Whenever there is a change, we have a party or parties that are deviating from their norm to embrace or utilize something different. One of the greatest differences that separate individuals is the use of the different cultures that bind our beliefs. Each generation of humans continues to revise its cultural heritage in light of the current developments. It is important to understand cultural processes which have greatly been inspired by demographic changes that allow people with different cultures from their own to mingle and interact. Understanding cultural differences has been found to be important in solving practical problems (Rogoff). This paper will look at how a change of location and awareness of new paradigms can contribute to creativity by looking at Salvador Dali and his artworks.
Learning and development can be seen as a big change that brings creativity, especially to a growing child. A child’s learning begins way long before they begin attending school. The learning that is encountered is always preceded by a history. A good example is a study of arithmetic in school yet there were experiences with quantity, addition, size determination, subtraction, and division. (Vygotsky)
It is known that Salvador as a young kid was a precocious and intelligent child just like all other geniuses are. Being precocious is known as a characteristic of genius, stated “Genius is often precocious; as Raphael at fourteen years of age, Mozart at six, Michelangelo at sixteen; and sometimes it is tardy, with special characteristics, as in Alfieri. This is true; precocious originality is one of the characteristics of genius;” in “The man of Genius” by Cesare Lombroso. (Lombroso)
Salvador showed talent in drawing since he was young. Salvador was sent to a drawing school, Colegio de Hermanos Maristas and the Instituto in Figueres, Spain. Both of his parents were very supportive of his artistic talent. They built an art studio just for Salvador even before he entered art school, and exhibited Salvador’s charcoal drawing in the family home. However, Salvador’s father, as a lawyer and notary, was a very strict person with a harsh disciplinary approach to raising children. He was often targeted by school mates because of Salvador’s outstanding intelligence compared to children of his age. Being subjected to bullying and acts of cruelty by the more dominant group of children would have developed his unpredictable temperament which becomes problematic later on. Salvador was expelled from school for stating that none of the faculty members was good enough to teach him. (Biography.com Editors.)
In the 1920s, Impressionism, Futurism, and Cubism were the main styles Salvador has been working on. During this time, Salvador often made trips to Paris where he had chances to meet Pablo Picasso, Rene Magritte, Paul Eluard and Joan Miro. Interacting with these artists, he began to have an interest in Surrealism. Salvador is best known for ‘The Persistence of Memory,’ painted in 1931, which is a painting of melting clocks. On the other hand, “the Persistence of Memory” is one of the most well-known paintings that represent Surrealism.
Dali met Elena Dmitrievna in 1929 who was a Russian immigrant who was at that time married to a Surrealist writer Paul Eluard (“Biography.com Editors. 2016). They eventually got married in 1934 in a civil ceremony. Highly intuitive and mysterious, Gala was a strong willed woman who knew how to influence and at the same time excite Salvador’s diverse mind. She had a unique awareness of the arts and complex factors which made them closely bound to each other and gave her insight into his thinking, moods, and feelings. She became Dali’s inspiration and later became his wife who helped neutralize the creative forces in his life. He was not able to deal with the business side of an artist despite his wild fantasies. Gala managed his legal and financial matters and also was the one to negotiate deals with exhibition promoters.
During the World War 2, they moved to the United States where they stayed up to 1948 and then moved back to Catalonia. He stirred the media by playing the role of a Surrealist clown where he made a lot of money and was nicknamed Avida Dollars (greedy for dollars) by Andre Breton. Gala convinced Dali that his surrealist glory was nothing in 1941 and he should plan to achieve more. She contributed to his success by advising him on how to interact with the art community.
After returning to Europe in 1948 Do developed an absurd obsession with history, religion, and science. To this effect, he started referring to himself as having a “prophetic” side and had scientific exploits. He started reading scientific magazines and decided to integrate what he had learned from them into his language of art. Dali developed an interest in writings on psychology by Sigmund Freud who was an Austrian psychologist. His writings were to change how people think through his theory of unconscious. He states that the unconscious is part of the psyche that thinks and feels without the person’s awareness. He believed strongly that in his sleep, his subconscious was being taken away from him. His creative thinking technique allowed for him to introduce hypnagogia into his art. Dali believed that a secret of becoming a great painter was “slumber with a key” which was an afternoon siesta that would last less than a single second. He said he learned this from Capuchin monks. This nap involved sitting in a chair with arms resting on armrests and wrists dangling. There was a heavy metal key between the thumb and forefinger to his left. He placed an inverted plate directly below the key that would be hit by and awaken him when he dozed off. His ability to induce a state of paranoia to be able to draw what he had seen in his paranoid state was uncanny. Though not a paranoid in reality and not on drugs, he provoked this state so that he can produce realistically paranoid paintings.
In conclusion, change is a great contributor to creativity from the early development and learning of a child to the creation of illusion by an adult in the form of daydreams. The difference in cultures has made it necessary to emulate what we lack while at the same time realize the importance of what we have but neglected. Creativity is always a modification of what we normally believe the only way and is very important for the sustenance of the human species.