Surrealist Composition with Invisible Figures
<a title="Surrealist Composition with Invisible Figures" href="http://www.salvador-dali.org/dali/coleccio/en_50obres.php?ID=W0000236">Surrealist Composition with Invisible Figures</a>
Like most other items in this collection, Dali's painting deals with the idea of identity and body. Dali leaves out bodies completely from this composition, which forces us to look at what makes identity that surrounds us. This can be directly related to the idea presented in Woolf's <em>Orlando</em>, since the argument can be made that Orlando's gender is simply a product of the environment surrounding her at the time. While she is male, the environment made her so, and while she is female, the environment also made her so.
Salvador Dali
Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation
Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation
1936
Oil on cardboard
painting
Un Chien Andalou (Andalusian Dog)
<a title="Un Chien Andalou" href="http://vimeo.com/18540575">Un Chien Andalou</a> (Andalusian Dog)
This is a film written by Salvador Dali, a Catalan surrealist. I'm not going to attempt to explain what is going on in the <a title="IMDB's interpretation" href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0020530/fullcredits?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm">film</a>, as surrealism is left open to interpretation intentionally. To continue the theme here, though, this film relates to many of the books we read in this class because of the way it looks at the inner workings of the self. Most specifically, we can put this film next to Jean Rhys's <em>Wide Sargasso Sea</em>. Rhys's project in writing <em>Wide Sargasso Sea</em> was to give voice to the crazy lady in the attic, which meant that we as readers got to watch the slow descent into insanity from inside her mind. However, we are still, by virture of being readers of an interpretation of a person's mind, on the outside. The same can be said for Dali's film. For all we know, Dali was showing a slow descent into insanity by following the inner workings of this man's mind, but we are on the outside, and therefore understand nothing of the sort. This item had to be included in this timeline of surrealism to show that the concept of surrealism did not change throughout the movement, and that the statement surrealists made through visual art can also be seen in novels and other writings.
Luis Buñuel, Salvador Dali
viveo.com
viveo.com
This film was originally released in 1929
film
silent, French
horror, surrealism, art