to express some anxieties that he had on a personal level, especially sexual. All the elements that I mentioned in the previous section have an iconographic meaning:
- Shells and stones that symbolize the trips he made with his wife Gala to the beach in Cadaqués.
- The broken rope with the hook: a link to his family who wanted to keep him by their side and return to a traditional way of life, which he gives examples of wanting to rid himself of forever.
- The soft notes: The feelings of passion, emotional and carnal, that Gala provoked in him.
- The lion as sexual desire, with a pink tongue like a phallic symbol; Dalí used this painting to express some anxiety that he had on a personal level, especially sexual.
- Lobster: With a belly full of ants, they are the fears he experienced as a child, the panic he had of these insects.
- The person: Represents solitude.
- The hugging couple: The woman is Gala.
- The lily: symbolizes purity, a convoluted way to define masturbation as pure sex.
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Purpose
: Transport
Rel work with time
: – This work is closely related to Sigmund Freud, as Dalí felt very identified with his ideas: the importance of the unconscious; Dalí’s paranoid-critical method was to discover, through hallucination, new types of images; the painting is longish, narrow gaps, break the metamorphoses,…; social conventions make large eccentricities,…
Provide
: His work had a negative influence among his contemporaries and was not well regarded, to the point that the Surrealists ejected him.