Le nouveau doute de Dante 1952

Salvador Dalí made this watercolour, *Le nouveau doute de Dante*, in 1952, and the title translates as *The New Doubt of Dante*. The dreamy light blue washes around the contour of a face with very pronounced features – the nose, the lips, the chin. The red form, to the right of the head, is more ambiguous, and it's as though Dalí is testing the limits of representation by painting the edge between figuration and abstraction. I wonder if he was channeling his inner-Picasso here? There's an uncanny feeling evoked by the profile, but also the sense of form being broken apart and reconstructed, much like the Cubist portraits of the early 20th century. Dalí gives us a face of doubt, but the painting itself isn't hesitant. He's really going for it. Doubt is a theme that runs through the history of painting, a theme that echoes with the tradition, as well as breaking with it. We all stand on the shoulders of giants, right?