Essay, Research Paper: Dali, Salvidor - Leda Atomica

Dali, Salvidor - Leda Atomica
Essay submitted by Taha

Leda Atomica (24 x 18"- oil on canvas), is a painting by Salvador Dali (1904-1989) who
was the top Surrealists of this time. Surrealism explored the subconscious, the dream
world, and irrational elements of the psyche in the firm belief that the discoveries to be
made from such exploration would be of greater fundamental importance to the human
condition than any other form of social analysis. Surrealists like Salvador Dali was very
fascinated by the ephemeral state of the mind between sleep and consciousness,
dream and reality, sanity and insanity, as one in which the mind functioned purely,
unfettered by the constraints of logic and social behavior. (#1 - Surrealism)

Salvador Dali was born in May 11 of 1904 in Figures Spain, and in 1921 he entered the
San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid where he made friends with Federico
Garcia Lorca, Luis Bunuel, and Eugenio Montes. In June of 1923 Dali was suspended
from the Academy for having indicated the students to rebel against the authorities of
the school but was let back in October of 1925, and a year later Dali was permanently
expelled. Then in 1924 he was imprisoned in Figures and Gerona for political reasons.
The influence of metaphysical paintings and contact with Miro, caused Dali to join the
Surrealists in 1929. (#8 - Biographical Outline)

Dali held numerous one-man shows during his career and did many art forms from
paintings to sculpture and even movies. He directed and was a part of many films
including the first surrealist film "Un Chiea A Dalou A Andalusian Dog", with the director
Luis Bunuel. In 1945 he designed the memorable surrealistic dream sequence for
Hitchcock's Spellbound, and filmed Don Juan Tenorio, in 1951. By reading psychological
case histories, Dali hoped to represent neuroses in an ultra-realistic style so as to
objectify the irrational with photographic accuracy. A lot of his artwork has some kind
of connection to other artwork of his, like the melting clock, his symbol of death, and
most of all is Dali's anamorphic self portrait mask that appears in allot of his paintings.
The shape of the face, usually presented resting on its nose, is strongly reminiscent of
one of the rock formation of the coastline near Dali's home. Leda Atomica is some what
connected to The Madonna of Port Lligat, as if Dali is showing a symbolic story of his
relationship with Gala, (Gala- is his lover/wife).

In the painting of Leda Atomica, Dali shows Leda played by Gala, the mother of
semidivine children, whose birth is indicated by the broken eggshell out of which they
were hatched. Gala is presented as a mother, and furthermore, with the swan's beak
hardly touching her. She seems to represent a kind of miraculous and quit spiritualized
form of impregnation. Gala appears in many of his paintings including The Madonna of
Port Lligat, and that she plays a very important role for Dali, not just modeling but yet
also some kind of hope and inspiration to Dali himself. He paints the appearance of the
swan Zeus to the naked Gala, as an annunciation scene, the winged carrier of the
women's destiny whispers her future in her ear, a memory perhaps of the legend that
the conception of Jesus in the Virgin Mary was achieved by the introduction to her ear
of the breath of the Holy Ghost.

Leda Atomica is Dali's way if interpreting the Annunciation, Leda plays a mortal woman
visited by a metamorphosis god in order that she might bear his child, acts thereafter
as a conduit through which her son's mortal counterparts may regain access to the god
that gave them birth. " A figure of intercession, an agent of mediation between rational
man and state beyond the rational, she is both child-women and women-with-child"
(#2 - pp. 68-76), because she is a virgin, based on the Christian- Catholic divinity
belief. Gala in a sense is a god's muse, and is close to those incarnations of the
surrealist muse "Gala is being the supreme example" according to Dali, who owe their
pictorial and literary identity to ht e activity of their men. The muse is the object of
"desire, of love, and God is, famously, love itself" (#2 - pp. 68-76 & according to Dali's
philosophy). Dali's transformation of Mary is the result of love as if he created his love
to Gala, like God to Mary.

Dali paints Gala's wedding ring, a picture of a mystic marriage, which result in the "Twin
immortalisation" of Dali and Gala. Dali shows his thought of seducing Gala in his paining
of Leda Atomica, in a way of dreams, symbolism, and combining religious and Greek
mythology in his own personal taste. The suspension in space of objects and
architecture of the Leda Atomica painting symbolizes the demonstration that is the
equivalent in physics, in the atomic age, of divine gravitation, as if it's a free roaming
over modern science. Every object in the painting is carefully painted to be motionless
in space, even though nothing in the painting is connected whatsoever, even Leda
(Gala) is not touching anything, she barely try to touch the large swan bottom head,
but it never touches it in the painting. Her right hand suggests her feeling of urge of
something that is yet unclear to even her self. It might be the symbolism of the
process of her impregnation, and the love and mystery of the swan. Leda looks straight
into the bird's eyes with an understanding expression of what is happening to her and
what will happen in the feature to her and to her unsure reality.

The Madonna of Port Lligat has the Virgin Mary "Gala", and has the egg falling on top of
her head from a seashell that hangs motionless in space. Unlike Leda in the Leda
Atomica that has a broken egg on the bottom of the painting, and hangs motionless in
space. Both backgrounds contains water and Dali's mysterious mountains, but The
Madonna of Port Lligat painting has objects that are from the sea like shells and a fish
on a broken plate, while the Leda Atomica painting contains a large muse and a red
small book. But why is the broken egg shell in Leda's painting and the new egg is in the
Madonna's painting? That still lies unclear.

I watched a film by Dali - "A Soft self-portrait", that was narrated by Orson Welles and
filmed in Spain in 1969, that explains a little about Dali himself and his work but wasn't
much help. It was a little "Weird" at first, but yet I got used to him making the film, and
his way of speaking, which he called "Dalian English", which was very hard to
understand what exactly was he saying. In the video, he said that he never fully
understood his own artwork, " I never understand my work", as he explains "Never Dali
understand one painting of Dali", and then he concluded, "Because Dali only creates
enigmas." Mystification is his way of life, and Gala will always be a part of it.

Leda Atomica's composition is fairly complex and there are many different other
explanations to the painting and its composition of its objects and figures, which was
one of the goals that Dali had in mind as he painted. As Dali creates an artwork, one of
his goals is do something that is strange that comes from the deep thoughts of his mind
that yet people can relate to it just by looking at it and keep looking at it. These
thoughts might come from his dreams, beliefs, and/or reality.

Salvador Dali uses history, literature, religion, mythology, politics, contemporary science
and psychology to construct a series of personae within which he could create his
work, and in the context of which he could manipulate its reception (#6 - Salvador
Dali). A lot of people refer to Dali as crazy painter or that he has mental problems, but
the real truth is, Dali is a genius. Just because he thinks different from everyone else,
do not mean he has mental problems. Leda that represents Gala is not only his lover,
but yet she is his best and personal follower, that Dali suggests it as "The love of the
Gods."