Oil on canvas
28″ x 36″
Dalí Theatre and Museum, Figueres
Salvidor Dali
From Wikipedia:
The Swallow’s Tail — Series on Catastrophes (French: La queue d’aronde — Série des catastrophes) was Salvador Dalí’s last painting. It was completed in May 1983, as the final part of a series based on René Thom’s catastrophe theory.
Thom suggested that in four-dimensional phenomena, there are seven possible equilibrium surfaces, and therefore seven possible discontinuities, or “elementary catastrophes”: fold, cusp, swallowtail, butterfly, hyperbolic umbilic, elliptic umbilic, and parabolic umbilic.[1] “The shape of Dalí’s Swallow’s Tail is taken directly from Thom’s four-dimensional graph of the same title, combined with a second catastrophe graph, the s-curve that Thom dubbed, “the cusp”. Thom’s model is presented alongside the elegant curves of a cello and the instrument’s f-holes, which, especially as they lack the small pointed side-cuts of a traditional f-hole, equally connote the mathematical symbol for an integral in calculus: \int_{}^{} .”
In his 1979 speech, “Gala, Velázquez and the Golden Fleece”, presented upon his 1979 induction into the prestigious Académie des Beaux-Arts of the Institut de France, Dalí described Thom’s theory of catastrophes as ‘the most beautiful aesthetic theory in the world’. He also recollected his first and only meeting with René Thom, at which Thom purportedly told Dalí that he was studying tectonic plates; this provoked Dalí to question Thom about the railway station at Perpignan, France, which the artist had declared in the 1960s as the centre of the universe. Thom reportedly replied, “I can assure you that Spain pivoted precisely — not in the area of — but exactly there where the Railway Station in Perpignan stands today”. Dalí was immediately enraptured by Thom’s statement, influencing his painting Topological Abduction of Europe — Homage to René Thom, the lower left corner of which features Thom’s equation for the ‘swallow’s tail’, V = x5 + ax3 + bx2 + cx, an illustration of the graph, and the term ‘queue d’aronde’. The seismic fracture that transverses Topological Abduction of Europe reappears in The Swallow’s Tail at the precise point where the y-axis of the swallow’s tail graph intersects with the S-curve of the cusp.
” Salvador Dali inspires resilience research”
Dali’s 1983 painting, which was his last work before his death in 1989, was inspired by Rene Thoms catastrophe theory on abrupt behavioural changes.
The Dali painting captures the hysteresis curve, the very core of resilience thinking, illustrating flips from one basin of attraction to another, flips that may be irreversible or at least very difficult to reverse. Dali, deeply interested in chaos theory, used this curve in his last painting in 1983 to capture that he himself would soon be part of such a dramatic transition – from life to death, says Carl Folke, Scientific Director at Stockholm Resilience Centre.
He finds Dali’s painting to be an inspiration point for several aspects of resilience research:
The Dali painting is a source of inspiration and captures the integration of science and arts and the search for understanding the unexplored. The curve has also inspired research on social-ecological transitions, transformations and governance, all core areas for the Stockholm Resilience Centre, he says.
The hysteresis curve has been applied in resilience work to analyze regime shifts or shifts between different basins of attraction like coral vs algal reefs, clear vs muddy lakes, grasslands vs shrub landscapes, shifts in ocean currents, regions like Sahara and the implications of such shifts for economics and policy. (Source)
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Nice post. I don’t think there can ever be too many Dali stories. I had never heard this one… amazing piece of art… so much conveyed with so few lines.
My personal conclusion after researching Dali to prepare the post was that he has not bee not taken seriously enough as a major artist — perhaps because he was also such a showman, so interested in money, and probably a bit mentally “unusual.” His work is brilliant.
Wow, never knew Dali was THIS rich in possibility. I think many artists (particularly the most brilliant ones) really don’t care how seriously others (especially “The Establishment”) take them. Dali probably didn’t give a fig (or if he did, he wasn’t going to let it stop him) what other painters thought of his work. It was the work that mattered. And we are all the luckier for it.