The Metamorphosis of Narcissus
Salvador
Dali
What a piece of
work is this painting. How noble in reason. How infinite in faculty. In
form, how express and admirable. In subtlety how like an angel. In
apprehension how like a god. The beauty of the world. The paragon of
painting. What to me is this quintessence of art?
In my view, this is the greatest work by the greatest of the surreal
artists. To me, an artist has to have a genuine talent to paint and be
able to express an idea in a genuinely creative, imaginative and
striking way. Dali had all of this talent and here created an
outstanding work of art. This painting hangs in the Tate Gallery,
London. It's difficult to stand in front of this painting for anything
less than half an hour. To walk off any earlier is to fail to explore
its depths and to insult the creativity within.
COMPLETED:
1937
SUBJECT-MATTER:
The Greek mythological character named Narcissus who fell in love
with his own image reflected in a pool of water. The name subsequently
became associated with any living thing that is, or appears to be, vain
including the flower of that name.
Dali used both of these themes on another occasion in a window
display in New York. He arranged several ugly showroom dummies vainly
holding mirrors while standing in a bath overflowing with water.
Narcissus flowers covered the surrounding furniture.
COMPOSITION:
At the exact centre of the painting is a lascivious group of figures
highlighted from the rest of the painting’s subject-matter. Described
by Dali as a “heterosexual group” in attitudes of “preliminary
expectation” they pose in reflective water, narcissistically. This
grouping clearly has links to groups portrayed in Renaissance
paintings, evidently influenced by Dali’s trips to Florence and Rome
immediately prior to starting this painting.
To the left of this group is Narcissus kneeling in, as well as
looking down into, the pool of water that, ironically, is too dark to
reflect his own image. His face, the cause of his vanity,
self-absorption and self-reflection, is unseen; instead the viewer sees
only the top of his head and its distinctive hairline. The resting of
Narcissus’s head on his knee obscures his view
of his own image, and the fact that his face cannot be directly seen by
the viewer, may suggest that Narcissus (and vanity?) is dead but is
manifested in a different form by the flower of the same name.
To the right of Narcissus is the form of a hand holding an egg that
Narcissus has metamorphosed into that adopts exactly the same form and
posture. Narcissus's form is reflected vertically in the water and
horizontally by the hand. All limbs in Narcissus’s body becoming
fingers in the hand, and Narcissus’s head transformed into a
flower-bearing egg; the crack in the egg matching Narcissus’s hairline
and very subtly echoed in the trees in the rocks in the upper left-hand
and upper-right corners. The image of this egg is repeated in several
other Dali paintings (Enigma of Desire, Geolyptical Child Watching
the Birth of the New Man, Stage Set for Labyrinth). Dali claimed
the flower-bearing egg was inspired by the Catalan saying “he has a
bulb in his head” which
refers to someone who has a mental illness or complex. Conspicuously,
the
life-bearing hand is deliberately placed outside of the life-giving
water
pool: the hand obviously not interested in its own vanity, but maybe
also
an ironic play on the traditional representation of water being
associated
with new life. Curiously, the narcissus flower itself is not a radiant
example
of the flower, but instead a shabby shadow of one upstaged by the erect
stem
breaking through the egg.
It is debatable whether Narcissus has metamorphosed into the hand or
vice versa. My contention is that it is the former as:
the painting’s title implies that Narcissus himself is
metamorphosed, not the hand or flower
the hand is positioned in front of Narcissus implying its
primary visual significance
Narcissus is presented as an inanimate, lifeless object much
like a dead chrysalis
the hand has developed beyond Narcissus’s dead form into a hand
that now holds new life in the form of a narcissus flower growing from
an egg
chronologically, the flower being named narcissus follows the
myth of Narcissus the person.
The intricate structure of Narcissus and the resembling egg-holding
hand are very powerful images and obviously the major successes of the
whole
painting. The idea of transforming Narcissus in this way and the
careful
thought behind their construction, presentation, and positioning is
very
clever and typical of Dali. Even the crack in the hand to match the
water-line
where Narcissus meets the pool is used as a means of giving the hand a
further
surreal quality as a cracked, stone pedestal, rather than an actual
hand.
But there’s more:
The background comprises rocks, similar to da Vinci’s use of
background rocks in his paintings (Mona Lisa, Virgin of the Rocks).
They also resemble the rocks of Dali’s home region of Cadaques that
feature in many of Dali’s other paintings.
To the right of the hand is a preening figure set on a pedestal
placed in the middle of a chessboard-like floor that echoes the
narcissistic vanity theme of the main subjects.
In the right foreground is a dog tearing at some meat, perhaps
representing the death of something that was once beautiful.
In the distance, over the snow-covered mountains is a snow-white
version of Narcissus who is melting, repeating the theme of the death
of Narcissus.
Ants climb the hand that again is a recurring theme in Dali’s
paintings representing decay, decomposition and death. They cluster at
the base of the hand and start to make their way towards the narcissus
flower, threatening its existence. The ant imagery is utilised
extensively in other Dali paintings (Portrait of Paul Eluard, Enigma
of Desire, Accommodations of Desire, The Fountain, The Dream, Evocation
of Lenin, Persistence of Memory).
In many respects, this painting could be seen to be a Dali
self-portrait:
He was a notoriously vain self-promoter, something that many of
his surrealist contemporaries found odious.
He frequently referred to his split personality (one half
the ordinary person, one half the genius) as represented by the two
different representations of what a narcissus is.
He questioned his own sanity (“The only difference between me
and a madman is that I am not mad”) represented by the “bulb in the
head” metaphor.
In Dali's poem that accompanies the painting (provided below)
Dali talks of the new Narcissus, the flower, being Gala, his wife, as
though he is the original Narcissus.
Dali was clearly inspired by a very late 16th Century painting called Narcissus attributed to
Caravaggio. Caravaggio's painting provides a perfect mirror image
of Narcissus reflected in the water with the shoreline demarcating the
subject and his reflection. Notably, the point of rotation in
Caravaggio's painting is the highlighted knee at the centre of his
painting. It is this knee, in form, shape and angle that Dali
transports into his own rendition of Narcissus and the adjacent hand.
I have a very tenuous theory that the painting
may have also been partly inspired by T.S. Eliot's poem The Waste Land but I don't claim any
greater significance for this other than it's possible that they might
have more than an accidental correlation of similar themes:
The Waste Land was first published in 1922 and a key
publication again made in 1936, the year before The Metamorphosis
of Narcissus was completed.
The painting's subjects are set in a rocky waste land, just as
the poem's are.
The poem's main theme is death and decay without re-birth - the
direct opposite of the painting.
T.S. Eliot accompanied his poem with explanatory notes
explaining parts of its meaning and signifying how important the work
was to him; Dali accompanied his painting with an explanatory poem
again explaining parts of its meaning and signifying how important the
work was to him.
There is a chapter in the poem named Burial of the Dead
that may relate to my suggestion that the painting presents the death
of
Narcissus/vanity.
There is another chapter in the poem named A Game of Chess
that may relate to the chessboard-like floor that the pedestal is
placed upon.
There is a further chapter in the poem named Death by Water
that may relate to the "death of Narcissus/vanity in the pool of water"
argument that I have presented above.
There is a further chapter in the poem named What the
Thunder Said that may relate to the storm-clouds gathering in the
top right
of the painting.
The poem was in part inspired by Ovid's Metamorphoses.
Either way, this is a great painting in form, subject-matter, theme,
meaning and execution.
"Narcissus, in his immobility,
absorbed by his reflection
with the digestive slowness of carnivorous plants,
becomes invisible.
There remains of him only
the hallucinatingly white oval of his head,
his head again more tender,
his head, chrysalis of hidden biological designs,
his head held up by the tips of the water's fingers,
at the tips of the fingers
of the insensate hand,
of the terrible hand,
of the mortal hand
of his own reflection.
When that head slits
when that head splits
when that head bursts,
it will be the flower,
the new Narcissus,
Gala - my narcissus"
