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Vision of Hell
(Oil on Canvas, 1962)
"The
Vision of Hell (1962) is a highly sophisticated painting
that juxtaposes Salvador Dali's earlier style, Surrealism,
(for which he was most famous) with a more classical
style of religious mysticism which he developed later
in life.
Most
critics believe that Dali's greatest works were those
done during his Surrealistic period, (before the 1940's).
It was then that Dali, greatly influenced by Freud's
Interpretation of Dreams tried to enter the subconscious
world while he was painting, in order to fathom subconscious
imagery. To this end he tried various methods. For example,
he attempted to simulate insanity while painting, and
he tried setting up his canvas at the base of his bed
to paint before sleeping and upon rising.
During
this period of his life certain images repeated themselves
in his art: eyes, hands, noses, bones, crutches, clouds,
mountains, blood, soft bodies and/or objects. In Vision
of Hell we find all of these symbols, called cliches
by some critics, but, here they seem to be much more
than a trite convention. They are an expression of Dali
himself. Too Dali uses the techniques of double images,
hidden appearances, counter appearances.
It
is important to note that although in the early 1960's
(the time when Vision of Hell was painted) Dali's art
was pejoratively classified as "academic", "religious,"
and "mystic," and despite the fact that he was, at the
time, often excluded from the company if Surrealists,
Dali deliberately chose the lapse into his previous
surrealist style to accomplish these portrayal of hell.
Note, his old style, surrealism,dominates these portrayal
of hell (the left side of the painting), while his newer
style of "Religious Mysticism" is used on the right
side of the painting in the portrayal of Our Lady of
Fatima. A close look at Our Lady of Fatima shows that
an experimental technique was used around the upper
body of Our Lady. The paint has texture. It is interesting
to note that Dali does not use his wife Gala as the
subject for his portrayal of Mary, as he had in previous
portrayals of Our Lady (The Madonna of Port Lligat (1949,1950));
however, in vision of hell Our Lady of Fatima does hold
her hands open in a similar way as the Madonna of Port
Lligat.
The
central image in the painting is that of eight carving
forks, that, in the form of a circle are piercing a
body that, typical of Dali's earlier period, is soft.
The parts most visible in this human form are the left
chest, the left arm and the head. Note, too, the blood.
Vision of Hell is Dali's portrayal of death. Whenever
an artist seriously approaches the subject of death,
we can expect profundity. When this part of the painting
is placed side by side with Dali's famous birth painting,
Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man,
(1943) the comparison is startling. Both bodies are
curved in a type of fetal position; there are large
drops of blood; the arm, the navel and the breast are
the central focus of attention. Vision of Hell would
be well shown beside ...Birth of a New Man. One painting
shows life, the other death.
Not
to be dismissed is the elongated eye of the pierced
victim. Eyes have always been a symbol for Dali, particularly
in his own polymorphic self-portraits. His paintings
The First Days of Spring, Illuminated Pleasure, The
Enigma of Desire and The Persistence of Memory all show
a head, a face and a prominent eye. Those eyes, however,
are all closed. The long extended eye in Vision of Hell
is open, as if to say, the victim's eyes have been opened
at death. This eye is a double image, typical of Dali.
From one side it seems to be a human eye, bent out of
shape, from the other it is the eye of a strange creature
(Bosch like) with its mouth wide open ready to take
a bite.
Hieronymous
Bosch Influenced Dali's Vision of Hell
Dali,
as well as other surrealist painters, were greatly influenced
by the Dutch painter, Hieronymous Bosch (1450-1516).
Vision of Hell actually copies a part of Hieronymous
Bosch's Hell, portrayed in the right hand panel of the
Garden of Earthly Delights (triptych). The burning buildings
shown in the top left if Dali's painting closely resemble
Bosch's burning building in hell, and, interestingly,
Dali also picks up from Bosch's inferno the image of
the tattered flag, as well as a rectangular structure
from which emanate four rays of light.
Crutches
In
his earlier, much more famous works, Dali frequently
employed crutches in his paintings. He, himself, says
he finds the crutch to be "the significance of life
and death...a support for inadequacy." (p.66) It is
well known that Dali, for a long time, had a fetish
about crutches, which stemmed from his youthful desire
to place a crutch under the breast of a woman whom he
saw working in the fields. The orange/red spirit, shown
escaping from the pierced body in Vision of Hell, has
two crutches, one under or on each breast. They seem
claw like. Clutching. These crutches are more easily
seen when the painting is lighted by high intensity
artificial light. (Recall that Dali sometimes painted
with artificial light and a jewelers eye piece.)
Hidden
Self Portrait
Salvador
Dali often hides images and faces within his paintings,
and many of his works are self-portraits. There are
three places in this painting where it seems Dali is
portraying himself. First, in the polymorphic body.
Second, in a whimsical face which appears in a puff
of smoke in the lower left center part of the painting.
However, there is another face, hidden face, composed
of an eye and a nose, that dominates the painting.
Before
studying this last hidden face in Vision of Hell, remember
that eyes and noses are among the dominant symbols in
Dali's art. (Refer to The Enigma of Desire, Illuminated
Pleasures and The Persistence of Memory). One might
do well to look at a photographic portrait of Dali which
was done in 1955. In it Dali holds a magnifying glass
over his eye and nose.
The
dominant face in Vision of Hell can be found by focusing
on the black drops that appear in the middle left side
of the painting. These black drops (which echo the red
drops on the lighter side) if seen as tears falling
from a closed eye, anchor us into position to see a
bushy black eyebrow above the crying eye, the inside
edge of which is being pierced by two carving forks.
If one perceives the eye, then the large white nose,
which too is being pierced by carving forks, appears.
the hidden face is composed of an eye crying black tears,
a bushy eyebrow and a large nose, all of which closely
resemble Dali's own features. When viewed in this way,
the hell of Hieronymous Bosch appears to be flushing
from the mind, (to the left of the eye).
This
dominant and tormented face, floating in the air, recalls
the lines which Dali used to inspire the painting, ""plunged
in this fire were demons and souls in human form...raised
into the air by the flames that issued from within themselves...""
(from St. Lucia's Description of hell). The "flames
that issued from within" could well be the Hieronymous
Bosch flames that are issuing from the mind of this
tormented face.
Why
did Dali choose to sign his name so prominently in the
middle of the painting? Could it be that Vision of Hell
is not only a portrayal of the vision of hell seen by
the three shepard children of Fatima (which he was commissioned
for $15,000.00 to portray here) but also a portrayal
of Dali himself, tormented and crying. Is a serious
portrayal of death, such as this, a minor work?
The
Lower Half of the Painting
The
lower half of the painting has yet to be explored. But,
one must note that a solitary female figure who stand
on the cracked earth is holding a cross in her right
hand, just as St. John of the Cross held a cross in
Dali's painting The Temptation of St. Anthony (1946).
She also had another form in her left hand which may
be a shepherd staff. The painting must be examined with
a magnifying glass in order to determine this. If it
is a shepherd's crook, this figure could very well represent
Lucia, the sole survivor and one of the three shepherd
children who saw Our Lady of Fatima. and hell. It was
Lucia's account of the vision of hell that Salvador
Dali studied before he painted Vision of Hell.
The
White Circle
The
white circle on Our Lady's stomach could very well symbolize
Jesus. An extremely thick glob of paint, this circle
seems to be molded, like clay, into a shape that still
needs to be explored with a magnifying glass. It does
recall, in corporal placement, the square tabernacle
forms found in Dali's representation of the Madonna
of Port Lligat, (1949)."
This
analysis is by Sister Mary Ann Sullivan, O.P.
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