“The Persistence of Memory,” by Salvador Dali, “A Trip to the Moon,” by George Melies, and “The Great Day of His Wrath” by John Martin “The Persistence of Memory,” by Salvador Dali, “A Trip to the Moon,” by George Melies, and “The Great Day of His Wrath” by John Martin all displays the artists’ perception of parallel universes and scientific theories that are still being looked into today.
Martin’s painting “The Great Day of His Wrath,” Melies film, “A Trip to the Moon” and Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory” are all visually connected with fantasy, illusion, and play between reality and representation of scientific elements; Martin depicts the apocalypse, Melies portrays his version outer space, and Dali displays a the dream world inside the human mind while also depicting the theory of relativity, although this was not intentional. Each one of these theories is connected with science.
Furthermore, each artist had his connection with science whether it was directly or indirectly, whether they were just fascinated with it or were scientists themselves. Because of their concepts and inspirations, their artistic interpretation of scientific theories result in fantastical, dramatic illusions, and in Martin’s case, plays between the debating beliefs in science and religion. They all represent and share scientific fiction and other dimensions.
Through their perspectives, illusions, dramatized effects, and imaginative techniques, narratives, and suggested inspirations, each work of art has inspired or was inspired by science. The 19th century English, Romantic painter John Martin was rejected as a painter during his time, but after a period of time his paintings were more and more accepted by society. Martin was not just a painter, however. He was a scientist as well and participated in visionary engineering projects including a metropolitan railway for London and the embankment of Thames (Kahn).
Martin created his magnum opus, which consisted of three paintings, “The Great Day of His Wrath,” “The Last Judgment,” and “The Plains of Heaven. ” As the title suggests, the Book of Revelations in the Bible inspired Martin’s melodramatic, sublime, apocalyptic scene “The Great Day of His Wrath”. Although this title points straight to religious content, it has far more scientific inspiration than religion or the book of Revelations in the Bible. To begin, the painting, separate from science and religion, it is about the apocalypse.
The apocalypse is an event that humans today are curious about, and people attempt to explain this future event through religion and science. As people have tried to explain the end of human existence through religion and science, they have also tried to explain the beginning of human existence through religion and science. Charles Darwin approached the theory of evolution during the Age of Darwin in the mid-eighteen hundreds; this is just around the time Martin painted “The Great Day of His Wrath,” which also proved to be one of Martin’s inspirations (Kahn).
Darwin, a naturalist and a geologist, was a well-known contributor to the theory of evolution and claimed that all species of life descended from common ancestors (Kahn). This idea has rivaled with biblical contents that life started by the grace of God, another concept Martin rivals in his painting. With the dinosaur inspired rocks and the dramatic scene of the sky and earth closing in together and the vision of shifting and evolving, Martin created a “prehistoric” earth and raises the concerning thought whether Biblical sources are accurate or inaccurate (Kahn).
Also, in addition to Martin’s painted rocks in “The Great Day of His Wrath” and in addition to his evolution inspiration, his rocks also mimic geologists who studied rocks to determine what the world was like when it was only 6,000 years old. Kahn (2015) has observed that even though his initial purpose was the apocalypse in the Book of Revelations, Martin was inspired by science such as using dinosaur bones to be the falling rocks in “The Great Day of His Wrath. ” Martin may have been inspired by science to create his magnum opus, but he has also served as an inspiration to science fiction cinema after his death.
His painting is so dramatic and sublime that it has been argued by some critics that it’s too sublime and over-the-top (Kahn). Many apocalyptic movies mimic this idea of vivid apocalyptic events that are, for instance, linked to the Mayan’s records or the Book of Revelations in the Bible. Science-fiction movies such as this are “2012,” “World War Z,” and “The Day After Tomorrow. ” “A Trip to the Moon” is Melies’ first film to make him famous (Ezra). As the first science fiction film and the first spoof of the genre, the film is directly based on astronomy and the idea of travel to space (Ezra).
In this film, Professor Barbenfouillis’ (played by Melies) propose to build a rocket and travel to the moon to a group of astronauts that are gathered in front of him. The scientists cheer and are ecstatic about the idea, and within a short time they build a rocket that shoots them to the moon. Once the astronauts land there, they encounter Selenite natives who take them into captivity. After escaping and beating the moon-dwellers, the astronauts return to Earth. The film was primarily based on Jules Verne’s science fiction novels “From the Earth to the Moon” and “Around the Moon,” which is about a trip to the moon.
A Trip to the Moon” is considered science fiction because of its scientific base, its connection with another universe, and its fantastical interpretation of the moon. The moon was considered a place of mystery and because of this, it was also considered a place of desire. This is especially ever since Cyrano de Bergerac’s book “L’Autre Monde” was first published in the seventeenth century (Ezra). This cinema has numerous inspirations, including Jules Verne’s novels and a couple scientific theories. Although his film wasn’t the first depiction of travel to space, it is commonly recognized as the first depiction because of its popularity.
Konstantin Tsiolkovsky is considered one of the founding fathers of rocketry and astronautics and contributed to Melies’ depiction of space (Quarterly). The astronaut is known for his rocket designs. Some of these designs include steering thrusters, multistage boosters, space stations, airlocks for exiting a spaceship, and a system that would allow astronauts food and oxygen during travel in space (Quarterly). While Melies didn’t include all of these ideas in his cinema, but a few of them are very relevant and obvious.
One interpretation of astronomy in “A Trip to the Moon” is the representation of Professor Barbenfouillis’ proposal to build the rocket to travel to the moon. He presents this idea to a group of fellow astronomers. At first, when Barbenfouillis’ is proposing his idea, the astronomers look like magicians but soon after they remove their top robes and are dressed as scientists. The most recognizable Tsiolkovsky idea is the rocket. From 00:05:18 to 00:07:36, the astronauts are aided in preparing the rocket, and as soon as they are inside the rocket, the rocket is pointed at he moon. Once it blasts off, it hits the moon’s eye, which is one of the most iconic visual of the film. In modern day cinema, space travel is not new idea or visual to the public, but since the idea of space travel was so relevant during the early 19th century, it was a huge oddity. Furthermore, astronauts, such as Tsiolkovsky, at the time only focused primarily on the transportation to space and how to survive once in space. Scientists such as Tsiolkovsky did not consider what would happen or what they would do once they got to space (Quarterly).
Melies proposed this idea through his film; he created his vision of what he thought could possibly be in space through his theatrical and illusion based films. This is where Melies approaches another scientific theory in his film about extraterrestrial life, or other known as exobiology. Melies approaches the theories of exobiology in a fantastical way that makes the thought of meeting other existing life forms in the universe seem desirable. With this, Melies constructs the Copernican principle in his film, the idea that Earth is not an especially unique planet or place in the entire Universe, into a visual context and narrative (Kahn).
Melies film is also considered fantasy. The display for the film was based on a fantasy stage created by Adolphe Dennery, who was inspired by from Jules Verne (Erza). His fantasy stage includes ideas that are likely impossible, such as women sitting upon another moon like prop that looks like a crescent, and other figures standing in the background. Also, in addition to his fantasy theme, he incorporates his magic through his special effects. One of these special effects is called shot/shot reverse structure, making dissolves and magic tricks with big puffs of smoke where figures appear or disappear (Erza).
In “The Persistence of Memory,” Dali clearly exhibits his Paranoiac-critical method, where Dali attempts to enter a meditative state of self-induced psychotic hallucinations. With this, Dali is able to create hand-painted dreams that look almost like photographs. The dream-like quality in “The Persistence of Memory” is seen through the melting clocks, the dead tree growing out of a man-made object, the floating rocks on water in the background, the clock infested with ants, and the disoriented face with long eyelashes that lays on the ground like a beached whale.
Dali creates these everyday objects, excluding the disorientated face, in spontaneous patterns in unusual settings. Dreams are what ultimately inspired the visual in “The Persistence of Memory,” but through further analyzing, it had been noted that Dali’s inspiration could have been from Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity (Puchko). At the time when it was exhibited, critics immediately drew a direct connection between the melting clocks and time dilation in the theory of relativity (Puchko). The critics made a direct connection between the piece and Einstein’s theory because of two reasons.
First, when the painting was exhibited was around he time when Einstein released his theory. It made a big impact on the science world because it was so debatable, and it still is. Second is because it is extremely relevant visually to time dilation. Basically, the time dilation, a part of the theory of relativity, is the idea that nothing happens at the same time, even though two events seem to happen at the same exact moment (Whittaker). In Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory” mimics this through the visual in two ways. First, the portrayal of four different melting clocks, as if to question the relevancy of time.
Second, each clock is around the same time, with the hour hand close to the 7 and the minute hand ranging between the 11 and the 1. This could represent the idea that nothing happens at the same exact time, although it may seem that two events happen exactly the same time. For example, moving clocks are slower than stationary ones. Two clocks, one stationary and one in a car, are exactly the same, however, when the fast moving car passes the identical clock that is stationary, the viewer on the stationary one sees his clock as moving slower than the one on the fast car (Kahn).
This is another visual given by the clocks in Dali’s painting. However, when interviewed about this painting, Dali was asked if the theory of relativity in relationship to “The Persistence of Memory” and he denied it. He claimed that his inspiration was a cheese wheel that was melting in the sun (Puchko). Although the cheese wheel was his main inspiration, audiences who were analyzing this painting saw connections with this and time dilation.