Salvador was given a picture of elephants on long legs. Elephants

The eccentric, exciting surrealist Dali more than once turned to the theme of elephants in his paintings. For some reason they worried him. He had Swans with Elephants, The Temptation of St. Anthony, and then in 1948 Salvador Dali's Elephants.

Dali's personality

This complex person cannot be described in a nutshell, but the outline of the image can be given. He grew up as a very capricious and uncontrollable child. Already in childhood, he developed fears and various complexes that prevented him from living among children as equals. He studied painting at an art school and then at the Academy of San Fernando.

After dropping out of school, he moved to Paris, where he began to develop his surrealist style. But a trip to Italy makes him delighted with the works of the Renaissance. He fills the paintings with realistic images, but introduces his incredible fantasies into them.

Italy and its influence on Dali's work

This is how Salvador Dali’s painting “Elephants” was born in 1937, or more precisely, it is “Swans Reflecting Elephants”. It depicts swans, which, sitting on the shore of a lake, are reflected in the water along with the trees.

It is the necks and wings of swans that form the figures of elephants. The trees complete the picture, transforming into the bodies and powerful legs of elephants. This painting is a reversal. If you look closely, the swans will turn into elephants. The background depicts a Catalan landscape. Its color is the fiery colors of autumn. Salvador Dali's painting "Elephants" will be painted later. Art critics find in it the influence of D. Bernini. And the artist himself did not deny that he was inspired by the sculpture of the great creator of the Baroque style: an elephant carrying an obelisk on its back. Salvador Dali's painting "Elephants" also has this symbol of power and dominance. Only there is not a drop of academicism or realism in it.

Salvador Dali, “Elephants”: description of the painting

Dali first painted elephants with legs as thin as flies when he lived in America. These elephants appear in a woman's dreams.

Another creation that appeared to Salvador Dali with elephants on thin legs is the temptation of St. Anthony. Unhappy Anthony in the desert tries to escape from demonic visions of terrible elephants, a rearing horse, a half-naked beauty, defending himself with prayer and the cross.

Salvador Dali saw other hallucinations after the World War. "Elephants" on legs are painted on a blood red background, like spilled blood, where the artist inserted the landscape of his hometown, wanting to remind one and all that no matter what happens, you should never forget where you come from. Whether it is sunset or sunrise is completely unclear.

The elephants do not fill the space of the picture. It is intentionally empty. Each viewer is given the right to imagine whatever he wants. However, not everyone has such a wild flight of fancy as the author’s.

Two animals are heading towards each other. Their legs are thin, fragile, almost invisible, multi-jointed, like those of spiders. As always, Dali has an element of eroticism. Their thin legs are the legs of desire. Both have very visible phalluses. It seems incredible how such legs can support their bodies with a load. Dali's elephants are a deliberate distortion of reality because they do not comply with the laws of gravity. They create a feeling of phantom reality.

Animals wander into oblivion along the smooth surface of the desert at an incredible height. One raised his trunk, the other lowered it. One is still cheerful and enjoying life, the other is already tired and has stopped. Between them two miniature figures of a man and a woman are barely visible as a symbol of the continuation of the human race after a terrible war that claimed millions of lives.

It is difficult to understand what the artist wanted to say. He said it best himself: “I paint pictures that make me die of joy, I create things that move me deeply, and I try to portray them honestly.”

“Elephants” is a painting by Salvador Dali that creates a minimalistic and almost monochromatic surreal plot. The absence of many elements and the blue sky makes it unlike other paintings, but the simplicity of the painting enhances the attention that the viewer pays to Bernini's elephants, a recurring element in Dali's work.

The man who conquered reality

Dali is one of those artists who rarely leave anyone indifferent even among people unfamiliar with art. It is not surprising that he is the most popular artist of modern times. The surrealist’s paintings are painted as if reality, as the world around it sees it, did not exist for Dali.

Many experts are inclined to think that the fruits of the artist’s imagination, poured onto the canvas in the form of unreal subjects, are the fruit of a painful mind, eaten by psychosis, paranoia and delusions of grandeur (an opinion with which the masses often agree, thereby trying to explain what cannot be understood) . Salvador Dali lived as he wrote, thought as he wrote, therefore his paintings, like the canvases of other artists, are a reflection of the reality that the surrealist saw around him.

In his autobiographies and letters, through a thick veil of arrogance and narcissism, a rational attitude to life and his actions, regret and recognition of his own weak character, which drew strength from unshakable confidence in his own genius, is visible. Having severed ties with the artistic community of his native Spain, Dali declared that surrealism was him, and he was not mistaken. Today, the first thing that comes to mind when meeting the word “surrealism” is the name of the artist.

Repeating characters

Dali often used recurring symbols in his paintings, such as clocks, eggs or slingshots. Critics and art historians are unable to explain the meaning of all these elements and their purpose in paintings. It is possible that the reappearing items and objects connect the paintings with each other, but there is a theory that Dali used them for commercial purposes to increase attention and interest in his paintings.

Whatever the motives for using the same symbols in different ones, for some reason I chose them, which means they had a secret meaning, if not a purpose. One of such elements that passes from canvas to canvas are “long-legged” elephants with an obelisk on their back.

Such an elephant first appeared in the painting “A Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate, a Second Before Waking Up.” Subsequently, Salvador Dali’s painting “Elephants” was painted, in which he depicted two such animals. The artist himself called them “Bernini’s Elephants”, since the image was created under the influence of a dream in which Bernini’s sculpture walked in the funeral procession of the Pope.

Salvador Dali, “Elephants”: description of the painting

In the painting, two elephants on incredibly long and thin legs walk across a desert plain towards each other against the backdrop of a red-yellow sunset sky. At the top of the picture, the stars are already shining in the sky, and the horizon is still illuminated by bright sunlight. Both elephants bear the attributes of the Pope and are covered with identical carpets to match the elephants themselves. One of the elephants has lowered his trunk and head and is heading from west to east, the other is walking towards him, raising his trunk.

Salvador Dali's painting "Elephants" makes everything except the animals themselves drown and dissolve in the bright light of the sunset. At the feet of the elephants are depicted the outlines of human figures walking towards them; their shadows are elongated almost as grotesquely as the elephants' legs. One of the figures resembles the silhouette of a man, the other - a woman or an angel. Between the figures of people, in the background, there is a translucent house, illuminated by the rays of the setting sun.

Symbolism of Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali's painting "Elephants" seems simpler than many others, since it does not abound in many elements and is made in a narrow and rather dark color palette.

The symbols, in addition to the elephants themselves, are:

• bloody sunset;
• a translucent house that looks more like a monument;
• desert landscape;
• running figures;
• "mood" of elephants.

In many cultures, elephants are symbols of power and influence, perhaps this is what attracted the great egoist Dali. Some associate the choice of Bernini's elephants with a symbol of religion, however, most likely, the special attraction of the sculpture for the surrealist Dali is that Bernini created it without ever seeing a real elephant in his life. The long, thin legs of the elephants in the painting are contrasted with their mass and strength, creating a distorted, double symbol of strength and power that rests on a shaky structure.

Salvador Dali was an artist with superhuman flights of fancy and a unique imagination. Not everyone understands his paintings, and very few can give them a specific explanation supported by facts, but everyone agrees that each painting by the Spanish surrealist is, to one degree or another, a reflection of reality as the artist perceived it.

Salvador Dali's painting "Elephants" is an excellent example of a surreal subject. She creates a reality that resembles an alien planet or a strange dream.

Fears and fetish of a genius - symbolism of Dali

Having created his own, surreal world, Dali filled it with phantasmagorical creatures and mystical symbols. These symbols, reflecting the master’s obsessions, fears and fetish objects, “move” from one of his works to another throughout his creative life.

Dali’s symbolism is not accidental (just as everything in life is not accidental, according to the maestro): being interested in Freud’s ideas, the surrealist came up with and used symbols in order to emphasize the hidden meaning of his works. Most often - to indicate the conflict between the “hard” bodily shell of a person and his soft “fluid” emotional and mental filling.

Symbolism of Salvador Dali in sculpture

The ability of these creatures to communicate with God worried Dali. Angels for him are a symbol of a mystical, sublime union. Most often in the master’s paintings they appear next to Gala, who for Dali was the embodiment of nobility, purity and connection bestowed by heaven.

ANGEL


the only painting in the world in which there is a motionless presence, a long-awaited meeting of two creatures against the backdrop of a deserted, gloomy, dead landscape

In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts (Ralph Emerson)

Salvador Dali "Fallen Angel" 1951

ANTS

Dali's fear of the perishability of life arose in his childhood, when he watched with a mixture of horror and disgust as ants devoured the remains of dead small animals. From then on, and throughout his life, ants became a symbol of decomposition and rot for the artist. Although some researchers associate the ants in Dali's works with a strong expression of sexual desire.

Salvador Dali “in the language of allusions and symbols, he designated the conscious and active memory in the form of a mechanical watch and ants scurrying around in it, and the unconscious memory in the form of a soft clock that shows an indefinite time. PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY thus depicts the oscillations between the ups and downs of the waking and sleeping states.” His statement that “the soft clock becomes a metaphor for the flexibility of time” is filled with uncertainty and a lack of intrigue. Time can move in different ways: either flow smoothly or be corroded by corruption, which, according to Dali, meant decay, symbolized here by the bustle of insatiable ants.”

BREAD

Perhaps the fact that Salvador Dali depicted bread in many of his works and used it to create surreal objects testified to his fear of poverty and hunger.

Dali was always a big “fan” of bread. It is no coincidence that he used buns to decorate the walls of the theater-museum in Figueres. Bread combines several symbols at once. The appearance of the loaf reminds Salvador of a hard phallic object, opposed to the “soft” time and mind.

"Retrospective Bust of a Woman"

In 1933, S. Dali created a bronze bust with a loaf of bread on his head, ants on his face and ears of corn as a necklace. It was sold for 300,000 euros.

Basket with bread

In 1926, Dali painted “Bread Basket” - a modest still life, filled with reverent respect for the little Dutch, Vermeer and Velazquez. On a black background there is a white crumpled napkin, a wicker straw basket, a couple of pieces of bread. Written with a thin brush, no innovations, fierce school wisdom mixed with manic diligence.

CRUTCHES

One day, little Salvador found old crutches in the attic, and their purpose made a strong impression on the young genius. For a long time, crutches became for him the embodiment of confidence and hitherto unprecedented arrogance. Participating in the creation of the “Concise Dictionary of Surrealism” in 1938, Salvador Dali wrote that crutches are a symbol of support, without which certain soft structures are not able to maintain their shape or vertical position.

One of Dali's outright mockeries of the communist love of Andre Breton and his leftist views. The main character, according to Dali himself, is Lenin in a cap with a huge visor. In The Diary of a Genius, Salvador writes that the baby is himself, screaming “He wants to eat me!” There are also crutches here - an indispensable attribute of Dali’s work, which retained its relevance throughout the artist’s life. With these two crutches the artist props up the visor and one of the leader’s thighs. This is not the only known work on this topic. Back in 1931, Dali wrote “Partial Hallucination. Six apparitions of Lenin on the piano."

DRAWERS

Human bodies in many of Salvador Dali's paintings and objects have drawers that open, symbolizing memory, as well as thoughts that one often wants to hide. “The recesses of thought” is a concept borrowed from Freud and means the secret of hidden desires.

SALVADOR DALI
VENUS De MILO WITH DRAWERS

Venus de Milo with boxes ,1936 Venus de Milo with Drawers Gypsum. Height: 98 cm Private collection

EGG

Dali “found” this symbol from Christians and “modified it” a little. In Dali’s understanding, the egg does not so much symbolize purity and perfection (as Christianity teaches), but rather gives a hint of a former life and rebirth, and symbolizes intrauterine development.

“Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man”

Metamorphoses of Narcissus 1937


You know, Gala (but of course you know) it’s me. Yes, Narcissus is me.
The essence of metamorphosis is the transformation of the daffodil's figure into a huge stone hand, and its head into an egg (or onion). Dali uses the Spanish proverb “The onion has sprouted in the head,” which denoted obsessions and complexes. The narcissism of a young man is such a complex. Narcissus’s golden skin is a reference to Ovid’s saying (whose poem “Metamorphoses,” which also talked about Narcissus, inspired the idea for the painting): “golden wax slowly melts and flows away from the fire... so love melts and flows away.”

ELEPHANTS

Huge and majestic elephants, symbolizing dominance and power, are always supported by Dali on long thin legs with a large number of kneecaps. This is how the artist shows the instability and unreliability of what seems unshakable.

IN "The Temptation of Saint Anthony"(1946) Dali placed the saint in the bottom corner. A chain of elephants, led by a horse, floats above him. Elephants carry temples with naked bodies on their backs. The artist wants to say that temptations are between heaven and earth. For Dali, sex was akin to mysticism.
Another key to understanding the painting lies in the decorous appearance on the cloud of the Spanish El Escorial, a building that for Dali symbolized law and order achieved through the fusion of the spiritual and secular.

Swans reflected as elephants

LANDSCAPES

Most often, Dali's landscapes are made in a realistic manner, and their subjects are reminiscent of Renaissance paintings. The artist uses landscapes as a backdrop for his surreal collages. This is one of Dali’s “trademark” traits - the ability to combine real and surreal objects on one canvas.

SOFT MELTED WATCH

Dali said that liquid is a material reflection of the indivisibility of space and the flexibility of time. One day after eating, while examining a piece of soft Camembert cheese, the artist found the perfect way to express man's changing perception of time - a soft clock. This symbol combines a psychological aspect with extraordinary semantic expressiveness.

The Persistence of Memory (soft clock) 1931


One of the artist's most famous paintings. Gala quite correctly predicted that no one, once they saw “The Persistence of Memory,” would forget it. The painting was painted as a result of the associations that Dali had with the sight of processed cheese.

SEA URCHIN

According to Dali, the sea urchin symbolizes the contrast that can be observed in human communication and behavior, when after the first unpleasant contact (similar to contact with the prickly surface of a urchin), people begin to recognize pleasant traits in each other. In the sea urchin, this corresponds to a soft body with tender meat, which Dali loved to feast on.

Snail

Like the sea urchin, the snail symbolizes the contrast between the outer harshness and toughness and the soft inner content. But in addition to this, Dali was delighted with the outlines of the snail and the exquisite geometry of its shell. During one of his bicycle forays from home, Dali saw a snail on the trunk of his bicycle and remembered the charm of this sight for a long time. Convinced that it was no accident that the snail ended up on the bike, the artist made it one of the key symbols of his work.

“Elephants” is a painting by Salvador Dali, creating a minimalistic and almost monochromatic surreal plot. The absence of many elements and the blue sky makes it unlike other paintings, but the simplicity of the painting enhances the attention that the viewer pays to Bernini's elephants - a repeated element in Dali's work.

The man who conquered reality

Dali is one of those artists who rarely leave anyone indifferent even among people unfamiliar with art. It is not surprising that he is the most popular artist of modern times. The surrealist’s paintings are painted as if reality, as the world around it sees it, did not exist for Dali.

Many experts are inclined to think that the fruits of the artist’s imagination, poured onto the canvas in the form of unrealistic subjects, are the fruit of a painful mind, eaten by psychosis, paranoia and delusions of grandeur (an opinion with which the masses often agree, thereby trying to explain what cannot be understood) . Salvador Dali lived as he wrote, thought as he wrote, therefore his paintings, like the canvases of other artists, are a reflection of the reality that the surrealist saw around him.

Video: Elephants - Salvador Dali, review of the painting

In his autobiographies and letters, through a thick veil of arrogance and narcissism, a rational attitude to life and his actions, regret and recognition of his own weak character, which drew strength from unshakable confidence in his own genius, is visible. Having severed ties with the artistic community of his native Spain, Dali declared that surrealism was him, and he was not mistaken. Today, the first thing that comes to mind when meeting the word “surrealism” is the name of the artist.

Repeating characters

Dali often used recurring symbols in his paintings, such as clocks, eggs or slingshots. Critics and art historians are unable to explain the meaning of all these elements and their purpose in paintings. It is possible that the reappearing items and objects connect the paintings with each other, but there is a theory that Dali used them for commercial purposes to increase attention and interest in his paintings.

Whatever the motives for using the same symbols in different paintings, for some reason the artist chose them, which means they had a secret meaning, if not a purpose. One of such elements that passes from canvas to canvas are “long-legged” elephants with an obelisk on their back.

Such an elephant first appeared in the painting “A Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate, a Second Before Waking Up.” Subsequently, Salvador Dali’s painting “Elephants” was painted, in which he depicted two such animals. The artist himself called them “Bernini’s Elephants”, since the image was created under the influence of a dream in which Bernini’s sculpture walked in the funeral procession of the Pope.

Salvador Dali, “Elephants”: description of the painting

In the painting, two elephants on incredibly long and thin legs walk across a desert plain towards each other against the backdrop of a red-yellow sunset sky. At the top of the picture, the stars are already shining in the sky, and the horizon is still illuminated by bright sunlight. Both elephants bear the attributes of the Pope and are covered with identical carpets to match the elephants themselves. One of the elephants has lowered his trunk and head and is heading from west to east, the other is walking towards him, raising his trunk.

Video: Paintings by Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali's painting "Elephants" makes everything except the animals themselves drown and dissolve in the bright light of the sunset. At the feet of the elephants are depicted the outlines of human figures walking towards them; their shadows are elongated almost as grotesquely as the elephants’ legs. One of the figures resembles the silhouette of a man, the other - a woman or an angel. Between the figures of people, in the background, there is a translucent house, illuminated by the rays of the setting sun.

Symbolism of Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali's painting "Elephants" seems simpler than many others, since it does not abound in many elements and is made in a narrow and rather dark color palette.

The symbols, in addition to the elephants themselves, are:

• bloody sunset;
• a translucent house that looks more like a monument;
• desert landscape;
• running figures;
• "mood" of elephants.

In many cultures, elephants are symbols of power and influence, perhaps this is what attracted the great egoist Dali. Some associate the choice of Bernini's elephants with a symbol of religion, however, most likely, the special attraction of the sculpture for the surrealist Dali is that Bernini created it without ever seeing a real elephant in his life. The long, thin legs of the elephants in the painting are contrasted with their mass and strength, creating a distorted, double symbol of strength and power that rests on a shaky structure.

Salvador Dali was an artist with superhuman flights of fancy and a unique imagination. Not everyone understands his paintings, and very few can give them a specific explanation supported by facts, but everyone agrees that each painting by the Spanish surrealist is, to one degree or another, a reflection of reality as the artist perceived it.

Salvador Dali's painting "Elephants" is an excellent example of a surreal subject. She creates a reality that resembles an alien planet or a strange dream.