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We are all hungry and thirsty for concrete images. Abstract art will have been good for one thing: to restore its exact virginity to figurative art.
Salvador Dali
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Dali emphasizes the human desire for tangible imagery in art, suggesting that abstract art serves to highlight the value of figurative representation.

In this quote, Salvador Dali reflects on the human longing for vivid and concrete imagery in art. He argues that while abstract art has its merits, its greatest achievement may be to rejuvenate and remind us of the importance of figurative art, which speaks more directly to our senses and emotions.

Themes

ArtAbstractFigurativeImagesDali

In practice

Example use cases

In a discussion about modern art, this quote can highlight the need for clarity in artistic expression.

More from Salvador Dali

There are some days when I think I'm going to die from an overdose of satisfaction.
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Since I don't smoke, I decided to grow a mustache - it is better for the health. However, I always carried a jewel-studded cigarette case in which, instead of tobacco, were carefully placed several mustaches, Adolphe Menjou style. I offered them politely to my friends: "Mustache? Mustache? Mustache?" Nobody dared to touch them. This was my test regarding the sacred aspect of mustaches.
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Let the labyrinth of wrinkles be furrowed in my brow with the red-hot iron of my own life, let my hair whiten and my step become vacillating, on condition that I can save the intelligence of my soul - let my unformed childhood soul, as it ages, assume the rational and esthetic forms of an architecture, let me learn just everything that others cannot teach me, what only life would be capable of marking deeply in my skin!
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The problem with the youth of today' is that one is no longer part of it.
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You have to systematically create confusion, it sets creativity free. Everything that is contradictory creates life
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All of my knowledge, of both science and religion, I incorporate into the classical tradition of my painting.
Salvador DaliRead

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