Monday 25 June 2012

Dali's animal icons


I recently watched Woody Allen’s ‘Midnight in Paris’; where famous 1920’s Parisian-based artists, designers, authors, composers and mentors were depicted in wonderful, quirky characterisations. 

Allen’s Salvador Dali was humorously wacky; insistent on painting a portrait of the lead character (Owen Wilson) as a rhinoceros shedding an oversized tear drop holding a reflection of Christ.

In the context of the movie you laugh; how bizarre; what a vivid caricature of the man (Dali); how weird would that painting look, etc. 

Dali’s fascination with animal images was represented in many of his works from the 1950 onwards.  The rhinos in his paintings and sculptures are elongated and majestic. Much is written about the iconography: Dali painted rhinoceros horns, signifying divine geometry, because they grow in a logarithmic spiral. Dali also linked the rhino horn to the legendary unicorn horn, a symbol of chastity.



My favorite are his butterflies: I am absolutely captured by them. The colours and the essence of them, on sailing ships and windmills, creating images of freedom, travelling in course-less directions, where ever the wind takes you.  





In ancient Greek, the word ’psyche’ means soul and butterfly.

I wonder what my psyche is trying to tell me?  

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