Tag: dali

Last time we built our five araneariums and now it’s time to learn how to use an aranearium. Here we reference Secret #16 – The Secret of the Retrospective Utilization of Araneariums. Things are going to get more intense and the process doesn’t get any easier. If you feel like quitting, just keep going! It will be worth it!

For this secret you’ll be performing some witchcraft. During this “typical magical ceremony” you’ll fall in love with a landscape you have chosen. It can’t be just any landscape. If you truly want to be a good painter your studio needs to be close to where you were born, in “an admirable natural setting.” This is your inspiration for your chosen landscape to fall in love with. You must be willing to sacrifice anything for it!

Now for the ceremony!

The Secret of the Retrospective Utilization of Araneariums

Step 1: Be Young and in Love

The process starts at age 20 when you are in love. You should be having relationships one after another in order to attain optimal “love-anguish.”

Step 2: Fill a Bowl with Water

Now that you are 20, full of love-anguish, and have a landscape to fall in love with, place a flawless crystal bowl “filled with the purest water” across from your beloved landscape. Situate it so you can see the landscape’s reflection in the water, perfectly inside the bowl.

Step 3: Set Up Your Araneariums

At dusk, when the last rays of the sun reach across the horizon, place your five (or more) araneariums in a line in front of the crystal bowl.

Step 4: Gaze at the Bowl

Look through the webs at the bowl.

“Looking through the five cobwebs you will be wonder-struck as you see the bowl, by virtue of the rays of the setting sun, become irradiated by the most subtle and golden mother-of-pearl tints of thousands of rainbows.”

Step 5: Keep Looking!

This will be an indescribable vision to behold! Prepare for ecstasy!

Step 6: Move the Araneariums Around

Move your araneariums and look again. Closer together, further apart – keep changing the distances and see how the rainbows intersect. They’ll form delicate patterns and begin to turn deeper and deeper shades of red at the sun disappears over the horizon line.

Step 7: Stay Put!

Don’t leave just because it’s dark. In fact, the power of what you just saw may make it impossible to leave – or even move!

Step 8: DROOL

You’re going to be drooling by this point. Let it happen. There’s no need to fight it. In fact, don’t wipe away your drool until you hear a nightingale sing AND the bowl and the nighttime are making the same sound.

Step 9: Leave

Now it’s time to go. Be careful not to look at your landscape again, no matter how much you want to. Push any thoughts of your beloved landscape from your mind.

Step 10: Seriously, Don’t Look!

Don’t even look at it from a distance! Plan your daily life around NOT seeing your landscape. Stay away from it for twenty-seven years. That’s right, two-seven. The more you can forget it, the better. You can do it!

“Go and do the things you can’t. That is how you get to do them.”

–Pablo Picasso (He was friends with Dalí)

Step 11: Return

After twenty-seven years, you’ll no doubt feel the longing to return to that special place. Bring all those years of experiences, losses, and emotions – and don’t forget your araneariums. They should be maintained with webs still spun by your spiders over the years.

Step 12: Set Up Your Araneariums (Again)

Set up your crystal bowl and araneariums as you did twenty-seven years ago and gaze upon your landscape. Not only will you drool as before – you will WEEP!

“But wipe your tears, do not weep overmuch, for now it is the spider web’s turn to weep, to weep all its geometries for you.”

Step 13: Return (Again)

Just before sunrise the next morning, return to your spot. Behold the array of dew drops clinging to the spider webs! Take in each tiny reflection of your landscape in each dew drop balanced upon the threads.

Step 14: Swell with Pride!

Enjoy the sense of pride and superiority at the splendor and beauty you have accomplished!! It doesn’t matter that no one else is around. They’ll probably feel inferior being in your presence anyway.

Step 15: Put Everything Away

It’s time to paint from nature. Pour all of yourself into this painting. It will be your greatest masterpiece yet!

Step 16: Celebrate!

It’s time to have a gathering to commemorate what you’ve accomplished. Use your dew-speckled araneariums to decorate the room where you and your guests will feast in celebration of this masterpiece you created. To complete the ambiance, make combs from tiny araneariums and have your wife wear them. Should anything happen to the webs during the festivities, the tiny spiders inside will quickly make repairs.

Step 17: Keep Your Araneariums

They have many uses! They aren’t just magical and inspirational – they’re practical too! Your araneariums will keep dust and hair away from your precious painting, allowing you to continue your greatness as an artist.

Conclusion

That was a lot, wasn’t it? I’m sorry if you made all those araneariums only to find out you can’t even properly use them if you’re past the age of twenty. At least now you won’t have to dust as much.

Salvador Dalí was a super weird wildly eccentric person. Ten seconds of Google will net you dozens of articles outlining the better-than-fiction details of his life. He thought he was the reincarnation of his dead brother. He paid for his restaurant bills with doodles on the backs of checks, knowing that the doodle was worth more than the bill. Dalí once collaborated will Disney. He liked butts and orgies. Then there was that time he was on the gameshow What’s My Line? and answered yes to every question.

There’s one thing missing from all the lists. I mean really, why does no one mention it? In 1948, Dalí published a book titled 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship (you can get it here). It’s all about how to be a great painter – just like Dalí himself – and it’s literally 50 ways to accomplish it. The book is a stream of verbose egotistical rantings and it’s AMAZING. Here’s one of my favorite quotes:

“Compare yourself… to a kind of dromedary masticating visions which constantly make you drool with satisfaction.”

This is the beginning of a long rant comparing the artist to a camel with a massive hump that houses the brain and describes how images are processed through the mouth that is now also the stomach and…

You can also read about slightly more serious things like color palettes and studio settings in this book, but there’s one secret in particular that has stuck with me since I first read the book years ago: how to make an aranearium.

What the Heck is an Aranearium?

I’m still trying to figure out if aranearium is a made up word. A similar word, aranearum, is plural for aranea, which is Latin for spider web or cob web. However, looking up aranearium just leads to information about Dalí and images of spiders. Made up or not, we could guess that an aranearium is an enclosure for spiders and/or spider webs.

That’s exactly what Dalí tells us to make in Secret 15 from his book.

Secret 15 – The Secret for Constructing an Aranearium

I’ve boiled this process down into ten simple steps, but make no mistake – this is a process. It assumes that you will be able to procure your own spider. Be sure to pick one you like because this little one will be your friend and assistant for quite some time. Oh, and you have to train it. Dalí assures us that this is all well worth it. Using the aranearium will not only make you drool, but weep!

Step 1: Make a Hoop

Get a slender olive branch and bend it into the most perfectly circular hoop you can manage. Leave four or five leaves around the outside for your spider’s enjoyment.

Step 2: Make a Base

Secure your perfectly round hoop to four-foot long pine wood pole attached to a solid base. We don’t want our drool-worthy spider hoop to fall over!

Step 3: Add a Spider Box

Place a small, perfectly cube-shaped box made of very green pine at the bottom of the hoop. It should have one hole in the top and a hole in one side. This will be your spider’s nest.

Step 4: Get the Box Wet

Moisten your spider box, put some dirt in it, and let it dry in the sun.

Step 5: Make the Aranearium Fancy

Place a little ball of amber on the box. Amber is “very sympathetic” to both artist and spider, according to Dalí. You’ll use it to magnetize the tip of your wand, which is used to train and direct your spider.

Step 6: Set the Table

Place a small bowl next to the amber ball. This is where you will keep dead flies for your spider when you are training and feeding it.

Step 7: Train Your Spider

Place your spider friend in its new home. Using your magic wand charged by the amber ball, put a dead fly on the end. Use your wand to direct your spider where to go. If spidey does good, spidey gets treat! Simple, right?

Step 8: Weave a Web

This is the hardest part! You have to get your spider to weave its web “exactly within the circle of your aranearium.” You’ll need to keep bringing the spider to the hoop and directing it with your fly-laden, amber-charged, magic wand until starts to weave, so keep lots of flies and patience in your little bowl.

Step 9: Reward Your Spider!

You and spidey have been working really hard, so give your eight-legged friend some encouragement and extra flies. This will make it want to stick around.

Step 10: One Aranearium Isn’t Enough

Build at least four more araneariums because every knows a good studio has at least five.

What Now?

Now that you have your five araneariums, you’re probably wondering what to do with them. Never fear, it’s all explained in Secret #16 – The Secret of the Retrospective Utilization of Araneariums! It’s doesn’t get easier, but if you want to achieve drooling and weeping we have to learn how to use the aranearium in part two!