Editing Salvador Dalí (section)

== Symbolism ==
From the late 1920s, Dalí progressively introduced many bizarre or incongruous images into his work which invite symbolic interpretation. While some of these images suggest a straightforward sexual or [[Freudian]] interpretation (Dalí read [[Sigmund Freud|Freud]] in the 1920s) others (such as [[locust]]s, rotting [[donkey]]s, and [[sea urchin]]s) are idiosyncratic and have been variously interpreted.<ref>Gibson, Ian (1997) pp. 207–08</ref> Some commentators have cautioned that Dalí's own comments on these images are not always reliable.<ref>Gibson, Ian (1997), p. 478</ref>

=== Food ===
Food and eating have a central place in Dalí's thoughts and work. He associated food with beauty and sex and was obsessed with the image of the female [[praying mantis]] eating her mate after copulation.<ref>Gibson, Ian (1997), p. 312</ref> Bread was a recurring image in Dalí's art, from his early work ''[[The Basket of Bread]]'' to later public performances such as in 1958 when he gave a lecture in Paris using a 12-meter-long [[baguette]] an illustrative prop.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://ivc.lib.rochester.edu/breaking-dalinian-bread-on-consuming-the-anthropomorphic-performative-ferocious-and-eucharistic-loaves-of-salvador-dali/|title=Breaking Dalinian Bread|last=Pine|first=Julia|date=1 January 2010|website=InVisible Culture|access-date=3 April 2020|archive-date=30 July 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200730163221/https://ivc.lib.rochester.edu/breaking-dalinian-bread-on-consuming-the-anthropomorphic-performative-ferocious-and-eucharistic-loaves-of-salvador-dali/|url-status=live}}</ref> He saw bread as "the elementary basis of continuity" and "sacred subsistence".<ref>{{Cite book|last=Dalí|first=Salvador|title=The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí|publisher=Dover Publications|year=1993|isbn=978-0-486-27454-6|location=New York|page=306}}</ref>

The egg is another common Dalínian image. He connects the egg to the prenatal and intrauterine, thus using it to symbolize hope and love.<ref name="symb">{{cite web|url=http://www.countyhallgallery.com/education/dali_symbols.htm|title=Salvador Dalí's symbolism|work=County Hall Gallery|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061202083808/http://www.countyhallgallery.com/education/dali_symbols.htm|archive-date=2 December 2006|access-date=28 July 2006}}</ref> It appears in ''[[The Great Masturbator]]'', ''[[Metamorphosis of Narcissus|The Metamorphosis of Narcissus]]'' and many other works. There are also giant sculptures of eggs in various locations at Dalí's house in [[Portlligat]]<ref>{{cite book|last1=Stone|first1=Peter|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=v8ehi--t7EYC&q=portlligat+house+dali+eggs&pg=PA284|title=Frommer's Barcelona|date=7 May 2007|publisher=Wiley Publishing Inc.|isbn=978-0-470-09692-5|edition=2nd|page=284|access-date=23 March 2017|archive-date=10 December 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211210185332/https://books.google.com/books?id=v8ehi--t7EYC&q=portlligat+house+dali+eggs&pg=PA284|url-status=live}}</ref> as well as at the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres.

The radial symmetry of the sea urchin intrigued Dalí. He had enjoyed eating them with his father at Cadaqués and, along with other foods, they became a recurring theme in his work.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/dali/salvador/food.html|title=Salvador Dalí: Liquid Desire|work=ngv.vic.gov.au|access-date=14 February 2015|archive-date=24 March 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150324231014/http://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/dali/salvador/food.html|url-status=live}}</ref>

The famous "melting watches" that appear in ''The Persistence of Memory'' suggest [[Albert Einstein|Einstein]]'s theory that time is relative and not fixed.<ref name="Conquete" /> Dalí later claimed that the idea for clocks functioning symbolically in this way came to him when he was contemplating [[Camembert]] cheese.<ref>Salvador Dalí, ''The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí'' (New York: Dial Press, 1942), p. 317.</ref>

=== Animals ===
The [[rhinoceros]] and rhinoceros horn shapes began to proliferate in Dalí's work from the mid-1950s. According to Dalí, the rhinoceros horn signifies divine geometry because it grows in a [[logarithmic spiral]]. He linked the rhinoceros to themes of chastity and to the [[Virgin Mary]].<ref name=":6" /> However, he also used it as an obvious phallic symbol as in ''[[Young Virgin Auto-Sodomized by the Horns of Her Own Chastity]].''<ref name=":0">Gibson, Ian (1997) p. 478</ref>

Various other animals appear throughout Dalí's work: rotting donkeys and ants have been interpreted as pointing to death, decay, and sexual desire; the [[snail]] as connected to the human head (he saw a snail on a bicycle outside Freud's house when he first met him); and locusts as a symbol of waste and fear.<ref name="symb" /> The elephant is also a recurring image in his work; for example, ''[[Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening]]''. The elephants are inspired by [[Gian Lorenzo Bernini]]'s sculpture base in Rome of an [[Santa Maria Sopra Minerva#Minerva's Pulcino|elephant carrying an ancient obelisk]].<ref>Michael Taylor in [[Dawn Adès]] (ed.), ''Dalí'' (Milan: Bompiani, 2004), p. 342</ref>

=== Science ===
Dalí's life-long interest in science and mathematics was often reflected in his work. His soft watches have been interpreted as references to [[Theory of relativity|Einstein's theory of the relativity]] of time and space.<ref name="Conquete" /> Images of atomic particles appeared in his work soon after the [[atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki]]<ref>Gibson, Ian (1997) pp. 433–34</ref> and strands of [[DNA]] appeared from the mid-1950s.<ref name=":0" /> In 1958 he wrote in his ''Anti-Matter Manifesto'': "In the Surrealist period, I wanted to create the iconography of the interior world and the world of the marvelous, of my father Freud. Today, the exterior world and that of physics have transcended the one of psychology. My father today is [[Werner Heisenberg|Dr. Heisenberg]]."<ref name="triangle">{{cite web |url=http://www.thetriangle.org/media/storage/paper689/news/2005/04/29/Entertainment/Dali-Explorations.Into.The.Domain.Of.Science-944328.shtml?norewrite200608080502 |title=Dalí: Explorations into the domain of science |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101208181828/http://media.www.thetriangle.org/media/storage/paper689/news/2005/04/29/Entertainment/Dali-Explorations.Into.The.Domain.Of.Science-944328.shtml |archive-date=8 December 2010 |work=The Triangle Online |access-date=8 August 2006 |last=Datta |first=Suman |page=1 |publisher=College Publisher}}</ref><ref>Salvador Dalí, "Anti-Matter Manifesto," Carstairs Gallery, New York, December 1958 – January 1959, quoted in Elliott H. King, 'Nuclear mysticism', Salvador Dalí: Liquid Desire, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 2009, p. 247.</ref>

''[[The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory]]'' (1954) harks back to ''The Persistence of Memory'' (1931) and in portraying that painting in fragmentation and disintegration has been interpreted as a reference to Heisenberg's [[quantum mechanics]].<ref name="triangle" />