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The Great Masturbator by Salvador Dalí: A Portrait of Gala as Surrealist Praying Mantis
Wade, Katharine Dueffort Martin
Wade, Katharine Dueffort Martin
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Abstract
Characterized as a “devouring” and castrating femme-fatale, the paradigm of the “praying mantis” rose to popularity among Surrealist artists during the 1930’s as a symbol of repressed male sexuality. Salvador Dalí, famed for his “paranoiac-critical” method, found the praying mantis to be an alluring motif of psychoanalytic expression, canonizing its myth further in 1934 through an extensive analytic essay titled “The Tragic Myth of Millet’s L’Angelus”. His essay, which focused on a psychoanalytic interpretation of Jean-François Millet’s 1857 painting L’Angelus, then prompted the painting of a series of L’Angelus inspired works, associating the role of the original’s female figure with the identity of the praying mantis. Prior to this, in 1929, Dalí painted The Great Masturbator, just after beginning his intimate involvement with Gala Éluard, who’s profile appears in a curiously erotic composition within the painting. Interestingly, The Great Masturbator, was later claimed to convey praying mantis imagery in multiple works of scholarship of the late 20th century, despite an undeniable lack of primary evidence of Dalí’s intended symbolism. Therefore, this thesis intends to explore the possible “keys” of interpretation of the portrait of Gala in The Great Masturbator, attempting to “decode” the presence of specific visual elements though their biographical origins and to build upon their corresponding psychoanalytical conclusions. By compiling and analyzing the Surrealist viewer’s collective knowledge of and expectations about the Surrealist praying mantis paradigm through a variety of succinct visual analyses and comparisons of praying mantis works by other Surrealist artists, this will survey the iconographical patterns, or lack thereof, which help to define the visual representational limits of the praying mantis trope, from which one can further analyze its symbolic association with the portrait of Gala within The Great Masturbator.
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Thesis (B.A. in Art History, First Minor in Creative Writing, Second Minor in Classical Studies)--John Cabot University, Fall 2019.
Date
2019
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Salvador Dalí, 1904-1989
Citation
Wade, Katharine Dueffort Martin. "The Great Masturbator by Salvador Dalí: A Portrait of Gala as Surrealist Praying Mantis". BA Thesis, John Cabot University, Rome, Italy. 2019.