dali
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Metamorphosis of Narcissus - Salvador Dali
The painting Metamorphosis of Narcissus was created in 1937 by oil on canvas by Salvador Dali. This painting uses a lot of images to say what it means, for example, a person, a hand, water, a starving dog, a chess board, a canyon or cliff, and people. This is not to fill the paper or distract the viewer from the suggested meaning or point, but to support the idea that hope and despair are reflections of one another; on opposite sides of a coin, spinning in mid-air, waiting to land and fix or destroy everything.
The first thing that one thinks upon first seeing it, from far away, is that Dali just painted the same thing twice.
From afar, it appears as if he simply cut the canvas down the middle and made one side brown and the other blue, but on closer inspection, one sees that the two sides, although very similar, are nothing alike.
On one side, there sits a limp body staring at the reflection of herself in the water that she sinks in. The setting sun glistens off the back of her head, but she just wallows in grim depression and boredom. The canyons trap her in the barren wasteland as she sits motionless, without movement, struggle, or life. This mysterious figure looks so vacant that it might as well be dead. Nothing is happening on this side, so one's attention is directed to the other...