Salvador Dali is famous for his phantasmatic paintings. His imageries are bizarre, inscrutable, and queer, reminding us of those gory figures looming large from the shadows behind. So long as his brush touches, images appear unexceptionally unfathomable. As though a spell cast onto everything you have got familiar with, his paintings thrust you into a realm of austerity, string your soul to a tangle of horror.
His portraits, For instance, profiling mesmerized figures that appear like specters creeping up into the darkness.
This painting is a good demonstration. Dali deliberately gives everything black touches and renders this painting immensely grim. So much so, as we look at the woman whose face, in this case, seems to be given little patience, appears exceedingly inscrutable. However, her stiff posture suggests a sense of detachment. As if she were oblivion of her surroundings.
This image of landscape, though being exempted from gloomy black touches, is nevertheless covered by a queer greenish hue. Why is it green? Why is the green penetrating the whole picture? Nobody can answer, just like many curious dreams we have that never embrace a reasonable interpretation.
Perhaps, seeking interpretations is wrong in the first place. What Dali intends to imply, through his paintings, resembles those odd dreams, sustaining meanings of themselves. He seems to deliver a statement of sorts, and his surrealistic approach to reality codifies everything into esoteric symbols. Hence, it is plausible to ascertain Dali’s expository intention behind those portraits of fantasy. He seems to be at odds with the direct expression of emotions. Merely those metaphors recount his inner activities.
However, when we look at the painting Ecce Homo, we are struck by this abrupt shift in style. There is no clear contour of the face. Even his brushes seem to begrudge the portray touch of paints, and leaving only arbitrary splashes on a canvas. In contrast to his previous works delineated with careful details and delicate arrangements, this one seems to be no less perfunctory. As though he was not in a state of painting. Should we are not told this is his painting, we are liable to mistake this one for another. There is a big question mark as to why he brought about the sudden change.
Looking into the background might give us some insight into the theme of this picture. The title Ecce homo is a Latin word used by Pontius Pilate in the Vulgate translation of the Gospel of John, when he presents a scourged Jesus Christ bound and crown with a throne, to a hostile crowd shortly before his crucifixion.
It is a profile of Jesus that suffers from his injustice. Many paintings in art history give accounts of this scenario. Hieronymus Bosch (c 1450–1516), for instance, produced this painting with appalling details. Every expression delivers certain emotions. The outrage of the crowds, the keen Jewish people, the calmness of Jesus are all well-depicted. Nonetheless, such realistic details do not free this painting from the nature of symbolism. Deriving from a biblical story, this painting inextricably suggests exhortative intentions.
It is affirmed through the words "Salva nos Christe redemptor" (save us, Christ the Redeemer) which are inscribed in gold.
The Salva appears to be a cluster of similar compositions in northern Europe at about the same time. Closer views of Christ are generally the most common, and typical compositions of broader views like this tend to look straight at the group containing Christ and Pilate.
There is no way of knowing why Dali chooses this biblical theme since little does he embraces religious ideologies. It seems to suggest he convert to Christianity. However, if we juxtapose his painting Ecce homo with other ones, the intention of deviating himself from being religious is evident.
Not only does he refuses to present Jesus in a religious background, he also seems to be at odds with the symbolic representation of biblical stories. His style, as I said, was accustomed to symbolism, regardless of the hue of surrealistic fantasy. To show his disavowal of religious conformity. He forsakes this habitual way of representation, since it is, in a way, liable to mislead viewers into a religious interpretation. The way he makes everything a contraption of certain metaphors is smashed by his own hands.
This seems to be an accident, but it is not coincidental. The way he challenges the religious symbolism seems to give an impression that he has also forsaken his belief in surrealistic symbolism altogether. Nonetheless, we shall not be misled by the facade of this painting. Rather, his seemingly controversial behavior is his unique way of defending his faith in symbolic surrealism. This painting is, nevertheless, his salutation to spirit. For him, Jesus is his reach of the spirit. If we see his previous works as symbolic reconstructions of reality into dream-like scenarios. This one, with his giving up on a religious narrative, shows his pursuit of emotions in the realm of spirit.
The way he represents Jesus reminds us of Pollock who gained the prestige of drop partings that express freely emotions. Like Dali, Pollock states his emotions in free splashes of colors that never come to be defined.
As he said “I paint as direct...the matter of the painting has its growth out of need. I prefer to express my emotions rather than illustrate them.”
Dali’s unusual painting Ecco homo parallels Pollock’s approach to emotions. As Pollock maintains that the emotions are to be expressed rather than being illustrated, Dali responds to this statement by symbolizing the spirit through a direct expression of emotions.
Dali is deeply influenced by Freud who was ambitious to decipher the mysterious subconscious. As a result, Dali’s painting always brings us into those many dreams which, according to Freud, reflect one’s unfulfilled desires. Those desires are in the disguise of imageries that contain symbolic meanings.
For Dali, as a representation of dreams, his paintings symbolize reality with surrealistic imageries. Seemingly, He has converted from surrealism to abstract expressionism. But, keep in mind, it is the spirit that Pollock is at pains to represent. And to capture the spirit, one must stand in a metaphorical standpoint that has already been surreal. According to Hegel, the spirit is essentially collective and is instituted as a result of its development towards freedom.
To achieve this freedom, one has to adopt a creative process that is free from the bondage of form and allows the paint to be “lively” upon the canvas. In this way, the liberal traces of paint project the artist’s spirit on the canvas, revealing what comes to be the surrealism of the spirit.
Therefore, rather than feeling ostracized with bizarre imageries as we do in seeing most of Dali’s paintings. Dali represents the spirit in a way that draws you close to his heart---you seem to be able to hear his heart bits with his brush fling over the canvas. You can feel the sense of intimacy delivered by this genuine expression of his own emotions.
