Directions Unit - Research into a self portrait - Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali was a famous artist known for his outstanding self-publicist acts and for his incredible showmanship. Dali is especially well known for a wide range of art forms, ranging from paintings, sculpture work, graphic designs and photography.

To the left is one of the self-portrait paintings Dali did called Soft Self-Portrait with Grilled Bacon. Dali argued that the most consistent thing about representation is in fact the skin rather than the spirit or vitality. The side of bacon is a representation of organic matter of the every day life.

The image consists of a number of crutches helping keep the character up and the colour tone is consistently dark and brown which can convey the every day struggles this character has to go through. I like to perceive the message as a character struggling though coping with every day life and despite these struggles he keeps on fighting. I see the bacon as a representation of the little rewards you will get after going through these struggles.

I find this very relatable to my piece as my portrait film goes into the details of how someone will claim these little rewards having had one of the most mistake filled days of their lives and almost looks as though nothing could possibly go right. These rewards can be conveyed in a number of ways, some more subtle than others, this can take the form of a piece of fried bacon (as presented in the portrait above) or a letter (as presented in my portrait film).