Salvador Dali

[MyFrySkyTie]

What oh what is that shape representative of? The one that appears some form in The persistence of memory, The great masturbator, and others.

[gary baldy]

What shape? The melting clock you mean? be more specific please?

[rosyrussell]

The soft drooping faces in both of these pictures are self portraits of Dali himself. Quote from one website says 'The Great Masturbator" is one of Dali's classic surreal images of sexual persecution and an obsession with castration, impotence, and masturbation. It is also an image that plays off of psychic automatism and Freudian dream logic: displacement, condensation, and fetish. Dali's own distorted profile with eye closed in sleep or dreaming becomes the featured element in this autobiographical work. Here the profile has been blown up to a monumental scale. Metamorphosis occurs at the neck region, giving rise to a woman engaged in her own sexual fantasy, though the man's genitals remain limp and impotent. Right under Dali's rather phallic nose, however, a grasshopper is once again perched over the mouth. NOt sure how many of those words will escape the censor, but fascinating stuff none the less! Think he was either a genius, a bit mad or monumentally nacissistic!

[gary baldy]

I loved the way Dali didnt intellectualise things. He was once asked what the melting clocks meant and he replied he saw saw some Brie melting on a warm day and thought it looked nice. Simple as that!