Giostre per la festa di San Giorgio 1964

Salvador Dalí made this watercolor, Giostre per la festa di San Giorgio, using paper, pigment, and water. It's easy to miss the skill involved in working this way. Watercolor is a medium that demands absolute control. Once the color is on the page, it's almost impossible to remove. Dalí, celebrated for his surrealist painting, was deeply attuned to the qualities of material. Here, he harnessed the fluidity and spontaneity of watercolor to capture the feverish energy of a festive jousting match. The watery pigment bleeds and merges, creating a dreamlike vision, but it also fixes the composition, the architecture, and the characters on the page. It is a one-shot medium. The relative ease of producing watercolors meant they were often associated with amateur artmaking. But that is a trap. Dalí was not an amateur and made it his own. Consider the relationship between labor, social status, and consumption in his work. These all challenge traditional distinctions between fine art and craft.