Salvador Dali is probably my favorite artist. The guy that painted the “Persistencia de Memoria,” you know, the melting clocks? Yeah that’s the one. His work is immensely famous, with the “Persistencia de Memoria” possibly being the most well known of all. In Charles Stucky’s article “Dali in Duchamp-Land” he says that Dali was arrogant and saw the world as simply context for his own autobiography. Despite this arrogance, though, Dali was remarkably skilled and has always seemed to bring countless strangers together in enclosed areas to discuss amongst themselves the symbolism behind each detail of his works. The title of the article should have been “Salvador Dali, bringing people together through narcissism and self-promotion.” In Mark van Proyen’s article “On Point” he says that the surrealist style has completely changed the style of contemporary art to center largely around what Robert Hughes called “The Shock of the New.” It was a shock that came in part from the presence of something normal either twisted into or accompanied by something out of the ordinary and absurd. This was exactly what Dali accomplished with many of his paintings.
Stucky uses Dali’s numerous self-portraits to back up his argument. The sheer number of them is a testament to the fact that he loved for others to see him. Perhaps he was in love with himself? Or maybe he was simply full of himself. In “The Railway Station at Peapignan” 
Dali depicts himself rising up, as if towards heaven accompanying Dali’s ascension is an image of a crucified Jesus in the sunrise. Stucky also describes an unnamed painting from when Dali was a teenager in which he shows himself as Bacchus (or Dionysus if you need the Greek equivalent) holding grapes over his head in greeting to the sunrise. Dali liked to show himself as an attractive and desirable figure in many of his paintings, but then, who wouldn’t if they were a talented artist? Stucky also references a recollection by John Cage of one of his visits to Dali’s place. He said that he was always talking, as if he were a king. Perhaps Dali was a bit full of himself. Hughes, on the other hand argues that Dali had a different purpose for his paintings.
In his article, Hughes argues that Dali’s aim was to bring the “shock of the new” to people. His style was far from generic, and the surrealist theme always kept people looking at his works for a good amount of time in order to pick everything out. Hughes claimed that Dali was the first post-modern artist because he came to the realization that “popular culture was the only real living culture." Dali’s own type of surrealism had more of an impact on people, Hughes said, because he wasn’t trying to do anything truly new, but rather was depicting the surrealism that was modern popular culture. The shock was derived from seeing the man’s interpretation of everyday life and fads all laid out bare before them and shown under a different light.
I feel that each of these articles make valid points. The number of Dali’s self-portraits and his idealistic depiction of himself in most of them are a testament to his love of self; however, I think it is also possible that he painted himself so much because it was his own self that he knew best. His strange surrealist style certainly does bring a shock to people, even after seeing one of these works numerous times it can still be a bit of a surprise seeing the way things are distorted and magnified through the eyes of Salvador Dali. This shock was also his means of becoming well known in the world. Dali knew that in order to leave his mark in the world, he had to go above and beyond what was expected. Not only did he accomplish that, he also twisted that concept back in on itself with the intense level of distortion present in nearly every one of his works.
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