Observations Of "The Temptation Of St. Anthony"
Uploaded by spootyhead on Apr 18, 2007
Observations Of "The Temptation Of St. Anthony"
Salvador Dali is a master painter who has honed his abilities in the arenas of style, technical skill, representation, realistic rendering, concept, and thus, above all else, surrealism. His method and motivation, surrealism, he defined as the effort to take implausible situations, ridiculous ideas, the grotesque, and translate them in a manner that suggested their reality. This idea is something for which Dali came to be known. A great example of his surrealistic efforts and his master’s skills is painting called "The Temptation of St. Anthony." There are many aspects to this painting that identify with the idea of the surreal and indicate extreme skill in technicalities and concept.
First, look at how surreal the painting is. Look at it, and for a second take time to recognize how grotesque the images Dali has rendered are. Don’t you feel the overpowering size of these long legged beasts bearing down upon you? Don’t you feel the strain through which St. Anthony is going? The idea of long legged horses and elephants, isn’t it rather implausible, rather surreal? Dali puts the beholder in a world that he has created, bearing qualities over which he has all the power. This makes this work surreal. The narrative of the painting could not take place in the world that we know because there are no such long legged beasts to impose upon us their force.
But notice too, then how the surrealism is achieved. Dali attains a truly surreal world with his technical skill and his realistic rendering of a grotesque concept. Another very successful aspect of this then painting is the technicalities of brushwork and the actual application of paint. His ability to render is paramount and it is the skill with which he does the actual painting that makes this and other paintings everything they are. Dali has an extreme sensitivity to the intricacies of realism with pinpoint accuracy about detail and brushwork. His brush strokes are literally invisible and his lines are so cautiously selected and applied that his paintings seem like photographs of some strange world. Outside brush strokes and line, his work , particularly "The Temptation of St. Anthony," exhibits an extreme sensitivity to the ideas of color and light. The sky is a great example. His hues are of...