This is something I would do when I am confused, if there is too much going on in my head that it seems it is all one big mess, I take the time to separate the ideas and I slowly begin to understand my situation better. It was a huge mass of ideas thrown together, but if I took the time to think, I could separate all the different things I was thinking, and individually they all made sense. The parts might not have been related, but never the less they were separate. But when I looked closer, I could pick out individual parts of the painting. I saw the painting as a part of my mind, seemingly one huge mass of thoughts and ideas thrown together making completely no sense.
Perhaps this was wrong of me to totally disregard the painter s initial reason for creating the picture, but what concerned me most was the idea of the painting that was taking shape in my mind. I no longer cared what the painting had meant to Dali when he was painting it, but rather I was interested in what the painting meant to me.
I did not understand at first Dali s reasoning for this strange painting, but as soon as I let go of my confusions, the painting started to make sense to me. Why on earth would Dali put a dog in his painting, and moreover, why would we make it such a concealed part of the painting. At the very top of the painting was a mountain landscape, and below it, mixed into the scenery, standing behind the cup on the table, was a dog! A dog? I said. The scenery that I had previously disregarded as unimportant revealed itself to be much more. The neck of the cup seemed to be part of a face, the mouth and nose of the face lying in the table. When I looked closer however, I began to see much more to the picture. I do not consider myself someone who appreciates art in any particular form, so at first all I saw was a bland table with a cup on it. When I first saw this painting, I saw a cup on a table, with a lot of scenery in the background. The painting has many levels to it, a succession of realizations occur if the painting is studied long enough.
The joy of the painting for me comes from the intricacies that Dali weaves into the painting. What one may perceive to be beautiful, an opinion perhaps brought on by personal experiences, another may not see the same way.Ī work of art I truly enjoy and respect is Salvador Dali s Table with Landscape. As to what a work of art is, that is something I believe to be totally up to the observer. Reproduction allows people to see something they might never have, they allow the artist to gain more exposure, whereas if there had been no reproduction, only a handful of people might have seen it. I do not see reproductions of art to be perversions of the original, and I also do not agree with his outline for a work of art. His perception of reproductions is that they pervert the original piece, and that by reproduction the beauty and value of the piece is taken away, that the piece is not the same because it does not represent anymore what the artist originally intended. He also talks about reproductions of art.
In this article of his, he imposes his opinion of works of art, what constitutes a work of art. John Berger wrote an article entitled Ways of Seeing.