The Persistence of Memory

Artist                   Salvador Dali

Year                    1931

Type                    Oil on canvas

Dimensions          24 cm × 33 cm (9.5 in × 13 in)

Location               Museum of Modern Art, New York City

Salvador Dali was a Spanish Surreal Artist (1904 - 1989).

The well-known surrealist piece introduced the image of the soft melting pocket watch in landscape. It epitomizes Dali’s theory of "softness" and "hardness", which was central to his thinking at the time Dawn Ades wrote "The soft watches are an unconscious symbol of the relativity of space and time, a Surrealist meditation on the collapse of our notions of a fixed cosmic order.’’

This interpretation suggests that Dali was incorporating an understanding of the world introduced by Albert Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity. Asked by Ilya Prigogine whether this was in fact the case, Dali replied that the soft watches were not inspired by the theory of relativity, but by the surrealist perception of a Camembert cheese melting in the sun.

Although fundamentally part of Dali’s Freudian phase, the imagery precedes his transition to his scientific phase by fourteen years, which occurred after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

The iconography may refer to a dream that Dali himself had experienced, and the clocks may symbolize the passing of time as one experiences it in sleep or the persistence of time in the eyes of the dreamer. The orange clock at the bottom left of the painting is covered in ants. Dali often used ants in his paintings as a symbol of decay.

The Persistence of Memory employs "the exactitude of realist painting techniques to depict imagery more likely to be found in dreams than in waking consciousness.

The craggy rocks to the right represent a tip of Cap de Creus peninsula in north-eastern Catalonia. Many of Dali’s paintings were inspired by the landscapes of his life in Catalonia. The strange and foreboding shadow in the foreground of this painting is a reference to Mount Pani.

The Persistence of Memory is a very interesting surreal piece, seeing melting clock at the beach is a little odd for us to see, the title is pretty straight forward though, 

The Persistence of Memory, a memory is something we store in our head from the past and persistence is to be passionate about something, or to not give up on something you're doing and can't seem to succeed at it. you'll be fighting for it till you get it right. 

Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion c. 1944

Francis Bacon was born on 28 October 1909 - 28 April 1992, Francis Bacon was an Irish-born British Figurative painter known for his bold, graphic and emotionally raw imagery. His painterly but abstracted figures typically appear isolated in glass or steel geometrical cages, set against flat, nondescript backgrounds.

Bacon began painting during his early 20's and worked only sporadically until his mid-30s. Unsure of his ability as a painter, he drifted and earned his living as an interior decorator and the designer of furniture, rugs and bathroom tiles. Later, he admitted that his career was delayed because he had spent too long looking for a subject that would sustain his interest. His breakthrough came with the 1944 triptych Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion which sealed his reputation as a uniquely bleak chronicler of the human condition.

Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion c. 1944 as titled above, painted by Francis in London, it is an abstract painting, painted with oil paint on Sundeala fibre boards, measuring 116.2 x 96 x 8 cm

Colours in this art piece represent the mood, and meaning behind it, the red and orange background represents how shockingly disturbing it was what humans have done to other humans in the World War II, the disfigured creatures in the painting look devastated and broke, angry, they are screaming for help, one image, this powerful can show a lot about the war, how shocking it was, how badly people/animals suffered.

Francis Bacon's painting, this particular one makes me shocked about the meaning of this image he painted, because the meaning behind it is very disturbing and unpleasant, imagining people how they suffered and died.

Overall I love this piece, it's so powerful, the whole point of this is to make people realise how horrible and selfish they were to each other between World War I and World War II.

Cubism

What is cubism? Cubism was an art movement invented jointly by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. Picasso and Braque shared their ideas and the result of their combined vision was called cubism. The foundation of the movement was Picasso’s early work including Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, which gradually developed into the style we now recognise as cubism.

Cubism was the first of the Abstract Art movements of the 20th century. It was praised by the avant garde and seen as the future of art. It quickly took hold amongst the arty elite in Europe. The public however gave this radical new movement a luke warm reception at first. An art critic at the time said one canvas looked like a sheet of broken glass.

Some say the name was suggested by Picasso’s friend and rival Henri Matisse others credit the French art critic Louis Vauxcelles with coining the term.

In cubism, traditional ideas of painting such as proportions and perspective were abandoned in favour of a minds eye or total view of an object.

Cubists argued that the mind sees an object from many different viewpoints simultaneously and can hold all these in the memory to create what we know as the object. When seen from above or below or from behind or to the side, the mind can put all these viewpoints together simultaneously to recognise an object.

Perspective had been used in painting since the 15th century to reproduce a three dimensional image on a two dimensional canvas. This wasn’t enough for the cubists who wanted to capture the notion of several viewpoints at once to create a multi dimensional image on a two dimensional canvas. They wanted a total view, a multi dimensional view.

Organic shapes were distilled into geometric angular patterns of colour. Cubism was not haphazard but very analytical and each shape was created with purpose and design. Subjects were carefully deconstructed and then reconstructed as if seen from several viewpoints simultaneously. This shattered the ideals of conventional art at the time which Picasso, Braque and their contemporaries considered too stuck in the past.

There were two stages of cubism, first came Synthetic Cubism between 1907-1911 followed by Analytic Cubism 1912-1921. Although artists continued working in the cubist style, around this time the vitality of the movement petered out. The Surrealist movement came along and gradually replaced it.

Fourth Plinth, Trafalgar Square 

The Fourth Plinth is a plinth in Trafalgar Square in central London. It was originally intended to hold an equestrian statue of William IV, but remained bare due to insufficient funds. For over 150 years the fate of the plinth was debated; in 1999, a sequence of three contemporary artworks to be displayed on the plinth were announced. The success of this initiative led to a commission being formed to decide on a use for the plinth. Eventually that commission unanimously decided to continue using it for the temporary display of artworks.

There is a plinth at each of the four corners of the square. The two southern plinths carry sculptures of Henry Havelock and Charles James Napier . The northern plinths are larger than those as they were designed to have equestrian statues, and indeed the north eastern plinth has one of George IV. The fourth plinth on the north west corner, designed by Sir Charles Barry and built in 1841, was intended to hold an equestrian statue of William IV , but remained empty due to insufficient funds.

   

              

Mystery and Melancholy of a Street (1914)

Mystery and Melancholy of a Street (1914) was painted by an Italian Surrealist Artist called Giorgio de Chirico. Giorgio de Chirico was born in 1888-1978, born at Volo in Greece.

Giorgio de Chirico has studied drawing and painting at the Athens Polytechnic 1903-6 and for eighteen months at the Munich Academy, where he discovered the work of Bocklin.

The title of this painting is 'Mystery and Melancholy of a street' the meaning of this title is, surrealism, mystery, magic, dreams, we can see that in this painting there's a young girl with a hoop and possibly a man in the distance, the title has the word melancholy in it, which means sad, does this mean the people in this street are sad and lonely? maybe there's a powerful meaning behind this, but what we see it as, isn't really what it might be, that is why the title has 'Mystery' in it, it's all hidden meaning that is for us to figure out. 

The street in this painting has been captured on an afternoon, almost sunset time, in Autumn.

Long shadows entering the street as the sun is slowly setting down, not yet a sunset, but it is clear the day will soon end. The shadows capture every movement or object in the painting, seeing as the shadows, night has already come. Two people are seen in this painting, a girl, and possibly a man in the distance, not his body is showing but his shadow, as its growing from the sunlight 

Mystery and Melancholy of a street (1914) was painted with oil paint in Italy, canvas measuring 88 x 72 cm. Mystery and Melancholy of a Street is a surreal painting, the image was painted really smoothly, also really sharp and edgy, the painting is full of beautiful warm colours, greens, yellows, whites, reds, blues, and light shades, mostly its dark as the shadow is blocking the rest of the street leaving it a dark diagonal line. 

Self Portrait 1997

'Self Portrait 1997' is a portrait painted by Chuck Close, he was born in America in 1940, Chuck Close has been a leading figure in contemporary art since the early 1970's. Over the years, Close's works have evolved from harsh black-and-white images to colourful and brightly patterned canvases of an almost abstract painterliness.

The self portrait is of a man looking directly above him or looking up into space, it can mean anything, he might be thinking about life, or he might be looking at something that is above him, like admiring a painting at the museum or watching builders build. 

The paint used on this canvas is oil paint, with canvas measuring 8' 6'' (259.1 x 213.4 cm).

The colours used in this painting are, pink, red, blue, green, black, brown, dark green. white, peach, purple, grey, burgundy, dark blue. The image is placed in the middle of the canvas, making the mans face fill up the whole of the canvas.

The art piece has a very unique style of painting, Chuck Close uses diamond shapes instead of lines, in each diamond there's little circles of different colours inside, giving it extra colour. the self portrait also looks three dimensional and bumpy, the art piece has a very realistic illusion. 

I really like this piece of art because it has amazing details, I like how from a distance you see it as just a good self portrait but once you get closer you see all these little diamonds and little bubbles bursting with colours, its amazing, and a very unique piece also, I would say the atmosphere in this painting is very straight forward, the mans staring up, but it questions its viewers if he is just looking up or if he's thinking about something precious to him, or if there's a hidden meaning behind this painting. 

 

The False Mirror.

This image was painted by Rene Magritte, painted in the year 1928 in Paris.  This image Rene Magritte painted questions people whether what they are seeing corresponds with what they think they know.  Rene Magritte was a surreal artists and liked to paint surreal paintings, this was taken part in Paris between the World War I and World War II The style of this type of art work has also been referred to as “magical realism.”

The colours used in this particular art piece are blue, light blue, white, shades of brown, red and pink.  The colours were used to relate to a real eye but add a surreal image instead the eye to make the image look very unique. 


On this image, I can see the artists used round shapes, oval shapes mostly to show that it's the shape of a real eye.  The surface on this image is very round and sharp, it stands out a lot because it looks 3 dimensional, the eye is centred in the middle of the canvas.

The artist has painted the image full size, the image covers the whole canvas, leaving no gaps.

This image can relate to people who have been confused between the World War I and World War II also questioning why there has to be a war between people and why it's so hard to find and give peace, it can also relate to a person daydreaming.

Surrealism artists have painted a lot of images during the 1920's, such as Max Ernst with his art piece The Elephant Celebes in the 1920's in London.

This painting 'The False Mirror' is of an eye, but instead of painting a real eye instead, Magritte painted an image of the sky and clouds, making it more surreal and imaginary, it looks like the person is daydreaming, or they're unconscious, the image is looking at its viewers making them question the image.  This painting is a landscape, Dimensions  L54 cm x W81 cm.  Rene Magritte has called this art piece 'The False Mirror' because it looks like a reflection of a mirror or a glass, it is named 'The False Mirror' because it isn't real, his work is surreal, by the name 'The False Mirror' tells us it isn't real. 

'The False Mirror' painting was painted with oil paint and a brush, the artist made this piece look very clear for us to see, he didn't add any marks or any extra lines, he made it very sharp, to add in more of the surreal like texture.

This art piece makes me feel relaxed as I love looking at the sky, but in an unusual way, it also doesn't make sense to me why he added the sky into the eye, but that was his aim to make it unrealistic.  The atmosphere in this particular art piece is very edgy and sharp, its very clear, you're looking at the sky, it's a little bit creepy that the eye is looking directly at it's viewers but it adds the unrealistic vibe to it, the atmosphere is relaxed and wide, opened and bright, this art piece overall is remarkable.

Check out this Cubism video to help you learn more about it!
http://youtu.be/_jRan3u4ndc

Vincent Van Gogh

Van Gogh is now one of the most well-known post-Impressionist painters, although he was not widely appreciated in his lifetime.

Vincent Van Gogh was born on 30 March 1853 in Zundert in the southern Netherlands, the son of a pastor. In 1869, he took his first job, working in the Hague branch of an international art dealing firm. He began to write to his younger brother Theo, a correspondence which continued for the rest of Van Gogh's life.

Van Gogh's job took him to London and Paris, but he was not interested in the work and was dismissed in 1876. He briefly became a teacher in England, and then, deeply interested in Christianity, a preacher in a mining community in southern Belgium.

In 1880, at the age of 27, he decided to become an artist. He moved around, teaching himself to draw and paint and receiving financial support from Theo. In 1886, Van Gogh joined Theo in Paris, and met many artists including Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Pissarro and Gauguin, with whom he became friends. His style changed significantly under the influence of Impressionism, becoming lighter and brighter. He painted a large number of self-portraits in this period.

In 1888, Van Gogh moved to Provence in southern France, where he painted his famous series 'Sunflowers'. He invited Gauguin to join him but they soon began to quarrel and one night, Van Gogh threatened Gauguin with a razor. Deeply remorseful he then cut off part of his own ear.

This was the first serious sign of the mental health problems that were to afflict Van Gogh for the rest of his life. He spent time in psychiatric hospitals and swung between periods of inertia, depression and incredibly concentrated artistic activity, his work reflecting the intense colours and strong light of the countryside around him.

On 27 July 1890, again suffering from depression, Van Gogh shot himself. He died two days later.

Portrait of Vincent Van Gogh