Salvador Dalí: Exploding Raphaelesque Head 1951
Somehow in this picture everything works for me. The background’s golden-ochre color is very rich: It is like an old, faded papyrus. Dali used less color and more restrained, natural ones. The colors are in harmony. The raphaelesque face’s chiseled features and the slightly bowed head are simply beautiful. Even if she is just splitting apart like atoms.
I mention atoms because the atomic bomb of 1945 inspired Dali to paint this picture. He broke with surrealists before the war and later described his art as “nuclear mysticism” but I would still call it surrealistic. This painting is the representation of senseless destruction. The original Raphael-painted Renaissance portrait represents everything that is worth living for: beauty, love, family, dreams and more.
The falling parts of the head sometimes remind me of the small pieces of dough that I used to make with my grandma when I was little. Sometimes the scraps look like flowing milk in slow motion. Sometimes they are like sperms, or like a sculpture’s shattered pieces. Inside the head it is just like the Pantheon’s dome in Rome with a central opening. The Madonna’s halo, which also appears in Raphael’s original painting, here, is like a smoke ring, the atomic mushroom cloud’s form.
Surrealism attempts to capture dreams, fantasies and the subconscious world. This one piece is a perfect, ravishing and refined example of it. I do not need more surrealism than this.
Though I would reverse Dali’s thought and imagine another dream. When the world, including us, ceases to exist, God creates everything again. From the exploded debris he rebuilds humans. Like a whirling wind everything goes back into place in the form of beauty. Before he finishes his work he enlightens human mind with love through the central opening. After that, he covers the hole so as not to let any disturbing thoughts in. This is my surreal mental collage.