Existing comment:
Salvador Dali
Narcissus, 1968
Dali was one of the leading members of the surrealist movement, which proposed that the source of the artist's genius lay in the subconscious mind. Playing a critical role in the surrealist movement were the psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud and their emphasis on the role of unconscious thoughts and desires on the conscious mind as well as the imagination. Dali had long been fascinated with the Freudian implications of the Greek myth of Narcissus, the story of a prideful youth so enamored with his own reflection in a pool that he cannon look away and starves and dies in place. Besides the obvious Freudian concepts of ego and vanity embodied in the story, Dali was fascinated by the significance of the act of looking as central to the artist's process. |