The great masturbator, Salvador Dali – analysis of the picture
-
- Posted by Salvador Dali
- Museum: Queen Sofia Art Center
- Year: 1929
Overview of the painting :
The great masturbator is Salvador Dali. 1929. Oil on canvas. 110×150
Surrealists do not know how to hide their secret thoughts, they even manage to make the secrets of their subconscious public. This is the special meaning of the most intricate and difficult direction in art. Children’s psychological trauma, which averted the artist from sex throughout his life, became the main motive for this famous work of the master.
In the work, we recognize at once several of the author’s favorite motives: a rock near Carcades, turned into a huge head, an egg – fertility and a symbolic image of life itself, ants symbolizing decay and decomposition, locusts – the artist’s eternal inexplicable horror. There is Gala, the only woman in the world who has awakened the imagination of the master. So many favorite details in one work make it special and very important in the artist’s work.
Suffering and sex, sex as suffering, suffering as sex. This is the main idea of the author. Throughout his life, the artist was never able to overcome the horror that he experienced when he saw pictures in a medical album dedicated to sexually transmitted diseases. This injury made the artist always suffer physical suffering during sex. He was not saved by love for Gale; he was not cured by constant creative reflection and deliverance from the most secret thoughts and desires. The picture is the great secret of the psyche of every person.
They gave until the end of his life he did not want to part with the picture, she was constantly in front of his eyes, forcing every time to analyze the features of her consciousness.
Clear, understandable and realistic details of the work are collected in such an inexplicable combination that they acquire a completely unusual meaning. The viewer’s look slides down the canvas, lingering first at large objects, moving on to smaller ones and, finally, begins to snatch the smallest images of the canvas.
Erotism, bordering on indecent, transfers work to a special level – intimate art, very personal, infinitely individual.
The general atmosphere of destruction, corruption and decline, conflicts with that passion that is easily distinguishable in “human” images. Whenever the viewer sees the picture, his gaze picks up more and more micro-details that change the impression of the content of the canvas.
Today, work adorns the collection of paintings of the National Royal Assembly, acting as one of the main masterpieces. Every day near this work you can see a crowd of tourists unsuccessfully trying to unravel the secret of the subconscious fears of the great master of illusion and hallucinations. The failure of these attempts is a component of the canvas, its idea, theme and super-tasking.