Les mille et une grâce des mille et un jours de l’Alhambra 1973

Salvador Dalí made Les mille et une grâce des mille et un jours de l’Alhambra with a confident, even impatient hand, as though he was in a hurry to get it all down. The colours are simple - a wash of pinks, blues, yellows and blacks. The material feels so immediate. It’s all about surface, transparency, and how the artist has let the process show. See how the paint is thin, almost watery in places, and how the strokes bleed into one another? Look at the legs, and how the blue paint seems to trickle down. There’s a physicality to the piece, like the figure is emerging from the shadows. I find the head and hair especially interesting - the way it almost dissolves, radiating upwards and outwards, like the energy and emotion of the figure has literally taken form. Thinking about other artists who worked with similar ideas, I wonder if Dalí looked at the work of someone like William Blake, who was also interested in revealing the inner life of his subjects. Art, after all, is one big conversation.