The subconscious symbols in Dalí's paintings

The subconscious symbols in Dalí's paintings.

When it comes to Dalí's paintings, images such as ants, bread, soft watches, walking sticks and drawers will always come to people's minds.They appear frequently in Dalí's works, being so distinctive and eye-catching. Dalí interprets his dreams more by means of these subconscious symbols that symbolize his childhood memories. In Dalí's works, everything is not what it appears to be in its original form, and each has been endowed with special meanings by Dalí.

Ant

Since Dalí took over the injured bat from his cousin when he was a child, it was destined by providence that ants would enter Dalí's memory. For this little injured bat, Dalí poured out all his love. However, one day, a nightmare befell little Dalí. For some unknown reason, his beloved little bat was surrounded by a large swarm of crazy ants, was covered with wounds, was trembling with pain and was on the verge of death. He jumped up, picked up the bat crawling with ants, and bit the bat's head like crazy with a crunching sound. Then he threw it into the water. Since then, ants have been accompanying Dalí. In Dalí's works, the busy ants are usually symbols of nervousness, anxiety and aging, implying Dalí's subconscious fears, powerlessness, uneasiness and sexual anxiety.It may also imply that time erodes and destroys things
　

Bread

Just as Dalí said in "The Diary of a Genius": "Throughout my life, bread has followed me endlessly...". For Dalí, bread was another indispensable theme. In Dalí's eyes, bread, which is hard on the outside and soft on the inside, was a symbol of sexual desire. Bread was an object that Dalí liked to depict. With its help, Dalí could fully express his fantasies about sexual passion.

Soft watches
The soft watch is the theme that Dalí is best known for. In Dalí's famous oil painting "The Persistence of Memory", sculptures such as "The Nobility of Time", "The Saddle of Time" and "The Profile of Time", clocks that seem to be almost melted by the scorching sun appear. The soft watch expresses Dalí's fanatical relationship with time, as well as his understanding of the restrictiveness of time and the inherent importance of time to memory. Dalí often depicted clocks, the messengers of time, as soft.  In the painting, they become soft, distorted, and limp, as if freed from the constraints of time. This implies the unpredictability and illusoriness of time in the subconscious, expressing Dalí's unique perception of the passage of time and his skepticism towards the concept of time in the real world.This symbolic technique was limited to the things he hated. In the book "The Secret Life of Dalí", he pointed out: "Machinery has always been my personal enemy; as for clocks, they are doomed to perish or simply not exist." Walking stick

Crutch

The walking stick is also an iconic object that frequently appears in Dalí's works. When Dalí, as a child, first discovered the walking stick in the attic, which had a bifurcated top, was wrapped in worn-out dark tweed and was used to support walking under the arm, his feelings were so intense. The walking stick "obscured all my illusions and deeply shook my soul... Its dead poetic flavor penetrated into my heart." "I immediately picked up the walking stick and knew that I would never part with it again. At that instant, I became a fanatical fetishist. How great this walking stick was! How much dignity and tranquility it contained!" The walking stick conveyed to Dalí the messages of self-confidence and arrogance that he had lacked before. Since then, in Dalí's eyes, the walking stick has become a "symbol of death" and a "symbol of resurrection" and has frequently appeared in his works.

 Drawer
Regarding drawers, Dalí once gave the following explanation. He believed that the human body with drawers was related to Freud's psychoanalytic theory. That is, children's innate strong curiosity about enclosed spaces drives them to open drawers. Firstly, it is to satisfy the desire to explore the unknown, and secondly, to dispel the fear that the unknown might cause harm. Freud explained that drawers represent women's latent sexual desires. In Dalí's works, drawers basically appear on the female body, which perhaps confirms Freud's explanation and also reflects Dalí's fantasies about sexual passion.