Dali`s Megalomania

Surfacing

I, Dali?

You resembled me, or perhaps I resemble you. I read about you and although I am not that knowledgeable about your biographic details, I feel deep identification with your work, with your opinions, with what you represented, with your moods, your capriciousness, your madness, your lack of self-restrain and with the slavery to your genius.

I might look at you and see in that infantile megalomania of yours something cute to the extent of wanting to slap a kiss across your forehead, just as I might see in it something so disgusting as to the extent of wanting to shove your head into a bucket of feces, just so that you gain some perspective.

The bitterness of jealousy

It could be that I criticize you only because the consensus has not yet allowed me to be like you and be admired for it or at least be readily forgiven despite it. I criticize you out of jealousy, although I am quite certain that being you was not such a great pleasure, certainly not to others around you.

Expressing

The statue of megalomania

The golden muscularity along with the ostentatious posture of the statue symbolically express the haughty self-importance and extravagant social demeanor which characterized Dali. Gold as the symbol of corporeal status and not of sanctity.
Self-importance is of course a sign of weakness and fragility, hence symbolized by this heavy and massive structure’s base. The statue would have fallen hadn’t it been supported by Dali’s famous crutches, which in this case symbolize the lie of the distorted and bloated self-image that supports such arrogance.

The crutches of vanity

However, lies are always fragile and transparent like glass. Dali’s famous crutches that were a recurring motif in his works to depict states of flaccidity that need to be artificially supported in order to remain in their natural state, are used here to support the evident weakness of Dali’s arrogance. Dali’s face is reflected through the statue’s face to imply that it is indeed the symbolic depiction of Dali’s and none other.

Closure

I, Dali.

I do resemble Dali, probably to such an extent of polishing his Megalomania with my admiration – after all it is also my own.

The secret of passion

Oh, one more thing: civil war in Spain or no civil war in Spain, to me the depicted intensity of turbulent emotions, of agony and pain is in fact an expression of the inside, which in this case wraps itself with belligerent and aggressive sexuality. So perhaps your true secret was…