Soft Construction with boiled beans by Salvador Dali

A detailed Summary of Soft Construction with boiled beans by Salvador Dali

Soft Construction with Boiled Beans: A Premonition on Civil War is a painting done in 1936, by the star of Surrealism, Salvador Dali. It hangs among other paintings of the Surrealist movement in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I was drawn to this work by the strangeness of it. It shows a large human-like mass of body parts looming over you in front of an ominous, foreboding sky-scape. It appeared very mysterious to me, and that is why I had the interest to research it further. I wanted to know, what influenced these strange forms...what is the significance of boiled beans...who is that man pictured in the lower left...and in general...what's going on here?!

Salvador Dali is a fascinating enigma. Born in Spain on May 11,1904, he was surrounded by women growing up. There are a few specific instances in his early life which Dali names as causes for his mental problems. Nine months before he was born, Dali had an older brother pass away at two years of age. This brother's name was also Salvador, and his picture hung on the wall for years after the second Salvador was born. It was because of this that he always thought of himself as "the replacement child". Another traumatizing incident in his life was the passing away

One of the great influences on not only Dali, but also all artists of the Surrealist movement (which Dali officially joins in the summer of 1929) was Sigmund Freud (Goff, 8). Freud believed the mind to be composed of the conscious and the unconscious. The unconscious mind is the source of all repressed primitive instincts and sexual drives. He believed that dreams were a way for the unconscious to express itself without interfering in our daily lives. Dali was committed to Freud's idea that childhood experiences mark us for life. Dali also began to read the works of Nietzsche during his academic career. The way Nietzsche questioned the moral, philosophical, and religious foundations of western society influenced him (Goff 41).

foresee, almost immediately, which side will win and which side will

eat anything, and they always have magnificent digestion. The others,

and in short are unable to benefit from anything they eat (Shanes, 30).

strangulation. As a background to this architecture of frenzied flesh devoured

"In this picture, I showed a vast human body breaking out into monstrous

In this work, Dali expresses his anguish and premonitory feelings about the war. The giant figure, possibly recalling Goya's Saturn Devouring one of his Children, rises over an arid landscape (Radford, 187). This form is an impossible combination of body parts. He connects soft, fleshy forms with hardness, and decomposition (Radford, 187). There is a great use of transformation in this picture. The squeezed breast is grasped by a hand that comes from an arm that is joined to another arm which becomes a thigh, and then a buttock supporting a foot and then again becomes an arm. The gnarled head ands hands of the figure make the point that the civil war will be a tragic catastrophe with cannibalistic destruction (Goff, 67).

the others become more and more sick. The ones [who will win] can

normal course. The soft structure of that great mass of flesh in civil war I

Salvador Dali was driven by a

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Approximate Word count = 1364
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: History