In his own autobiography, Dali states that all artists must become, “carnivorous fish…swimming between two kinds of water, the cold water of art and the warm water of science.” This expresses the idea that Dali was not only interested in artistic methods for his paintings, but he also wanted to involve ideas of science, like psychology, into his work. Discovering Freud’s ideas pushed forth Dali’s art and furthermore answered some of the problems he had faced throughout much of his childhood. He was very enthusiastic about the work of Freud and he therefore decided to incorporate it into his work. It was then that Dali began his stage of surrealist painting, which was from around 1929 to 1940. He was extremely interested in the concept of tapping into one’s subconscious mind, and he took these Freudian ideas to a one-dimensional canvas and expressed them further. By exploring a number of Dali’s surrealist works of art, with a main focus on his painting entitled Illuminated Pleasures from 1929, one can better understand how his style of painting at this time in his career was heavily influenced by Sigmund Freud’s theories of sexuality, childhood memories, and dreams.

The last screen, farthest to the right, and partially cut off by the edge of the canvas, contains hundreds of men with beards on bicycles, and again with white eggs on top of their heads. The egg also appears in the upper half of this canvas, a large white one, with a crack in the center, with something that appears to be growing inside of it. The egg is a continuous symbol in many of Dali’s paintings as well. It is seen in countless works, such as Accommodations of Desire, also from 1929. Yet, each time it is used, it appears to take on a new meaning. Within this painting alone, it appears to represent creation and death at the same time. In one aspect the egg in the upper portion of the canvas seems to be cracked, possibly making way for a newborn creature. The egg in the left-hand box is the target of danger, from a gun. The man holding the gun is often thought of as a father figure, possibly relating back to Dali’s own childhood. Freud also suggested that much of a person’s own psychological well being involves bringing up memories from one’s past, and dealing with them in a one-on-one therapy-type session. By expressing views of his own childhood in his painting, he is involved in an act of psychological “catharsis,” a method of releasing stressful agents in one’s life.

Dali chose the symbols for his paintings very carefully with subconscious dream imagery in mind. In his use of repetitive symbols, he reinforces the numerous ideas, which he gained from his encounters with Sigmund Freud. It has been said, “the only method of investigation of the symbols in Dali’s paintings would be, perhaps, psychoanalysis.” This means that it is easier to interpret Dali’s repeating symbolic imagery in a psychoanalytic format. For example, Dali often uses a liquid of some sort that may be coming out of some figure. In Illuminated Pleasures, the profile facial structure has blood coming out of its nose and possibly mouth. An interpretation states that, “Freud points out that liquid can stand for any body fluid including mucus, urine, semen, and tears.” This is a symbol that is often seen in someone’s dream, and can be attributed to violence or sex. As discussed above, other repeating symbols include the lion head, the egg-like object, and the side profile of a face. These symbols are used continuously in Dali’s paintings, often in very different contexts. They are all, in a sense, extremely random in their placement throughout the painting. This may reinforce the idea that in the stages of sleep, an individual might encounter a number of random images during one night of dreaming. Dali imposed a sequence of dreaming upon the viewer that suggests this randomness in essence. In Dali’s work, the confusion between images “

Some topics in this essay:
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