I recently watched
Woody Allen’s ‘Midnight in Paris’; where famous 1920’s Parisian-based artists,
designers, authors, composers and mentors were depicted in wonderful, quirky
characterisations.
Allen’s Salvador Dali was humorously wacky; insistent on painting a portrait of the lead
character (Owen Wilson) as a rhinoceros shedding an oversized tear drop holding a reflection
of Christ.
In the context of
the movie you laugh; how bizarre; what a vivid caricature of the man (Dali);
how weird would that painting look, etc.
Dali’s fascination with animal images was represented in many
of his works from the 1950 onwards. The
rhinos in his paintings and sculptures are elongated and majestic.
Much is written about the iconography: Dali painted rhinoceros horns, signifying
divine geometry, because they grow in a logarithmic spiral. Dali also linked the
rhino horn to the legendary unicorn horn, a symbol of chastity.
My favorite are
his butterflies: I am absolutely captured by them. The colours and the essence
of them, on sailing ships and windmills, creating images of freedom, travelling
in course-less directions, where ever the wind takes you.
In ancient Greek, the word ’psyche’ means soul
and butterfly.
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