Blog #1

As a painter, I have been doing art for years now. Watercolor, oil, acrylic: all mediums I’ve incorporated to bring beauty to life on a canvas. A piece of art that has truly captured the essence of beauty in my eyes is Salvador Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory”. This surrealist painting manifests the three characteristics of beauty that is described by Hans-Georg Gadamer. Beauty is defined as that which is manifested in nature and art alike, which reveals a truth to us and this can be holistic in nature. Beauty is able to draw us in and the painting of the melting clocks does just that. It draws me in with its beauty. The playfulness of the image is described by Gadamer, evident of the playful movement of the clocks in the painting. The melting clocks are abundant on the landscape. The juxtaposition between the land and the unconscious mind comes through with the placement of the objects on natural ground. Movement and reason together create the notion of play. The clocks are placed aesthetically and with purpose upon the foreground and background of the landscape. The artistic work is an intended play with the concept of time and how it slips by as the background remains stable and stagnant. Gadamer uses the characteristic symbol as something that allowed us to recognize another symbol and it also has the element of veiling and unveiling. The unveiled factor of the painting as explained by Gadamer is that it allows the art to be encountered and perceived in its own quality and the veiled is explained as the very fact that it exists represents “resistance against superior presumption to make sense of it”, the work and piece of art help us realize this and recognize its beauty and allows us to dwell with it. The unveiled quality of the painting is the melting clocks and their meaning. They sit there on the landscape ready to be analyzed and pondered, the surrealist painting allows this to happen because of the juxtaposition of two different realities. The contrast between the landscape and innovation such as the clocks is a symbol as to what isn’t there that meets the eye, meaning a holistic encounter and giving meaning to the painting as a whole with its objects as fragments. The veiled quality of the painting is that the fact it exists, perplexes us and how it compels us. The painting with the surrealist quality, during its time, stands by itself with no explanation. Its very existence is for people to ponder and sit with the art and consider its movement and play and the meaning it has whether it was what the artist intended or how a person perceives it with their experiences they bring to the table. For Gadamer, art has a “eucharistic” element to it where it can show an increase in being becoming attuned to ourselves and the world when we encounter it and interpreting the art in the past, present, and future. Gadamer explains festivities as bringing us together to stand before art and dwell with it. Festival time is shown through this painting as it’s famous and has a lot of meaning to people and highly regarded. It is in a museum and people walk by it every day, to be celebrated. The way Pieper described “festive” was that it was an exceptional time and it affirms goodness by offering a response of joy. Festivals allow us to move towards worship and through art, we are able to be closer to God and divine worship. Festivals must also be made perceptive to the senses and there is almost a universal assent for the world as a whole. He describes that if something else is adored beyond God, then it’s only entertainment. Festive in this sense, comes through in this painting when we think about the meaning of the painting and how time slips away, and the persistence of memories. Festivals live through memories and this painting touches on this idea through the landscape and background and the clocks in the front. Celebrating life and contemplating the passage of time through the means of this painting offers others to affirm the goodness in this world and all of the good memories they may hold. This painting draws this out of people and allows for more contemplative thought on a universal scale.