Salvador Dali 2016

Curator: What strikes me first is how unsettling this image feels—a blend of hyper-realism with something profoundly off-kilter. Editor: This 2016 oil painting by Andrey Allakhverdov, simply titled “Salvador Dali,” certainly has that effect. Allakhverdov seems to be playing with Dali's iconic imagery, weaving a portrait within a portrait into his composition. It’s quite layered. Curator: Exactly. It's like a fever dream painted onto canvas. The woman in the painting looks almost…indifferent, while Dali himself appears as a slightly faded dandy. The melting clock is, of course, an unsubtle nod, yet feels freshly melancholic here. I see both classical portraiture and something edging towards modern allegory in play. Editor: The melting clock is *the* archetypal image, isn't it? Here it might symbolize not just the fluidity of time as Dali intended, but perhaps the decaying, slippery nature of fame itself, or of memories, reflected in the reproduction. Note, also, how he stages Dali near the red zone that’s seemingly "behind the scene". It is like we can access to something very personal. The artist's choices pull the great man down from a stage. Curator: Good observation. It almost humanizes Dali, stripping away some of the flamboyant mystique he cultivated so carefully. This portrait almost whispers a private, contemplative mood against Dali's well-rehearsed persona. He feels so much closer to a modern character here. Allakhverdov brings a very original insight into the surface of the public face of Dali. Editor: What does endure, I suppose, is that powerful iconography he generated in a century which witnessed such rapid and enormous social change. He left signs, instantly recognizable cultural signals of a particularly flamboyant European sensibility that still speaks, or whispers to us, today. The persistence of image… I'll chew on that a while longer! Curator: Me too. This image's uncanny stillness leaves so much space to feel the flow of time, to hear the clock ticking in the silence of artistic memory and imagination.