Ulysse et Télémaque 1969

Salvador Dalí made this watercolor painting, Ulysse et Télémaque, in 1969. The painting is made with thin washes of color, which bleed and flow into each other, creating a dreamlike space. Look at the wall, it’s mostly red, but the color isn’t uniform, and the pigment pools at the bottom of the bricks. This gives the wall a real sense of weight and texture. The figures on top of the wall are dark and silhouetted, and they feel distant, like memories or figures from a myth. The figure in the foreground is much more present, and there is something ghostly about the way they seem to dissolve into the ground. I feel like I could almost reach out and touch them. Dalí’s work is often associated with surrealism and dreams, and you can see some similar qualities in the work of Yves Tanguy, though he has a much colder palette. For both artists, ambiguity is embraced, and multiple interpretations are encouraged.