Paintings

This is Salvador Dali's "The Elephants" painted in 1948. Dali was known for his surrealist oil paintings which famously include melting clocks and impossible proportions. In this painting, you can see two enormous elephants with spindly legs walking along a desert type landscape. These elephants appear in many of Dali's paintings but first in 1944 with "Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening."

I personally like the colours in this piece as I portray the deep red sky as a sign of danger, as if the elephants are something to be feared. Elephants are used a lot in religious culture such as in Hindu mythology, the deity Ganesh is symbolic to overcoming anything and removing obstacles. However, the elephants in this painting are skinny and bony, symbolising that these creatures are weak and tired even though they are elephants which are bulky and powerful. The animals are holding huge stone statues on there back which could bring meaning to why they are so malnourished. They have been cursed with this unbearable weight.

This painting makes me feel unnerved which is the effect that the surrealism genre is supposed to give. This could be because the style of painting includes impossible situations and scenarios designed to confuse. The fact that these feelings of unknowing can be made from the painting proves that Dali is an influential and powerful artist.