Salvador Dalí, influencer

I love museums and exhibitions, specially contemporary art ones. And I also love practising sensing, allowing myself to be exposed to new and unexpected stimuli.?

That's what I just did last Sunday afternoon. I went to ‘Dalí Cybernetics’, at Ideal Barcelona, Digital Art Centre.

If you want to enjoy Dalí’s works in full detail, you may want to go directly to the Dalí Museum in Figueres.

But if you feel you would like to gain a better understanding of the author’s artistic DNA and his works, you should visit this audiovisual – bi-sensory (sight and sound) – exhibition. This is an excellent, digitally based exhibition culminating in a surprising Daliesque experience wearing a virtual reality headset.?

I have learned seven things about Salvador Dalí at this amazing exhibition.

1

He was born before his time. Today, cutting-edge technologies would have allowed him to take his surrealist art even further. However, being ahead of his time, he helped society advance.

2

‘I can see things others cannot see’, Dalí would say. Driven by his curiosity, he was very adept at forming an ‘active vision’ of the outside world, of things he saw in everyday life. An ‘active vision’ would be the visual equivalent to the expression ‘active listening’.

?3

He did not try to specialise, but to hybridise. Instead of trying to continually improve his painting and related-art skills, he let himself be ‘contaminated’ by disciplines whose nature is, in theory, far removed from art. He began by showing an interest in Freud’s psychoanalysis. Then, he was fascinated by photography, 3D vision, holograms, maths, quantum physics, cybernetics and even philosophy.

Such open-mindedness, letting himself be influenced by different disciplines, demonstrates his intelligence, a term derived from the Latin interligare, which means linking different worlds or fields.

4

He was an excellent marketer.

Success in marketing is much more likely when the product is great. And his product was great – he was a brilliant painter. The fact that he had excellent communication skills, both verbal and non-verbal, and that he was highly charismatic, would have also helped. All this enabled him not only to attract great media attention in widely different markets, but also to generate a successful business.?

5

He intuitively knew how a person’s brain works when it detects something different.

At the time, neuroscience was still in its beginnings, but his intuition was excellent.?

He claimed that,

‘if I take a retrospective look I can see that what remains are those images with the highest number of information bits, i.e., those that persist and will always persist in memory’.

His use of the metaphor ‘information bits’ is applied to an image generating a highly emotional impact, in the same way as the writer Chuck Palahniuk talks about ‘physicality’.

Brain science confirms that highly emotional experiences strongly activate the hippocampus and they end up staying in our deep memory.?

Creating something that generates a high impact, such as melting clocks, means that it ends up being unforgettable. Here is a part of our brain behaviour that feeds the great interest enjoyed by surrealism.

Our deep memory is that place in our prefrontal cortex that is like a wardrobe full of mental images each of us has and which helps us understand what is perceived by our eyes or the rest of our senses, in just a split second.

6

Dalí understood that what matters is not getting people excited, but changing their mindsets.

For something external to reach our hippocampus, it will have had to go round a ‘roundabout’ that channels it: the thalamus.

When human senses capture an external stimulus, such as a melting clock, the thalamus sends it to our deep memory and, there, it is contrasted with something pre-existing.?

- ‘Here are clocks that melt,’ the thalamus tells deep memory.

- ‘Clocks don’t melt!’ the prefrontal cortex resoundingly replies.

- ‘But, on this Dalí painting, there’s a melting clock hanging off the branch of a tree’, the thalamus responds.

The hippocampus is so surprised by this that it has to end up accepting that time can be something ‘diluted’. Without such emotionally strong and surprising stimuli, quantum physics would find it harder to help us understand that time is not as rigid as a Swiss watch may make us believe.

The thalamus is the part of our brain that manages the tos and fros in that process of contrasting what we have just perceived with our pre-existing mental images. Without its task of facilitating comparisons, people would be unlikely to change their mind about things.

7

Dalí was able to transform people.

What do all these disciplines Dalí was interested in have in common?

A desire to remove ideas that are mummified or anesthetised in our deep memories.?

A desire to make you feel that this work of art he presents to you is not what it seems, that there are other angles things can be seen from, other second readings, second feelings..., or, maybe, other second meanings.

Perhaps, that second meaning can make us change something ‘stable’ that has been part of our trunk of ideas and convictions our whole life.?If that happens, it means that such work of art has been able to transform you.?

Surrealism continues to be useful even after Dalí

Dalí’s methodology did not end with his death. We are going to show you an example.

Let me ask you a question. How may a great law firm make you feel that they are excellent without arrogantly telling you ‘we are brilliant professionals’?

The traditional way of doing so may be by showing you their classic, exclusive and state-of-the-art facilities.?

This route is as correct as it is predictable. It is an obvious way to communicate, but it does not generate any surprise and, therefore, the hypothalamus will not create an indelible memory associated to having seen such facilities.

Cuatrecasas law firm’s new headquarters in Barcelona is a huge and modern building. It is classy, but not flashy. However, in the waiting area itself, as well as comfortable chairs, rugs and other premium items of furniture, there is a Ferrari engine on display.

Visitors will see it, and they will probably touch it. Their senses will capture a lot of information.

The thalamus will send these stimuli to their prefrontal cortex:

- ‘Look, there’s a car engine in the waiting room!’

- ‘But lawyers are not vehicle repairers’, the deep memory will reply. ‘You must be mistaken. You’d better have a coffee’.

- In the meantime, the hypothalamus is hard at work. ‘Oh!’, it says, startled.

- The thalamus confirms, ‘I’ve been brought the coffee I asked for. And it’s actually a very good coffee, and the cup it’s served in is lovely. But, yes, these lawyers do have a Ferrari engine in their waiting area’.

- ‘A Ferrari engine no less!’, the hypothalamus exclaims.

The visitor has just had a new mental picture formed in their deep memory: ‘These such powerful lawyers will really help me solve my difficult challenge’.

A brand with a brain-pleasing purpose has just been born in this visitor’s mind.

And it has been born without any words, without any self-praise.

This strong and brain-pleasing brand has been created using the same method Dalí earned a living with – surrealism. Making the confusion –well thought out– this law firm generates a new meaning to the company’s brand, thus increasing its likeability.?

Surrealism has helped here to create a brain-pleasing brand.

? Authors:?Lluís Martínez-Ribes and?Marina Font. Reviewed by?psychologist Rosa Franch. m+f=!, Barcelona, November 2022

_________________________________________

Ideal Barcelona, https://idealbarcelona.com/en/agenda/cybernetic-dali/

Museu Dalí (Figueres), https://www.salvador-dali.org/