"Voluptuous Death" by Salvador Dali - behind the scenes

Voluptuous Death is a surreal portrait by Spanish artist Salvador Dali, created in collaboration with photographer Philippe Halsman (1951). The picture shows Dali posing next to a huge skull ("living picture"), consisting of seven naked women. It took Halsman three hours to arrange the models according to Dali's sketch. And we'll see how the workflow of this shooting went.

(Total 9 photos)

Source: cultureinquieta.com

1. What at first glance may seem like a simple example of memento mori (“remember death”), in fact, is a more complex interaction of the concepts of sex and death.

2. The image is based on the symbolic tradition of vanitas (from the Latin "emptiness" or "insignificant") - an artistic style that recalls the transience of life, the futility of pleasures and the inevitability of death.

3. The most unusual thing here is the addition of voluptuousness (expressed in the form of naked female figures). Volupia is the daughter of Eros and Psyche in Greek mythology, the goddess of "sensual pleasure", and the original title of the work is In Voluptas Mors.

4. As a result, naked female natures make up a skull - a symbol of death.

5. The picture is a fusion of eros (erotic or sexual love) and thanatos (death) into a single whole (hence voluptas mors, literally - “death in voluptuousness”).

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