Salvador Dali Vw Ad Analysis

Salvador Dali’s “VW Ad” initially draws the viewers eyes to the sobbing man with the outstretched and broken arm. After focusing on him for a minute you might then direct your attention to the empty pockets. While viewing all of that you may have noticed that this man is crying a puddle/pond of tears. The best part of this artwork is that the deeper you look, the more meaning you get out of these symbols. Dali does a commendable job at displaying pain, depression, and poverty. He does this through the three separate symbols that I will be addressing. The arm, the puddle of tears, and the visibly empty pockets. Though there are many symbols, these are the three that really pop, moreover, can all connect to make a bigger picture. The first symbol that we will be discussing is the broken arm. This arm represents pain, or if we go deeper, the damage done to the oil industry. Starting off with the more straightforward of meanings, pain. This represents pain in that, the arm to look so misshapen moreover deformed it must have gone through continuous and strenuous pain. If we were to go deeper we would get this meaning. The sobbing man can be viewed as a symbol of the oil industry, the arm could be viewed as the damage done to the earth. the damage done to the earth would be the extraction of all
We will move on to the last symbol, the pond/puddle of tears. While the indicated isn't a large representation, it does still connect with the main theme. This represents depression, why depression? Well, often people will say things to the accord of "Cry me a river, pond, etc." when someone is sad and or depressed. We can infer that since the previously mentioned damage caused poverty, that these two combined drove this man, or in our case, the industry into a deep depression. Since we have gone through all three symbols, in what I believe to be a fitting order, we now move on to the