Salvador Dali

"Surrealists are also interested in the imaginations of children and the insane, both of which they saw as being uncorrupted by reason." (Linda Bolton) The surrealists attempted to explore the unconscious part of their minds. They developed a method of "automatic writing and painting." "Artists tried to approach their work without any prior thought, returning to a childlike state in order to produce works of pure imagination." (Linda Bolton) .
             Surrealism has two very opposing outlooks. The first side is the unconscious and abstract style. These surrealists tried not to think of what they were painting. They tried to stop the conscious part of there minds from taking over and let the pencil or brush "take a walk in their hand" to see what the unthinking mind might do. The other side saw art in another view point. It was the realistic yet dreamlike style of painting. Dali was involved in this group of surrealists. This group painted very clear images of objects and landscapes, but what stood out about this style of painting was the impossible settings that these objects were placed in. Contorted and dreamlike objects were obvious to the eye of the onlooker. .
             In 1923, Dali discovered the work of an Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico, and this artists work was dreamlike yet had normal shapes and objects placed in the settings of his paintings. Dali was fascinated by the way it was possible to see two objects in one shape at the same time. He called this effect the "paranoiac-critical method", he used this in his work. One famous piece, which used this effect for is known as "The Thought Machine", painted in 1935. .
             Dalis" paintings have many meanings behind them in which are very difficult to interpret. "The Persistance of Memory" for example is the most famous of his paintings. Dalis" interprets this piece, "The soft watches are nothing else than tender, extravagant and solitary paranoiac-critical camembert of time and space in similarity ambivalent, referring to the painting genesis and also to it's tantalizing significance.