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Archaeological echo of "Angelius" Millet

Salvador Dali • Painting, 1935, 39×32 cm
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About the artwork
This artwork was added since it is referred to in the materials below
Art form: Painting
Subject and objects: Landscape
Style of art: Surrealism
Technique: Oil
Materials: Wood
Date of creation: 1935
Size: 39×32 cm
Artwork in selections: 5 selections

Description of the artwork «Archaeological echo of "Angelius" Millet»

When in 2016 the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, America invited visitors to wear virtual reality glasses and take a walk inside the picture, it became clear how huge they are, these dilapidated towers. How threatening is their instability, imbalance.

Salvador Dali raved"Angelus" Millet. There were two paintings from his early childhood (not even paintings, but their reproductions) that did not give him rest all his life, from the loss of which Dali became sick and lost his strength, stopped drinking and eating. Returning their reproductions to himself, he eagerly took up the study, for dreams and dreams above them, for the search for unexpected meanings and the decoding of alarming understatements. One is "Angelus" Millet, the second -"Lacemaker" Vermeer. Both were points "A" for Dali's artistic search, from which he eagerly set off on endless journeys to unnamed, unpredictable destinations, each time to different ones.

More than 60 direct and hard-to-find references to the composition of the painting “Angelus” by the French artist Jean-Francois Millet are found in Dali’s paintings (1, 2, 3) And the “Archaeological Echo” is one of the most obvious.
Figures of peasants who bowed their heads in evening prayer, the first nine-year-old Salvador first saw in the corridor of the school. He studied at the Academy of Brothers of the Order of Marists in Figueres and looked through the open door of the class at a reproduction of a painting by Millet:

“This picture caused me an unreasonable fear, so piercing that the memory of two motionless silhouettes accompanied me for many years, causing the same feeling of depression and anxiety. This lasted until 1929, when the picture disappeared from my memory. Then I found another reproduction and was again overcome by similar anxiety. The image again obsessively haunted me, and I began to record the psychological phenomena that followed its perception, then inspired by my poems, paintings, compositions. Finally, I wrote an essay, which has yet to be published: “The tragic myth of“ Angelus “Millet,” which I consider to be one of the main documents of the Dalinian philosophy.
"Angelus" caused me anxiety and at the same time hidden pleasure, which penetrated somewhere under my skin, like a silver blade of a knife. "

The Dali artist, who grew up and watched the praying peasants of Millet, was tormented by a mismatch: too desperate, tragic poses and faces incommensurable with the event - the usual evening prayer over a potato basket and unfinished field work. Once Dali turned to the leadership of the Louvre, where was then "Angelus", with a request to conduct an X-ray analysis of the canvas. And the Louvre experts conducted an analysis. Under the colorful layer, at the place where the basket of potatoes is written, Millet first painted a children's coffin. And later he painted over it, either yielding to the wishes of the customer, or anticipating his dissatisfaction.

The discovered explanation satisfied Dali's many years of childhood anxiety, but did not stop him in the search for possible interpretations. Heartbroken parents who are forced to bury an unbaptized baby in the field are convincing, but not the only ones in Dali's mythology. He saw in this picture an erotic story: a man who is overcome by lust and bashfully hides his excitement (see how he tries to hide an erection under his hat pressed to his body), a woman who humbly accepts this lust. The forks, voluptuously stuck in the soft plowed earth, are direct proof, an obvious erotic symbol.

Angelus, the silver blade of a knife, penetrates the skin of the artist Dali over and over again and gives rise to disturbing images. Two ancient, corroded by rains and winds, dilapidated towers nailed to their eternal foundations and doomed to reach each other in a silent mountain and endless, unsatisfied passion.

Author: Anna Sidelnikova
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