Dali & Film

The Tate Modern’s exhibit, “Dali & Film” showcased Dali’s films and art pieces together to demonstrate how they influenced one another. Seeing Dali’s two forms of art side by side shed light on his unique style of exploring the sub conscious with surreal, dream-like images: dismembered body parts, ants taking over these body parts, barren desserts, etc. His work may not appeal aesthetically, but it is the emotions that are evoked by these images and the way they challenge an individual’s perception that make Dali a key artist of surrealism. This is seen in Dali’s work “Remorse or Sphinx Embedded in the Sand.” When you first look at the picture, your gaze is immediately captured by the black shadow that is at the center of the painting, possibly symbolic for remorse—it follows you wherever you go and can become bigger than you. In front of the shadow is a frail woman with her back towards us. From the waist up, she is stuck in sand, and as her body enters the sand, we see bone rather than flesh, just like remorse can consume an individual. She is holding her hand to her head as she looks down, as if she’s made the biggest mistake. She is all alone and ahead, in the distance, all you see are sharp mountains, a challenging and unknown future. Dali puts together these images to personify an individual’s experience of remorse. The painting evokes emotions of disappointment, helplessness, hopelessness, and loneliness, enabling the viewer to connect with the woman. While these images are quite tame in comparison to Dali’s other works, the juxtaposition of a beautiful woman with a bleak dessert and skeleton embodies the remorse that we may deny when we are conscious, but consumes us without our knowledge when asleep. Dali uses this approach in his films, one being “Destino,” a film he worked on with Walt Disney. Seeing the juxtaposition of Disney’s elements of a beautiful male and female characters singing with Dali’s images of dessert, ants, eye balls, a body growing without a head, etc. was unique and surprising. Even though Disney and Dali worked together to create an animation, Dali’s unique style wasn’t compromised. It demonstrated how Dali’s images aren’t necessarily ugly, merely misunderstood. Dali’s usage of provocative images in film, often taking from his own paintings, cements the two art forms together and shows how his paintings were often the drawing boards, or the beginning of his ideas for film.

Marissa Verdeflor