Dali Vs Miro

As World War I came to an end the Dada movement was engulfed by a new movement called Surrealism. Surrealist ideas often conform to anti-logical depictions under a subconscious influence. Artists in this school may use elements from dreams, visions, memories, and psychological distortions that are drawn upon through the use of familiar objects such as childhood icons. Salvador Dali and Joan Miro, both born around the turn of the 20th century in Spain, are two exemplary figures that belonged to the Surrealist school. Both artists, however, were able to solve creative and artistic dilemmas “once they felt able to influence objects, to manipulate them according to desires unknown even to themselves” (Nadeau 203). A key distinction between the two is the treatment of images: Dali favoured representational imagery while Miro preferred abstract imagery. This representational distinction is evident in Dali’s painting, Accommodations of Desire (1926) while Miro’s abstraction can be observed in The Potato (1928).

Dali, who joined the Surrealists in 1929, created Accommodations of Desire three years earlier out of only oil paint and not, as the Metropolitan Museum of Art indicates, cut-and-pasted print paper on cardboard. The oil paint colours are chosen with great care, for they carry a certain degree of meaning. The viewer first sees the white pebbles that take up a large portion of the space. Because they are white, the pebbles seem to be screens for emphasizing the objects that are on them; the white colour acts as a sort of highlight as the pebbles are even accompanied by cast shadows. These shadows also alert the viewer that the pebbles are three-dimensional objects.

Also contributing to Accommodations is the intensity of the colours. The reds of the outlined lion’s mane and the lion’s afterimage draw attention to themselves. Noted art historian and writer Dawn Ades believes that red is a colour of passion, rage, and blood and is therefore used to intensify the emotions that Dali has put into the painting itself (Ades 78). The ground takes up approximately 95% of the canvas. Its brown colour serves as both a contrast to the white pebbles and as a surreal foundation on which all of the other elements of the painting rest. Brown itself is made when almost all of the colours in a palette are mixed. The composition is therefore a murky, hodgepodge of elements blended together just as the proposed themes of the painting are molded together.

Miro’s use of colour differs from Dali’s blending and prevalent three-dimensionality. The Potato was painted using the strong primary colours of blue, red, and yellow although green and brown do show up in small areas. Miro’s work conforms to the fantasy dimension of surrealism as it, at first glance, radiates a childlike aura as demonstrated by the simple, unblended primary colours. The bright colours and whimsical lines and shapes seem to come alive. Even simpler are the black and white paints used – they revert back to an infantile stage in the sense that babies begin seeing only black, white, [and red] in early development. The colour in Miro’s work, unlike that of Accommodations of Desire, contributes to the two-dimensionality of the composition. The flattening of the plane conceals the true identity of the yellow square section to the right of the main figure. Dali’s painting also has a small yellow and blue section, but it is quite clear that the area is a ribbon of sky above the horizon. This contrast emphasizes the abstraction Miro uses in The Potato; the yellow section can be a table, a desert valley or simply nothing. Nevertheless, it serves to control the picture plane by solidifying the composition.

Dali’s treatment of the material – in terms of brushstrokes, scale, and how the surface was worked – contributes to the dreamlike aura that Accommodations radiates. The addition of oil to the paint serves to replace a finished matte look with a finished glossy look. Dali used the latter to achieve a lustrous sheen as to mimic the perceived dream image his painting renders. The brushstrokes are barely visible so as not to label the painting with the gritty rawness of nature. The surface seems to have been worked quite delicately owing to the small scale of the painting: 8 5/8 inches by 13 3/4 inches. Perhaps by painting on an almost miniature scale Dali meant to capture a composition of images that could, for instance, be projected in the mind as a dream and be as intimate as possible.

Miro’s technique eschewed intimacy inasmuch as The Potato seems to dwarf Accommodations in canvas size. The former – measuring 39 3/4 inches by 32 1/8 inches – is approximately three-times the size of the latter as it seems to be of a poster-like quality. The brushstrokes that Miro used point to a naturalistic application and presentation of paint that is much unlike the “plastic” feel of Dali’s paintings. The texture is readily apparent in Miro’s work because he wasn’t as concerned with covering, or hiding, the canvas with a glass-like employment of paint.

Dali’s degree of naturalism runs fairly low due to both the presence of images under the surrealist influence and the lack of organic elements. A fair exception includes the images of the lion and its parts on the white pebbles. These images appear to be taken from a children’s book and collaged onto the surface while, in fact, Dali convincingly imitated collage (Ades 78). The image of the lion on the pebble looks starkly realistic and naturalistic in contrast to the highly stylized, clay-like lions of the dreamlike landscape. Although the image of the lion itself is quite realistic, the background – desolate landscape, pebble as a sort of screen – destroys any sense of total realism. There isn’t much fluidity to be found in the images of Accommodations; there is definite movement, however, which can be found in the image of the three human figures, together with a lion, in the middle ground of the painting.

These figures are fused together on a sort of island-like piece nestled amongst the white pebbles. They are conjoined in a clockwise motion that is emphasized by arms and hands. One man, who speculatively can be middle-aged Dali, is holding a lion – symbol of desire – and putting his right hand in the lion’s mouth as if to say he is happily feeding his desires. The figure to the man’s left is a nude young man, who can speculatively be Dali as a torn youth, facing away from the viewer in shame with his right hand in the man’s mouth. The third figure is a man in anguish with his face buried in his hands; even the colours are toned down to muted grays of despair. This observation points to Dali’s own evolution as an artist: embracing his life and giving in to his desires and perhaps temptations. In 1926 Dali had not yet met his love and muse, Gala, nor had he joined the surrealists though he must have been exposed to early surrealist ideas. Dali was, then, struggling as an emerging artist and perhaps this small image captured his feelings associated with succumbing to – or accommodating – his desires.

Whilst Dali exercised a sort of internal movement, Miro utilized fluidity in the full sense of the word. His entire canvas comes to life through playfully curved lines and shapes. In no way is The Potato a naturalistic work because the shapes are almost indistinguishable as they float around in the composition. The white mass in the center can be viewed as a limited organic piece due to its scarecrow-like juxtaposition in conjunction with the mustard-yellow square of land, but in no way is the work naturalistic. Dali even worked with a true sky and horizon line; Miro neglected all such marks of reality as he instead opted for a carnival of shapes. Miro’s imaginative fantasy therefore collides with Dali’s story-like, and thus structured, painting.

Only in dissecting the content of Accommodations can one begin to understand and interpret Dali’s visions. His painting is predominantly made up of soft images (the pebbles, the ground, and the stylized lions) conceivably because of an inner connection with softness and warmth. One might guess that Freud had an influence on Dali in this area due to the association between a regression to early childhood and the stages of development in the womb. Another lasting element of Dali’s painting is the group of ants gathered on the pebble. Dali had, as a young child, found a wounded bat with ants crawling all over its body (Ades 54). It seems logical that ants are a metaphor for decay and destruction. From one perspective it can be thought that the pebbles are part of a chain of mass production – hence the repeated interchangeable parts of the lion – and the ants are crawling on the pebbles to symbolize the decay of a pure (associated with the colour white) society because of the increasing dependence on machines. It is of importance to note that the surge in population in the early 20th century undoubtedly created a mass concern about the availability of natural resources.

It has also been suggested, however, that the ants imply female genitalia given that Dali’s themes are often sexual in origin. This angle is supported by the presence of the woman-jug image in the far left corner of Dali’s painting. Inspired by a lithograph entitled The Fountain, Dali turned the head of a woman into a jug-container as “visual shorthand for the psycho-analytical commonplace that receptacles stand (for obvious reasons) in dream symbolism for women” (Ades 80). This jug-woman must represent sexual anxiety on account of Dali’s own insecurity in sexual performance and/or his inability to separate a woman from sex object and object of adoration and compassion. In support of this theory the ants are even visually arranged to resemble female genitalia so much that one cannot easily overlook the overtly sexual tones of Dali’s painting. Accommodations is an expression of the subconscious in free form so it is likely that Dali adopted Freud’s idea of allowing the mind to run away with itself through free association. There seems to be a connection between the major themes of personal evolution, mass production, and sexual anxiety. The factory on the horizon is a reference to mass production and therefore the loss of quality to quantity. Anxiety could stem from this fearful outlook as it presents itself in the form of sexual meaning, a topic that Dali spent much time reflecting both consciously and subconsciously within his perceived identity as an evolving artist with a unique surrealist style all his own.

Miro’s unique style lends itself to dual meaning in terms of content and visual perception. A child’s eye will most certainly see something different than an adult’s eye in The Potato. To a child the main white image may take on a cartoon-like quality as it can be likened to the popular figure of Mickey Mouse. The white mass may then be perceived as a body with a head with an almond-shaped eye and exaggerated nose coupled with a welcoming waving hand; the features take on a humorous essence. The same figure, to an adult, may seem much more serious as it takes on a contorted shape to the “educated” eye. What is an eye to a child may seem to be a burnt-out brain – in the form of a potato – within a bulging head about to explode. Also of major significance is the brownish mass on the right of the figure’s body. To a child it may be a balloon running out of air, but to an adult it could take on the form of a breast being exhausted of its supply in a possible grim prediction of the future, which also ties into Dali’s mass production theme. In fact, the figure as a whole seems to be deflating as reinforced by the smaller left hand in comparison to the large right hand stamped with an “M” presumably for Miro to ironically mimic mass production.

“The current accepted usage of ‘surrealist’ to designate something crazy, dreamlike, and funny strikes surprisingly close to the truth” (Nadeau 12). The Freudian idea of the subconscious was a well thought out excuse for the artist to paint a picture of his mind and mold it as desired. The subconscious was used to create illogical, yet coherent, compositions in an effort to plumb the imaginative fantasy for the purposes of manipulating reality. As demonstrated in both Accommodations of Desire and The Potato, this intensely subjective celebration of individual expression widened greatly the artistic angles available to artists that came after.

Bibliography:

Ades, Dawn. Dali and Surrealism. New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1982.

Nadeau, Maurice. The History of Surrealism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989.