The Flight, The Temptation, The Love, The Broken Wings 1945

Salvador Dalí made this painting with oils, and what strikes me is how thin the paint is, like watercolour almost. It’s as if he wanted to capture not the thing itself, but the memory of a thing. Look at the ballerina on the right-hand side. She’s captured in motion, but her figure is soft and yielding, like a mirage. The strange boat on the left is rendered with such precision, yet its forms are so outlandish, that it exists in a dreamlike state. Do you see how the paint is applied in thin washes, almost like veils, one over the other? Dalí builds up the image gradually, allowing the under layers to peek through. I think this allows us to see the painting as an ongoing process rather than a fixed image. I’m reminded of Giorgio de Chirico and his dreamlike cityscapes, where perspective is skewed, and time seems suspended. Like De Chirico, Dalí embraces ambiguity, inviting us to lose ourselves in the labyrinth of our own minds.