5a

original picture

Reformed by Paula

This picture from Salvador Dali is a metaphor of power and money.

Those elephants charring the golden sits and tower. It looks like a powerful person going out. The gold is shining and light. In there, the artist compares and contrasts the gold with those elephants. When we look at the elephants, they have very very thin legs, and their body is in dark black color that makes us cannot see them very clearly. Their thin legs and small body (the dark color makes them look small.) cannot carry the heavy gold, it’s about to fall. The artist using many subtext here.
In the original picture, the first thing we will notice is the terrified horse, because of the Rules of Thirds. Then we will notice the gold, then elephants and at last we will see elephants’ thin legs. The horse is kind of telling the theme of the picture, which are anger, conflict, and scare. The angry, conflict and scare is from the gold. We want know why, then we see the elephants, dark and old, and the most important is they have very thin legs. After I reformed the picture, it changed. According to the rules of third, now we are focus on the man. We first see the cross in his hand. And then some falling legs in the right. The man seems want defended himself, so he won’t hurt by those large body.

The conflict also shows in the shape. The golden products are all in a triangle shape. Compare to the naked man who is holding a cross, is in a rectangle. The conflict is clearer. Look at the lines in this picture, most of them are diagonal. But there are lines goes to a totally different direction. This frame shows a contrast direction of the lines. In my reformed picture, lines are diagonal too, they are toward the top left corner. And the man is below the horizon line which means he is very close to us.

The original picture is XWS (extremely wide shot), it has people in the location. The picture I reformed is WS. It contain the man’s who body. And it could also kind of two shot, even those legs are not human beings, this shot contain 2 elements.

In my picture, the elephant is higher than the man, but it is still small and far away from us. The man in our eyes is bigger. I think his defense or fight will success.