It happened that two of the most prominent artist names in the history of the fine art of the 20th century belong to Spain, and these names are Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali. Calling the names of these two artists side by side, people tend to oppose them, which is a natural desire because Picasso and Dali had such different personalities. The basis for this comparison and contrast was started by Salvador Dali, who liked to mention the name of Picasso in different contexts. This paper will discuss similarities and differences between Picasso and Dali, their life paths, art directions, and specific kinds of paintings they brought to the world.
Comparing and contrasting Picasso and Dali, it is possible to start with the life aspect. Both were born in Spain at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and absorbed the spirit of change, which they embodied in creative freedom (“Picasso and Dali,” n.d.). However, Picasso was born in Malaga, that is, in the south of the country, and Dali in the small Catalan town of Figueres, near the northernmost border of the Spanish state. Both Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali studied at the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid, and both did not graduate. Picasso left on his own because he was bored with academic teaching, and Dali was expelled from the academy in disgrace (“Real Academia de Bellas Artes,” n.d.). Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali are firmly linked by Barcelona (“Picasso and Dali,” n.d.). The first solo exhibition of Pablo Picasso took place in Barcelona in February 1900 (Robinson et al., 2006). The first two solo exhibitions of Salvador Dali were held in 1925 and 1927 in Barcelona in the Galeries Dalmau (Robinson et al., 2006).
Talking about the specific direction of art that artists were related to, Picasso and Dali had similarities. Both of them paid tribute to the course of surrealism. Nevertheless, for Picasso, surrealism was in his life for a brief and not the most successful period in his creative career (Jones, 2019). Dali, instead, made a name for himself and the worldwide glory of surrealism (Jones, 2019). Artists were at the origin of modernist trends in art and traveling across Europe; they gained more and more supporters and followers.
On the contrast part of artists’ paintings, one can say that Picasso and Dali went to separate ways for some periods. Experimenting with color, form, and perspective, Picasso became the progenitor of cubism (Jones, 2019). Picasso declared the meaninglessness of the transferring of the visible world in the picture. Hence, his attempts to look at the subject from different perspectives, depicting all its facets in the picture simultaneously, resulted in cubism (Stainer, 2020). Cubism made it challenging to guess what is drawn on the image due to the appearance of a lot of faces and angles of view. Salvador Dali went even further from the traditional reality, bringing to the front line of his inner world (Stainer, 2020). Because of this, his paintings were full of dream images and reflections. Dali encoded biblical and mythological motifs in his paintings, mainly rethinking the traditional point of view on eternal subjects, which can also be seen in Picasso’s art pieces (Arn, 2019).
Considering specific features that both artists used in their paintings, there can be named several essential points. Looking at the figures of a man in paintings of Salvador Dali, one can say that humans are something impersonal, flowing, formless for the artist (Stainer, 2020). In contrast, in art pieces of Picasso, humans are decomposed but brought back together with stable, strict outlines (Stainer, 2020). Furthermore, Dali’s paintings are more like photographs of his inner world. Dali is a photographer and seller of his dreams, whereas Picasso’s paintings are more like paintings than have two bottoms or hidden ideas. It can be summarized that Dali loved fluidity, and Picasso was looking for stability (Carmona, 2011).
To conclude, one can say that, despite many similarities, Dali and Picasso became independent artists. They are still well-known across the world for their unique manner of expressing ideas and views. At a time when Picasso was already a recognized master, Dali was taking the first steps on the path to fame and fortune. The question of who is a more brilliant artist is very controversial and is no less subjective than art preferences.
Answers to questions
I used the point-by-point method to organize body paragraphs and structure the paper. Even though I believe that the block method is a more straightforward method for building the essay, I decided to organize my writing differently. The point-by-point approach allowed me to create a clear comparison and contrasting narrative that would be noticed by the reader as similarities and differences for both artists do not to be remembered for a long time.
The narrative essay had a different structure in comparison to the above-written paper. The narrative essay had body paragraphs that included setting, the onset of events, climax, and ending, whereas a comparison/contrast essay emphasized opposition and comparison points. The narrative essay consisted of subjective, personal thoughts, while a comparison/contrast essay was objective. The purpose of the narrative essay was to tell a story, a comparison/contrast essay aimed to explore similarities and contradictions that specific artists had.
I struggled mostly with the comparison and contrasting part that discusses specific features that both artists had. Reflecting on what I could improve, I can say that I could add more characteristics for distinguishing unique works of painters. I could also experiment with the structure of the essay to highlight paragraphs, mixing with the block and point-by-point methods.
References
Arn, J. (2019). Salvador Dalí’s side project illustrating books — including the bible. Artsy. Web.
Carmona, E. (2011). Picasso, Miró, Dalí. Angry young men. The birth of modernity. Skira Editore S.p.A.
Jones, B. (2019). Dictionary of world biography: Sixth edition. ANU Press.
Picasso and Dali. (n.d.). 2020, Web.
Real Academia de Bellas Artes, Madrid. (n.d.). 2020, Web.
Robinson, W., Falgàs, J., Lord, C., Alix, J., Cleveland Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art. (2006). Barcelona and modernity: Picasso, Gaudí, Miró, Dalí. Yale University Press.
Stainer, H. (2020). Picasso and paper. Web.