Nerdy Science Blog

I was looking at Salvador Dali’s artworks, and this picture stunned me.

The painting consisted of one head, one tree and one nuclear mushroom. The head might represents humanity, while the tree represents nature and mushroom cloud represents destruction. When nuclear exploded, the tree was the one closest to it then come to the head, which could mean that impact on nature is far greater than impact on human.

I found some background reading from here:

Between the years of 1946 and 1958 (AFTER world war two), the United States conducted 23 nuclear tests at the Micronesian atoll, Bikini. The tests caused the radioactive contamination of the entire system of islands. The (roughly) two hundred Micronesians who inhabited the islands were relocated by the US before the tests, and eventually brought back in 1968. The US lost a lawsuit to the Micronesians in the amount of $100 million when it was discovered, ten years later in 1978, that the levels of radioactivity were still dangerously high.

These experimental explosions on the atoll of Bikini inspired Dali to paint the Three Sphinxes. Dali himself was a surrealist painter. If you look at the point of view of “expressionism,” then paintings in general are supposed to emphasize the expression of inner experience rather than a solely “photographic” portrayal of reality. It is subjective emotions and responses that objects and events arouse in the artist. In surrealism, it goes one step further: it’s the unconscious that is emphasized, and paintings express the workings of the mind by using symbolic imagery and interesting juxtaposition of subject matter.

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The other day I was watching ABC channel, and I knew this guy named Salvador Dalí from one of the documentary.

I sat down to watch the documentary was because of his cartoonist look. Then I knew more about him, and what he contributed to both science and arts fields. When I saw his paintings, I immediately amused by them. This is my favourite, “Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bumblebee around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening”, although his most famous painting is “The Persistence of Memory” (I like that too). Looking at his paintings triggered my thinking a lot.

I don’t know a lot of things, and I still have a lot more to learn. Watching the documentary of Salvador Dali also reminded me a question which one of my lecturer asked me before, “Should a scientist needs to be artistic as well?”

Guess what I answered? I said no as long as I drew something I see with its characteristic showing out, making sense, and not much difference from what I see. Now Salvador Dali made me re-thought about it again.

(all images taken from wikipedia)

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