Dali

A sense of perplexity and confusion fills everyone that looks at this famous painting by the great surrealist Salvador Dali; I was not exempted from these emotions when I first saw this masterpiece. That impression did not only come because of the dimensions of the painting – only slight larger than a normal piece of paper, which really surprised me– but mostly because of the subject matter of the painting: several melting watches being eaten by insects, a part of the face of someone, and all of these set in an imaginary landscape.

              After studying Dali and the Surrealist Movement, I came to understand the meaning behind the work. It is not surprising to realize that what Dali was trying to bring across was nothing less than confusion and perplexity. The intention of the Surrealist Movement was to portray the thoughts conceived in the subconscious mind and dreams of the artists. In other words, they were striving to depict something irrational, therefore impossible to understand. Salvador Dali said this about his paintings: "The fact that I myself do not understand my own pictures does not mean that these pictures have no meaning; on the contrary, their meaning is so profound, complex, coherent, and involuntary that it escapes the most simple analysis of logical intuition." (Salvador Dali).

              Although this painting appears to be irrational and impossible to understand, when I first saw it, this painting spoke to me. The soft watches became an allegory of life and time.

               We only live once; our time on earth is limited and passing by. The painting shows three watches that look like they are melting in the middle of nowhere. We can imagine our time on this earth as one of these watches in the palm of our hands melting away. We try to prevent time from going, but our efforts are useless. Then we look at the fourth watch, which seems to be being eaten by several ants; in the same way, our time is corruptible and impossible to preserve.

              Our lives are corruptible, and they are passing by. Sometimes it seems that we are in the middle of nothing going nowhere. For the apostle, this life, rather than being a situation for panic, becomes an urgent call to fulfill his mission of extending the kingdom and saving souls.