Salvador Dalí

[quintessentone]

Thank you for this. He was a true nut. He would have been better off painting in a coo coo house.

I will tell you that I knew he was nuts when I went and saw his work. He had a painting that was so big you needed a ladder to paint parts of it. 

With all his crazy detail he would have to stand on a ladder for a long time lol! 

I love his artistic brain. His coo coo side makes him him but that should be left locked up! Lol

I was just wondering if psychologists could use art like his, and others, that might help to assess problems with children's mental health through their art; to catch issues early on?

Dali seems to have had an interest in beheading (cats, women, skulls, etc.)

[sahgwa]

This somewhat obsession with classifying past art and culture into a political and apologetic, or condemning and cancel culture framework leaves me at best cold and at worst annoyed. 
Art is something that expresses the individual and the time he or she lives in. It does not need to be analysed like some Freudian or Soviet Socialist object for 'approval' by the hoi polloi.
It should stand on it's own merit, As Art, and digging into and questioning an artist's personal life, in order to decide 'how should we think/talk about X' is very infantile , censoring, and stupid in my book.
It may be Interesting to see why or how someone thought up something, but ultimately, such articles that were shared smack of their pseudo fascist or marxist, totalitarian, busybody manner of control on 'how should we think' .  We should think and paint however we like. 
Take art for it's own sake.

The young lady who wrote that article from Romania should know better, she is repeating the mistakes of her grandparents in supporting peer pressure and ideological control under the guise of 'equality' and 'human rights' which are always the opposite of what they think they are doing, when you use the words 'how should we think'

[FlyersFan]

I went to a Dali exhibit in Philadelphia once.
Big one.
It was awesome fun.

[Quantum12]

I went to a Dali exhibit in Philadelphia once.
Big one.
It was awesome fun.

Yep, the one I went to was super cool and fun, I walked out a different person.

edit to add. The one I went to is in Florida. The Dalí Museum (St. Petersburg, Florida)

[sahgwa]

I am afraid to go to a Dali exhibit because his paintings will make me a misogynist Nazi. Is there some kind of prophylactic I can take so I get the Safe Culture Approved viewing? 

Anyway, anyone here read the DALI COOKBOOK?
Now that is some crazy shet.  I almost bought it but it makes the Four Seasons Cookbook look like the most accessible thing ever. 
It really is beautiful though:
https://www.taschen.com/en/books/art/046...s-de-gala/

[Quantum12]

I am afraid to go to a Dali exhibit because his paintings will make me a misogynist Nazi. Is there some kind of prophylactic I can take so I get the Safe Culture Approved viewing? 

Anyway, anyone here read the DALI COOKBOOK?
Now that is some crazy shet.  I almost bought it but it makes the Four Seasons Cookbook look like the most accessible thing ever. 
It really is beautiful though:
https://www.taschen.com/en/books/art/046...s-de-gala/

[Image: https://taschen.makaira.media/taschen/im...923590.jpg]

French cooking?  Nice. Oh wow I just saw the photos. Lol

[quintessentone]

I for one prefer to understand the art I view, such as with certain sects of Islamic art, where the human form is not depicted because "In some forms of Islamic art, aniconism (the avoidance of images of sentient beings) stems in part from the prohibition of idolatry and in part from the belief that the creation of living forms is God's prerogative." Without knowing basic historical facts about art, that being art history, one really cannot fully understand art.

So going beyond just making up my own interpretations of others' art or letting it affect me due to my subjective thoughts or my emotions at the time of viewing, isn't my bag. I want to understand the artists' true messages for others or their internal messages/truths/fantasies for themselves to figure out, after all, that's what art is all about to me.

As for Dali and his mental illness, it is an interesting blend of his own brand of psychoanalysis (he uses Freudian psychology, which some aspects have since been disproved) and his mental illness, and his plagarism of an earlier surrealist artist's work, which makes me look at his art very differently.

------------

"Salvador Dalí, the well-known Surrealist artist, was ‘famous’ for his ‘craziness’ in both his shocking art and persona. Information on his behaviour and art comes from various sources such as his autobiography; literary texts; published interviews with friends, family, and the artist himself; letters; and data on his family history. Here, in addition to a descriptive analysis of such data, a formal diagnosis exercise was attempted, using two psychiatric assessment procedures: a computer program investigating the presence of psychotic disorder (OPCRIT) and a personality disorder questionnaire (PDQ-R). Dalí was found to meet the diagnostic criteria for several DSM Cluster A and Cluster B personality disorders, as well as for psychotic illnesses. However, these results should be treated with caution, given the ‘hall of mirrors’ Dalí inhabited and the deliberate persona he projected on to the world."

The link between artistic creativity and psychopathology: Salvador Dalí - ScienceDirect

[quintessentone]

Dali's self-portraits over time. 

"The genre of self-portraiture is generally an excellent way of learning more about how an artist views himself, and if one studies a number of them together, we can visually see how they age over time."

Salvador Dali Self-Portraits

"Dali at the Age of Six When He Thought He Was a Girl Lifting the Skin of the Water to See the Dog Sleeping in the Shade of the Sea"

by Dali


Dali - Self-Portrait with Raphaelesque Neck (how does this fit in to his beheading or arrogance themes (?) - I see his work can still be left open to subjective interpretation)

[Quantum12]

@quintessentone

Wow, thank you for adding all of this. He lived an odd life. 

He painted a lot of clocks that looked like bacon being cooked too. He might have seen himself as a pig.

[sahgwa]

I for one prefer to understand the art I view, such as with certain sects of Islamic art, where the human form is not depicted because "In some forms of Islamic art, aniconism (the avoidance of images of sentient beings) stems in part from the prohibition of idolatry and in part from the belief that the creation of living forms is God's prerogative." Without knowing basic historical facts about art, that being art history, one really cannot fully understand art.

So going beyond just making up my own interpretations of others' art or letting it affect me due to my subjective thoughts or my emotions at the time of viewing, isn't my bag. I want to understand the artists' true messages for others or their internal messages/truths/fantasies for themselves to figure out, after all, that's what art is all about to me.

As for Dali and his mental illness, it is an interesting blend of his own brand of psychoanalysis (he uses Freudian psychology, which some aspects have since been disproved) and his mental illness, and his plagarism of an earlier surrealist artist's work, which makes me look at his art very differently.

------------

"Salvador Dalí, the well-known Surrealist artist, was ‘famous’ for his ‘craziness’ in both his shocking art and persona. Information on his behaviour and art comes from various sources such as his autobiography; literary texts; published interviews with friends, family, and the artist himself; letters; and data on his family history. Here, in addition to a descriptive analysis of such data, a formal diagnosis exercise was attempted, using two psychiatric assessment procedures: a computer program investigating the presence of psychotic disorder (OPCRIT) and a personality disorder questionnaire (PDQ-R). Dalí was found to meet the diagnostic criteria for several DSM Cluster A and Cluster B personality disorders, as well as for psychotic illnesses. However, these results should be treated with caution, given the ‘hall of mirrors’ Dalí inhabited and the deliberate persona he projected on to the world."

The link between artistic creativity and psychopathology: Salvador Dalí - ScienceDirect

Surely you understand what I meant when I wrote that it's interesting to understand why someone created something, and their background and that regard, and are able to see the difference between that, and asking 'how we should think' ? 
One is trying to understand, the other is judging and dictating.