We are all hungry and thirsty for concrete images. Abstract art

Host:
The gallery was almost empty, bathed in soft, sterile light that hummed faintly from the ceiling. The walls were a quiet battlefield — splashes of color, shapes that refused to explain themselves, lines that broke logic in pursuit of feeling. The smell of oil paint, old wood, and silence filled the room.

A single spotlight fell upon a canvas — enormous, violent, and mesmerizing: a chaos of red and black, like a dream half-remembered. Before it stood Jack and Jeeny, their reflections faintly visible in the polished floor beneath them. Between them hung the quote that framed the night’s exhibition:

"We are all hungry and thirsty for concrete images. Abstract art will have been good for one thing: to restore its exact virginity to figurative art."
— Salvador Dalí

The words, like Dalí himself, seemed both mad and prophetic.

Jeeny: (gazing at the painting, voice quiet, reverent) “He’s right, you know. After drowning in abstraction, we start craving form again. Something recognizable. Something that says, ‘This is the world you live in.’ We can only wander in the fog for so long before we start missing the shape of things.”

Jack: (hands in pockets, his grey eyes tracing the paint strokes) “Yeah. Abstraction was rebellion — necessary, brilliant even. But Dalí’s saying it served its purpose. It burned everything down so we could see form again with clean eyes. Like how chaos makes you value order.”

Host:
A faint echo of footsteps drifted from another room — an unseen visitor passing through the gallery’s emptiness. The light flickered slightly over the painting, as though it were breathing.

Jeeny: (turning to Jack) “I think what he means by ‘virginity’ is purity. After the wildness of abstraction — where everything dissolved into idea — figurative art feels reborn, honest. Like rediscovering the beauty of the body after years of dreaming only about its shadow.”

Jack: (smirking, voice dry) “So abstraction was the necessary madness, and figurative art is the morning after — the clarity, the hangover, and the miracle of seeing reality again.”

Jeeny: (laughing softly) “Exactly. Every revolution becomes its own tradition, and every tradition needs a revolution. It’s the pulse of art — destruction feeding creation.”

Jack: (leaning slightly closer to the painting) “And Dalí lived right on that edge — between chaos and control. He wasn’t loyal to any school. He just used both — the real and the surreal — to make us feel something tangible again.”

Host:
The light on the painting sharpened, throwing new depth into the brushwork — layers within layers, as if the chaos was hiding a form just beneath the surface. The hum of the lights was the only sound now, mingling with the soft rustle of their breaths.

Jeeny: (softly) “You know, I think abstraction was necessary for the soul, too — not just for art. We needed to lose form to find it again. To learn that beauty isn’t in control, but in returning from confusion with new eyes.”

Jack: (nodding, eyes thoughtful) “That’s the cycle of everything — art, love, life. You lose meaning to rediscover it. You break what’s clear so that when clarity returns, it’s earned.”

Jeeny: (smiling faintly) “Like a wave washing over the shore — erasing, reshaping, but leaving something cleaner behind.”

Jack: (his voice low, almost to himself) “Exactly. Virginity not as innocence, but as renewal.”

Host:
They moved slowly along the row of paintings — past canvases that seemed to argue with each other in color. The abstract screamed; the figurative whispered. But together, they built a kind of harmony born from tension.

The air around them felt charged — that silent electricity that fills a room when art and philosophy collide.

Jeeny: “Do you ever think abstraction was less about the world and more about us? Like humanity had to go through that phase — to strip away the obvious, the representational — to face its inner emptiness?”

Jack: (nodding) “Definitely. It mirrored our time — the collapse of certainty. The wars, the technology, the alienation. Abstract art was a reflection of how fractured the human experience had become. And Dalí’s saying — okay, we’ve stared long enough into the void. Now let’s reclaim the image.”

Jeeny: (smiling sadly) “Reclaiming the human.”

Jack: (with a soft chuckle) “Yeah. Maybe that’s what we’re always doing — in art, in life — trying to redraw the human face after history distorts it.”

Jeeny: (gazing at another painting — a figure half-formed, emerging from color) “It’s ironic though, isn’t it? The more we try to escape reality, the more we end up craving it. Even surrealism — Dalí’s own dreamscape — still needs the real as an anchor. The melting clock only matters because we know what a clock is.”

Jack: (smiling) “Exactly. Surrealism depends on realism the way night depends on day. You can’t subvert what doesn’t exist. You can only distort what’s already beautiful.”

Host:
A soft hum filled the gallery as a ventilation fan came alive. The temperature dropped slightly, and with it came a subtle feeling — a mix of melancholy and renewal, like stepping from dream back into waking life.

Jeeny: (after a long pause) “So maybe that’s what Dalí meant by restoring virginity to figurative art — that after abstraction stripped art naked, we can finally look at a face, a hand, a body again without cliché. It’s pure again, not sentimental.”

Jack: (looking at her, voice low, deliberate) “Yeah. Abstraction burned away habit — made us see again. Every movement that destroys meaning also purifies it for whoever comes next. It’s brutal but beautiful — like pruning a tree so it can breathe again.”

Jeeny: (smiling) “That’s the artist’s paradox — destroy to reveal.”

Jack: (grinning faintly) “Or in Dalí’s case, destroy to seduce.”

Jeeny: (laughing) “Always.”

Host:
The laughter echoed softly against the high walls — brief, alive, then gone. The gallery lights dimmed automatically, signaling closing time. But neither of them moved yet. They stood there, side by side, facing the final painting — a face emerging from chaos, half-recognizable, half-lost.

It was as if the art itself had been caught between abstraction and rebirth — between memory and invention.

Jeeny: (quietly, as though speaking to the painting itself) “Maybe this is what he meant all along — that abstraction was never the end. It was the purification — the fire before the figure.”

Jack: (softly) “And maybe that’s why we keep coming back to images — because they remind us we still exist.”

Host (closing):
The gallery lights faded until only the faint glow of the exit sign remained — a small rectangle of light in a room full of fading forms.

Outside, the night reflected on the glass facade — a city of moving lights, abstract and alive.

Salvador Dalí’s words lingered like a whisper between the two of them:
"We are all hungry and thirsty for concrete images…"

And as they stepped into the cool night air, the world itself felt newly painted —
not abstract, not simple, but clear,
and beautifully real once more.