Untitled- Two Heads & Photo of Lips
February 13, 2018
Salvador Dalí, Untitled- Two Heads- Photo of Lips, 1975. Lithograph.
Salvador Dalí was a Spanish artist from a small town outside of Barcelona. He is best associated with Surrealism, a movement of the 20th century that manifested the subconscious and personal imagination through art. Like many Surrealists, Dalí was strongly influenced by the psychoanalytic concepts developed by Sigmund Freud, and his artworks give attention to dreams and hallucinations. Dalí’s most notable contribution to the Surrealist movement is his Paranoiac-Critical Method, a way of perceiving the world through a stimulated state of paranoia and irrational knowledge without the use of drugs. Dalí did not limit himself to painting. He was also a filmmaker, author, critic, and sculptor. Figurative influences of the artist were Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro, and Giorgio de Chirico.
Traces of Dalí’s famous flamboyant and provocative character can be found in this untitled lithograph from the University Art Collection. The oranges and yellows of the central figure pop in contrast to the dull, colorless landscape that expands in the background. Images stand in place of the figure’s mouth and single eye. Above the androgynous being is a halo- a hint of Dalí’s fascination with the religious symbolism of classical and renaissance art. As Dalí was known to hand paint “dream photographs,” it is safe to assume that this scene comes from a dream or hallucination, probably achieved by the Paranoiac-Critical Method. The artwork was gifted to the University Art Collection by Sarah and John M. Rainy Jr. in 1977, two years after the lithograph’s completion.
Written by Danielle Cervera Bidigare