The Elephants () is a 1948 painting by the Catalans surrealist artist Salvador Dalí.
Background
The
elephant is a recurring theme in the works of Dalí, first appearing in his 1944 work
Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening, and also in
The Temptation of Saint Anthony and
Swans Reflecting Elephants.
The Elephants differs from the other paintings in that the animals are the primary focus of the work, with a barren graduated background and lack of other content, where most of Dalí's paintings contain much detail and points of interest (for example
Swans Reflecting Elephants which is somewhat better known within Dalí's repertoire than
The Elephants). The stork-legged elephant is one of the best-known icons of Dalí's work. Other examples are
The space elephant (made of
gold and
) that Salvador Dalí designed in 1961
[ The Space Elephant. Dalí Theatre-Museum. Dalí Foundation.] and the homonymous sculpture created in 1980.
[ Space Elephant – Monumental Sculpture. Dalí universe.]
Symbolism
There are various cultural depictions of elephants, where they are often viewed as symbols of strength, dominance and power due to their bulk and weight.
Dalí contrasts these typical associations by giving the elephants long, spindly, almost arachnid-like legs, once described as "multijointed, almost invisible legs of desire".
[ Dalí Universe Collection . County Hall Gallery. Retrieved on 28 July 2006.] Dalí believed in the power of dreams, influenced by
Sigmund Freud psychoanalysis. In The Elephant, the elongated legs of the elephants have been interpreted as symbols of memory and its distortions.
Dalí enhances the appearance of strength and weight by depicting the elephants carrying massive obelisks on their backs, however, on close inspection it can be seen that these weights are floating. The obelisks on the backs of the elephants are believed to be inspired by Gian Lorenzo Bernini's sculpture base in Rome of an elephant carrying an ancient obelisk,
[Michael Taylor in Dawn Adès (ed.), Dalí (Milan: Bompiani, 2004), p. 342] and was mentioned in several communications of the artist, so can be considered a reliable claim.
The Elephants is a good example of a surrealist work, creating a sense of phantom reality. "The elephant is a distortion in space", one critic explains, "its spindly legs contrasting the idea of weightlessness with structure";[ pene art.com Retrieved on 26 July 2013]
See also
-
List of works by Salvador Dalí
