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ABOUT THE ARTWORK: Shocked
by the dropping of the atom bomb,
Dali took a different mystical turning after the Second World War. He
combined this new approach with a fanatical interest in the classical
art of painting. One year after painting the Portrait of Picasso he
described in his "Fifty magical secrets" how surprised he was that
people were able to split a nuclear, "but nobody had any knowledge of
the substances and the secret juices in which the brothers Van Eyck or
Vermeer from the Dutch town of Delft used to dip their paintbrushes. In
1948 Dali decided, after a very fruitful eight-year-long stay in the
United States, to return to Europe to devote himself to "nuclear
mysticism" with the expert motto his insight that the "the skillful
arts of painting were developed once and forever and with the greatest
perfection and influence during the Renaissance and that the decadence
of modern art finds its origins in skepticism and a lack of faith,
which is a consequence of mechanical materialism.
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ABOUT THE ART PERIOD: Dali
sublimated
his life in his art of painting. Relying on great
craftsmanship, acquired in all sorts of art experiments, he lifted
surrealism, in an inimitable self-willed manner, to exceptional
heights. He photographed, as it were, associatively what was enacted in
his mind. Incited by, at the time, new psychological insights he tried
to fix his subconscious with images, and to visualize his dreams in all
their inscrutable symbolism. It was for this purpose that he developed
his famous "paranoid-critical" method. To us, one dimensional mortal
souls, only the paintings and other expressions remain as fascinating
witnesses to a literally unbelievably intense and active life. Perhaps
we are so drawn to them because not only do they allow us to have a
look inside Dali’s subconscious, but they also are a mirror reflecting
our own souls.
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