Michael Wais Jr.

Salvador Dali - “Metamorphosis of Narcissus” Review

Text Content by Michael Wais Jr. - Rights September 24, 2011

Salvador Dali - “Metamorphosis of Narcissus”

Salvador Dali’s “Metamorphosis of Narcissus” is surreal enough to come from hypnogogic sleep. Its shapes take on regenerative abstract forms that are not geometric renderings from “Classical” or “Cubist” periods. Instead, Postmodern theory’s undermining of the “myth-making” function is symbolized by a refusal to create linear imagery.

In Dali’s piece two large androgynous forms appear human. Oval shapes are positioned like heads without faces. The left figure with an amber hue has space strategically filled where sex organs would be. That may be what makes the eyes perceive limbs, a head, and legs on the figure to the right that DOES include empty space.

The left figure’s amber hue serves another purpose. The oval shape is colored and shaped like a sperm cell (especially the lock of “hair” that seems like a spermatozoa’s “tail”). There appears to be a large portion of the painting that fairly resembles ejaculate (in the representation of the “stream where Narcissus became lost in his own reflection”). Furthermore, the high chroma of the red resembles a volcano. (Possibly an eruption of some sort?)

A dualistic element of a vicious scavenger is in the lower-right corner, feeding off raw humans or animals if that is the correct signification of the spots of red hue in that part of the painting. (Just above that portion of the painting there may be debris. If that assumption is correct, the debris might well be human or animal carcasses).

The background sky is very vivid. But the most vivid and recognizable part of the imagery is the flower tying us to a vivid representation of the Narcissus myth.

We are all like the figures on the horizon line of the painting, observing the fragments of a dream in vain interpretation of what tells us more about ourselves.

While the lone figure of Echo is on the right calling out to find Narcissus, it is that “audience” that participates in this literally consciousness-expanding piece.

This painting is not about Narcissus’s death by vanity (as the scavenger may represent). Instead, fertility is referenced. A red field like a desert is under the figure on the right. Silhouettes of the limbs appear like clock hands. (This is the time for fertile menstruation of the muse and imagination.) Instead of Thanatos’s death-impulse in Freud’s psychology, the alchemical interpretations of Jung’s are referenced (especially in the “alchemical” blending of similar colors on the painting’s left half). The archetypes of this painting invite us to a dream. They also invite us to the philosophy of art, which states that even a man like Salvador Dali can conceive by bringing creative works to the world. In doing so, Dali helps postmodernize and revolutionize the Narcissus myth. Instead of Dali dying by his own ego (like Van Gogh who painted before him), Dali can share the reflective act of creation with others (those who are in the background of the painting) and that is how we too revive and deconstruct the myth of Narcissus.

(Source: facebook.com)

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