The Enigma of William Tell by Salvador Dali


The understudy for The Enigma of William Tell by Salvador Dali

Sexuality and death; words that are usually unassociated come together with close relation in Salvador Dali’s piece The Enigma of William Tell. This painting was created using pathos to affect people in sense of their emotions. This piece also makes one attracted to the strange and unusual pairing of two emotions that are rarely brought together in the same setting. Salvador Dali has portrayed an image with exaggerated sexuality, while simultaneously enforcing an over all sense of malice. In creating this work of art, Dali has attempted to enforce his controversial belief that sexuality and death are in close relation to one another.

Dali begins enforcing his perceived relation of sexuality to death by incorporating an enlarged buttock an exaggeration of a part of the body that “Most consider to be sexually attractive” as part of a dark image in which a man is eating a child’s head with a deranged look upon his face set against a dark back ground. Further more, Dali adds a piece of raw flesh draped over the buttock to more closely relate the two, and draws attention to the area by applying a red tint on a lighter portion of the painting, also he ads birds waiting for the flesh to fall to frame the scene. The overall tone of the painting attempting to represent a saddened emotion is created using relatively deep hues along with monotonous repetition of similar colors.

Dali was a painter known for ironic pairings such as the comparison of death and sexuality; it was simply the way he perceived things in his life. “His whole life long, and throughout his work, Dali was as obsessed with sexuality as he was with the quest for the absolute. When he saw the shaven armpit of a woman for the first time, he declared, he was looking for heaven, just as he was looking for heaven when he poked a rotting hedgehog with a crutch. Sexuality and death are close companions in Dali.”

Irrational is a word that comes to mind along with insanity for pairing two such unrelated things. The thought process of Dali seems that of a mad man, which many would assume he is. However Dali was rather a man of emotional genius as he relayed his life story through his works, and if in the series of events in his life paired death and sexuality, that is what he set out to portray through his artistic and creative geniuses.

The inspiration for this painting came during a time in Dali’s life when his sexuality or relationship with his divorcee wife instituted the death of his relationship with his father. “For a long time, Dali [a usually openly public figure] was secretive about the origins of the breach with his family, for the reasons why he was expelled from their midst; and doubtless the motive for his secrecy was consideration for his father. His 1933 picture The Enigma of William Tell (p.201) suggests an explanation: “William Tell is my father and the little child in his arms is myself; instead of an apple I have a raw cutlet on my head. He is planning to eat me. A tiny nut by his foot contains a tiny child, the image of my wife Gala. She is under constant threat from this foot. Because if the foot moves only very slightly, it can crush the nut.” The painting shows Dali settling accounts with his father, who had disowned him because he was living with a divorcee (i.e. Elaurd’s ex-wife, as Gala was by then.)”

Sexuality and death may appear an irrational pairing, they did to me before I studied Dali’s paintings, however when given thought, these two concepts go perfectly hand in hand, a match made in heaven, or rather in hell. Consider this; how many hearts are broken and relationships ended because of one party being unsatisfied sexually, or by one party seeking sexual satisfaction elsewhere in the form of adultery or cheating? How does cheating relate to death? One must think in an abstract manner for this to make sense, for Dali was an abstract painter. Death must not be literal in its meaning, it must be abstract, the death of a relationship. Sexuality can become a demise for it is a drive within humans that we as a race are often times not consciously aware of. We do not consider the consequences of our actions, we consider only obtaining the satisfaction we set out for.

Death can be literal as well, but one must think outside the box, or perhaps before the box, the death of an unborn child. The drive of sexuality often leads to the consequence that is an unwanted child, and a reaction to that is occasionally an abortion, a death an ending of a life before its existence, before it’s birth.
The painting is a single frame. The concepts of sexuality and death stand together as one. Dali used a single frame so that the viewer sees these concepts simultaneously, as one. The images in the work are given high priority over the text for it is far more of a simple task to paint the images from the abstract corners of the mind than to explain them in words. The only text incorporated in the image is the title, meant to simply inform the viewer of the setting, of the event, of the occurrence within the painting.

Looking through the eyes of a person in today’s culture, one may not understand the meaning of this work of art, look through the eyes of an artist or a person during the time of the surrealist movement and a meaning is established, a connection, the connection of sexuality and death in the abstract. A connection that has been present through out the ages, a timeless concept, an idea about life, death, and rebirth, a thought pertaining to all of existence. It is a universal philosophy, a revelation: the association between death and sexuality.