Little Ashes

Paul Morrison's 2009 film Little Ashes, follows Salvador Dalí (Robert Pattinson), poet Federico García Lorca (Javier Beltran), and filmmaker Luis Buñuel (Mathew McNulty) through their years at the Resedencía de Estudiantes in Madrid, focusing on the intimate relationship between Dalí and Lorca up until Lorca's execution by the Spanish fascist regime. I've watched this film twice now. It is based on the true relationship between the painter and poet and is presented in a dramatic and beautiful way. I recommend it! Available for instant viewing on the miracle of Netflix.

Woman With a Head of Roses by Salvador Dalí

While I understand that paintings are interpretations of reality, I still find it boring to interpret the so-called “real world.” Instead, like Dalí, I try to create a new, bizarre, and often impossible person, place, or thing. Likewise, I wouldn’t surround myself with images of this world, but rather with the infinite atmospheric landscapes of the master of surrealism himself. Salvador Dalí’s “Woman With a Head of Roses” demonstrates all that I adore about the dangerously convincing oddities of surrealism.

            What first grabs my eye is the absurdly tall and slim woman facing me—her hip slid to the left and her bony arms animated. The bold contrast of her five dark and outstretched fingers against the light blue gradient background creates a somewhat central focal point. Her form’s organic slope draws attention to the fine detail in her emerald gold dress and the exposed and somewhat suggestive red-stocking leg. Mysterious white hands embrace the woman’s stomach and arm. One points to a lone egg on a silver table. Why? Does anyone know? That’s beside the point. I then see the lion head in the distance—the base of a pointy rock garden and the focal point of an indistinct man in the distance. There, I follow the lines of the seemingly wooden floor back into the foreground. The serene horizontal horizon seems quite far away due to the small scale of the man and the angle of the cracks in the floor. Another woman, in a sparkling red dress reads a piece of paper, her hand holding back her hair or holding her face in despair, surprise, disappointment. Nothing is certain.

            I am attracted mostly to Dalí’s use of hard light and sharp, stretching shadows to make these abnormal beings seem so realistic. The texture is so clean that his paintings become desolate, the figures often solitary in the midst of a nightmarishly empty world. His arrangement of strange objects and breadth of imagination keep me interested much longer than any realistic painting does. I entertain theories about the relationships between the women and the man, why the woman has a head of roses, and does the egg symbolize fertility or pregnancy? But most of all, this painting is full of beautiful design. I actually came across a website that actually sells these two pieces of furniture (I cannot seem to find it again, but I will post it once I do). And according to art.com, Dalí played a part on the fashion and photography scenes as well. “Woman With a Head of Roses” surely exemplifies his sense of fashion, sculpture, perspective, and most importantly, his desire to question reality by creating a new one. I would say this Dalí piece is my favorite right now (it simply struck my fancy for all the reasons explained above), but next week it will be different... “The Temptation of St. Anthony” maybe.

“Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.”    -Salvador Dalí