Meditative Rose, 1958 by Salvador Dali

Meditative Rose is something of an enigma coming from a painter whose works are primarily the stuff of dream and nightmare. Absent are the stretched forms and crutches signifying the paranoiac method. Instead we have a pretty picture. Here Dali seems to be showing off his painting skills at a time when many famous artists (including Dali himself) were painting in a much more abstract manner. Perhaps he was preparing himself for the Homage to Surrealism Exhibition which his friend Andre Breton had asked the artist as well as Joan Miro to exhibit in and represent Spain.

The painting itself is reminiscent of a natural Om symbol hanging against the sky above a desolate landscape. This work was completed the same year that Dali published his "Nuclear Mysticism" manifesto titled "Anti-Matter". Commenting on this newfound belief in science, DNA, and nuclear physics the artist had this to say:

In the Surrealist period I wanted to create the iconography of the interior world and the world of the marvelous, of my father Freud. Today the exterior world and that of physics, has transcended the one of psychology. My father today is Dr. Heisenberg.

It is uncertain how this piece fits into either the paranoiac method or the nuclear mysticism practices.

The following quote from the New York Times obituary, January 24, 1989 issue sums this particular style of Dali's:

The surrealists saw in Dali the promise of a breakthrough of the surrealist dilemma. Many of the surrealists had broken away from the movement, feeling that direct political action had to come before any mental revolutions. Dali put forth his "Paranoic-Critical method" as an alternative to having to politically conquer the world. He felt that his own vision could be imposed on and color the world to his liking so that it became unnecessary to change it objectively."