Salvador Dali - 1904-1989 (Art Ebook)
Salvador Dali - 1904-1989 (Art Ebook)
Salvador Dali - 1904-1989 (Art Ebook)
wit
Robert Descharnes
iBIiiufiffil
bIIjbBjjji
l /
Taschen
various contexts.
He
modern
sculpture,
is
lustration, Paris).
Salvador Dali
2013
http://archive.org/details/salvadordali 1 90400robe
Salvador Dali
1904-1989
Benedikt Taschen
FRONT COVER:
Portrait of Mrs. Styler-Tas (detail), 1945
Portrait dc Mrs. Styler-Tas
cm
SMPK, Berlin
National Gallery,
FRONTISPIECE:
Poetry of America (The Cosmic Athletes), 1943
Poesie d'Amerique (Les Athletes cosmiques)
Oil on canvas,
16.8 x 78.7
cm
Germany
ISBN 3-8228-0298-0
Printet in
ARTE B.V.
illustration
on
p.
Hoffmann
136
Contents
24
60
Edible Beauty
92
30
56
82
Paths to Immortality
A Chronology
216
Dalf:
220
Notes
221
Bibliography
223
Dalf's Exhibitions
224
Picture Credits
his
Mirror
at
waking and sleeping." Dali could easily have become the living
proof of Baudelaire's dictum. But the literal mirror was not enough for
him. Dali needed mirrors of many kinds: his pictures, his admirers,
newspapers and magazines and television. And even that still left him
all
times,
experience an
and
is
going to accomplish
today."
unsatisfied.
He would
attention to him.
walk
in the streets of
ring
Quiron
bitter end,
on
hospital in Barcelona); he
wanted
during his
last
days
alive (in
know whether
about
would revive or
whether he would be dying soon. At the age of six he wanted to be a
female cook - he specified the gender. At seven he wanted to be Napoleon. "Ever since, my ambition has been continually on the increase, as
has my megalomania: now all I want to be is Salvador Dali. But the closer
I get to my goal, the further Salvador Dali drifts away from me."
He painted his first picture in 1910 at the age of six. At ten he
him, and he also wanted to
discovered Impressionist
art,
and
at
his health
among them
Meissonier, Detaille
and Moreau). By 1927 he was Dali, and the poet and playwright Federico
Garcia Lorca, a friend of his youth, wrote an 'Ode to Salvador Dali.'
Years later Dali claimed that Lorca had been very attracted to him and had
sodomize him, but had not quite managed it. Dali's thirst for
scandal was unquenchable. His parents had named him Salvador "because
he was the chosen one who was come to save painting from the" deadly
menace of abstract art, academic Surrealism, Dadaism, and any kind of
tride to
he had lived during the Renaissance, his genius would have been
recognized
at
damned as stupid, he was thought proTo this day there are many who misunderprovocativeness and label him insane. But Dali repeatedly
stand the
me and
madman
is
the fact
am not mad!" 2 Dali also said: "The difference between the Surrealists and me is that I am a Surrealist" - which is perfectly true. And he also
that
(Self- Portrait at
Cadaques),
c.1923
cm
Loan
burg
Museum,
St.
Peters-
at
work."
my
which had occasionally been obscured from view by the artist himself
while he was alive. During the terminal stages of modern art, nihilistically
pursuing its reductive, self-destructive course, Dali was one of the few to
propose a way out. A great deal of work remains to be done before his
proposal
The
fully grasped.
is
alternative he
takes us via the conquest of the irrational to the decoding of the subconscious, deliberately including recent scientific discoveries. Writing in
1964, Michel
Deon
is
tempting to suppose
we know
Dali because he has had the courage to enter the public realm. Journalists
utters.
is
common
anonymous
back,
bowed
by the tramontana
Look! Salvador Dali has just been born!
It is on mornings such as this that the Greeks and the Phoenicians
must have disembarked in the bays of Rosas and of Ampurias, in order to
come and prepare the bed of civilization and the clean, white and theatrical sheets of my birth, settling the whole in the very centre of this plain of
Ampurdan, which is the most concrete and the most objective piece of
.
Salvador Dali's Catalonian roots were the key to a major aspect of his
"I
in the existence of
made no
fellow-Catalonian
Dali
liked
to
secret of this
I
don't
know
quote,
the
Augustine
in his
own
typical fashion:
Woman from
Cadaques,c. 1918-19
Portrait d'Hortensia, paysanne de
Oil on canvas, 35 x 26
Cadaques
cm
Private collection
Two
(p. 109).
Of
We
edibles only.
see
it
in
terms of
all
it is
round?
suitable
A round
face
thinking, Catalonia
was the
was
fo-
1924
"Oriente" Cafe
looking
at the
in
Madrid
It
seems
it
will
be
phrases to his
Catalonians,
like
own
fair to
life,
may
go."
money was
doing
so.
Catalonian
trait,
one that harked back to Phoenician ancestry. It was not for nothing that
Andre Breton anagramatically dubbed him "Avida Dollars." Money held
a
magical attraction for him. In Les passions selon Dali (1968) Dali wrote:
"To a mystic such as myself, Man is an alchemical substance meant for the
making of gold." 10 He quite openly confessed that he delighted in
accumulating gold through his
The
art.
made Dali
Catalonian - that
He was proud
is
to
was delighted by Sigmund Freud's comment when they met: "I have
11
never seen a more complete example of a Spaniard. What a fanatic!" In
his Journal d'un genie Dali declared: "The most important things that can
happen to any painter in our time are these: 1. To be Spanish. 2. To be
called
made
it
Familia.
du
10
cm
Cadaques
"When I was
was
in the kitchen."
he could
steal
away
to recall:
He would
it
was
a sin for
me
to eat
moments when
six,
mushroom on which
had the marvelous flavour, the intoxicating quality, that only fear and
guilt
can impart.
do anything I pleased. I wet my bed until I was eight for the sheer fun of it. I was
the absolute monarch of the house. Nothing was good enough for me.
Behind the partly open kitchen door I would hear the scurrying of those
bestial women with red hands; I would catch glimpses of their heavy
rumps and their hair straggling like manes; and out of the heat and
confusion that rose from the conglomeration of sweaty women, scattered
grapes, boiling oil, fur plucked from rabbits' armpits, scissors spattered
with mayonnaise, kidneys, and the warble of canaries - out of that whole
conglomeration the imponderable and inaugural fragrance of the forth"Aside from being forbidden the kitchen
and work.
He
number of things
in his
"My
brother died
my
to
was allowed
at
the age of
father and
birth.
youth
if
life:
"My
gifts
and an unerring
taste.
Maria
12
Portrait of my Father,
Portrait de
1920-1921
mon pere
cm
manner the
pointilliste
in
formula.
me
The systematic
juxtaposition of orange
like that
grammar
was
at this
sit
school-leaving examinations.
first
power
that Pepito Pichot advised his friend the notary to have his son given art
14
cm
Neck of Raphael,
Salvador's exceptional
1920-1921
and tubes of
palette
Autoportrait au cou de Raphael
Oil on canvas, 41
Gift
from Dali
.5
x 53
and
in
first
paint.
cm
gift,
course
in
at
Nunez and obliging him to concede that he, Dali, was right.
On one occasion, when his task was to sketch a beggar, Dali's teacher
confronting
recommended
lightly
was only
an incoherent mass of dark blotches, and then proceeded to ink it over. At
this point he had no alternative but to adopt a scraping technique. Using
his penknife he scratched away, producing dazzling whites:"
where I
wanted my whites to emerge more subdued, I would spit directly on the
given spot and my rubbing then produced peelings that were more
grayish and dirty. Soon I mastered the operation of bringing out the pulp
with
it;
it
way
as really to
look
like a
kind of
down ...
It
was,
15
Dali,
him
who
in a
great!"
It
at
Nunez
our Dali -
clasped
isn't
he
17
was
also the time Dali himself referred to as his "stone period:" "I
When
fact, to
paint with.
remember that during the peaceful family gatherings after the evening
meal we would sometimes be startled by the sound of something dropping on the mosaic. My mother would stop sewing for a moment and
listen, but my father would always reassure her with the words, 'It's
nothing - it's just another stone that's dropped from our child's sky!'.
With a worried look, my father would add, 'The ideas are good, but who
would ever buy a painting which would eventually disappear while their
house got cluttered up with stones?" 18 In early May 1918, Dali exhibited
some of his paintings in the theatre at Figueras, and attracted the attention
of two famous critics, Carlos Costa and Puig Pujades, who forecast a
.
father to
16
let
him go
to the
cm
Gouache and
collage
on
cm
later
wrote
"I
and destiny."
Together with
Madrid
to
sit
his father
the entrance
ing, Sculpture
comment on
would snatch
and
exam
at
his sister
Ana
Academy
of Paint-
is
so perfect that
He was
Dali
19
in the
it is
consi-
20
and divisionist
17
mon pere
cm
used a reduced palette of black, white, sienna and olive green - a reaction
to his exuberant use of colour in the previous year or so. In his personal
my
hair
which
wore
like a girl's,
my
my
my
sideburns reaching
was
in truth so
then puttees.
... I
now
people
who knew me
ance
at
It
really was.
Whenever
in
my appear-
went out or
my
Bunuel
Oil on canvas, 70 x 60
cm
Sofia,
Madrid
was much
man
wore
his students'
down from
the
a frock coat
tie,
sent
also
little
conces-
(which
"He had
a pair of
company
23
his
He was
made no
all
district to
have subscribed to
UHu-
in
his
books and
to
new
Back
in
paintings in the
him.
du pere
et
de
la
soeur de
Charcoal drawing, 49 x 30
l'artiste
cm
One
is
Neck
of Raphael (p. 1 5), in which the dominant impression is that of the glaring
midday light at Cadaques. Dali reported: "People called me Senor Patillas, because I had sideburns;" and, commenting on the origin of the
painting, "It was painted in the morning. At times I would get up at dawn
and work on four or five paintings simultaneously. I had people to carry
the canvasses, but the brushes were attached to my clothes with string;
that way, I looked like some kind of Bohemian. And I always had the
brush I needed close to hand. Later, I wore overalls that were spattered
with glue from top to bottom and were like a real suit of armour."
He viewed the period spent under arrest as an episode, "without any
other consequence than to add a lively colour to the already highly
24
coloured sequence of the anecdotic episodes of my life." The Madrid
group was ailing without Dali. "They were all disoriented, lost and dead
of an imaginative famine which I alone was capable of placating. I was
." 25
acclaimed, I was looked after, I was coddled. I became their divinity
He envied Lorca alone because he had greater influence over the group;
the group increasingly became Lorca's, and "I knew Lorca would shine
like a mad and fiery diamond. Suddenly I would set off at a run, and no
one would see me for three days." 26
Dali's family were upset that he had been expelled from the
Academy. His father was devastated. All of his hopes that his son would
enter upon a career in the civil service had come to nothing. "With my
sister, he posed for a pencil drawing which was one of my most successful
.
mark of
which my expulsion from the Academy had produced on him. At the same time that I was doing these more and more
rigorous drawings, I executed a series of mythological paintings in which
I tried to draw positive conclusions from my cubist experience by linking
the pathetic bitterness
its
Girl at the
Window, 1925
cm
20
27
Personnage parmi
les
rochers
Oil on plywood, 27 x 41
cm
Petersburg
22
(Fla.)
Venus
et
amours
23
cm
known beyond
Granada,
a cubist painter of
was
centimetre. Ortiz
know
deeply
him.
When
moved and
who
a friend of Lorca's
arrived at Picasso's
as full of respect as
and
which was
called
how
happened
to
brought
a small painting,
He
looked
at
it
He
we went up
is
this
though
'I
than money."
others
among an
we exchanged
it!'"
easel.
a glance
in turn
which meant
exactly,
was about
to leave
'I
get
29
and neowas almost at an end. That is to say, these influences indispensable for a beginner - had been nothing more than a means of
expressing images that were peculiar to his own world. He needed the
influences; but generally they held him for only a few weeks. His urge to
Dali's period of impressionist, pointillist, futurist, cubist
cubist borrowings
Oil on card, 33 x 25
cm
25
express
human
than Blood
his
way
upper hand,
as in
Honey
is
Sweeter
(cf. p.
and
And
it
all
maturity about
speak, of
all
it.
that
Indeed, his
was
work had
a certain
to follow.
some of
Dali's
town of Figueras
lies
... If
Salvador
now has
his
as
eye on France,
it is
because
it
within his scope, and because his God-given talent demands the
opportunity to prove
itself.
What does
it
matter
if
confirmed
in
corresponding to his
own
quest. Gradually,
The
26
Together
He was
we worked
my
is
'
est plus
doux que
le
sang'
cm
it
The
ing the
my
suggestions."
same
principle, the
32
Bunuel, for instance, had seen a tattered cloud pass across the moon,
followed by an eye cut open by a razor, while Dali had dreamt of a hand
crawling with ants.
was susceptible of
rational,
27
et
main
cm
Loan
Petersburg
Museum,
(Fla.)
OPPOSITE:
Senicitas
(also:
Senicitas
et:
Naissance de Venus)
Oil on panel, 64 x 48
cm
28
Still
Nature morte au
clair
de lune
open
door onto
images for the film they were not
to
Miro wrote to Dali's father from Paris and told him that a visit to the
capital would be invaluable, closing his letter with the words: "I
am absolutely convinced that your son's future will be brilliant!" 33 Salvador relished the statement and made his decision. Sensing that Paris
would bring a confrontation, he spent his last days in preparation, polishing up his approach with the help of intellectual acquaintances associated
with the Barcelona magazine L'Amic de les Arts. "This group I manipuFrench
lated as
its
did this
all
from Dali
cm
in giving
at that
me
time called
contradictory."
my
'tricks.'
These
tricks
already
34
from the word go when he arrived there for the second time in the winter
of 1927. Work on Un Chien andalou had not yet been completed; he
found the film mediocre. Paris seemed full of snares and traps - and "I had
not succeeded in finding an elegant
fantasies
in
DaW
5
).
It
took
a taxi
(as
he wrote
title
had read
in
know any good whorehouses?' ... I did not visit all of them, but I saw
Here I must shut my
many, and certain ones pleased me immeasurably
have
eyes for a moment in order to select for you the three spots which
produced upon me the deepest impression of mystery. The stairway of
the 'Chabanais' is for me the most mysterious and the ugliest 'erotic' spot,
.
He
is
the
36
much, but
the girls struck him as wretched. Their matter-of-fact, vulgar manner
contrasted with the demands of his "libidinous fantasies," and he never
liked the interior decor of the Parisian brothels very
Juan Miro.
Detail from:
Still
(opposite)
on the table.
performances
drid he
;
it
It is
in the
an allusion to Lorca's
student residence in
would pretend
is
to be
Ma-
We
Detail from:
is
(p. 27)
Detail from:
Senicitas,
(p. 29)
1927-28
Detail from:
Portrait of Paul Eluard, 1929
(p.
24)
Detail from
40/41)
not
man,
as
fall in
me
was no
if
To
would
girl,
with
mobile
little
promptly
He
is
influential. He'll
perhaps invite us to go to a
We
concert.
.
the pretty, the agreeable, the epidermal, the frivolous, the French."
Meanwhile, Dali
fled Paris
was
Catalonia. Pleased as he
he
still
much
Vceil
38
photographs," making
now
he
set
He
Dali was a quarter century ahead of his time, using techniques that later
made him
American
dream images.
transcribe
his
work; the
first
It
was
photo-realists. Dali's
own
method
that
was
to
become
may
constant in
be considered
own
tion of his
art
had been
handmade photography
clarified,
he was
still
declaring:
This, at
all
events,
and Dali was the only painter who could truly be described
and wholly
"My
art
is
Surrealist, just as
Dali's art;
as consistently
water
lilies
done
late in life.
worked
in a state of
watered
a skeletal
40
Presently there was good news. First a telegram arrived from Camille
Goemans,
34
would
exhibit
all
his
cm
iss
UN CHIEN ANDALOU
turns
de
FILMS
CUSSIOOfS
work
liS
summer
SUNOS
mm
BUNUEL
Surrealists
tricity
Luis
Un chien
CUSSIQUES
break.
Then
group of
wife - Gala.
Andre Breton and Louis Aragon, Eluard was one of the leading lights of
the Surrealist movement; Dali had met him only briefly, in Paris the
previous winter. As for Gala, she was a revelation - the revelation Dali
had been waiting for, indeed expecting. She was the personification of the
woman
in his
childhood dreams to
Galuschka and
stood in
was the
that of
for.
woman was provided by the fact that her physique was precisely
the women in most of his paintings and drawings. In The Secret
a child's.
Her shoulder
"Her body
still
36
andalou
La vache
spectrale
cm
met Dali
managed
for a
cliffs, in
the course of
To
its
by "shameful and
"enjoying his
own
right, a
besmirched figure
is
just escaping
between
Bataille
and the
cliffs at
break
Surrealists.
on the
Cape Creus, an
He
now
regularly
two fits of
him. The woman
body so
close to his
made
own took
itself
quite an impression
his
later.
In her youth, Gala had been treated for a lung complaint. "I looked at her
proud carriage as she strode forward with the intimidating gait of victory,
37
J4W
J).(;
,, 4 ,
Le grand masturbateur
Oil on canvas,
Gift
from Dali
1 1
50
cm
OPPOSITE:
Le
jeu lugubre
39
Ma mere, ma mere, ma
mere
Oil on canvas,
Staatsgalerie
10 x 150
cm
Les
and
plaisirs illumines
cm
aesthetic point of
view
victories, too,
my
was about
to touch her,
was
my arm around her waist, when with a feeble little grasp that
squeeze with the utmost strength of her soul, Gala's hand took
hold of mine
said to
me, 'My
little
boy!
We
shall
" 44
42
my wife.
But for
this she
my
that very
Gravida,
He was
a biological
cm
Private collection
knew
my
..
spirit.
47
Then he
at
and resumed
life,
a train to
complet-
sitting
PAGE 44:
PAGE 45:
The Invisible Man, 1929-1932
L'homme
invisible
cm
state
43
Detail from:
Portrait of Paul Eluard, 1929
(p.
r\i
*%% ^i&J^
ISV
*LF
^^
Pm^r
24)
'%.
XJsllib--
Detail from:
Imperial
(p.
44)
Monument
to the
Child-Woman, 1929
Detail from:
Vertigo,
1930
Detail from:
40/41)
cm
Oil on panel, 66 x 41
Loan
Museum,
48
St.
Petersburg
(Fla.)
Le reve
Oil on canvas, 100 x 100
Private collection,
49
New
cm
York
for.
later to achieve
cheeks very pink, the eyelashes long, and the impressive nose pressed
against the earth. This face
belly
of ants. Several of these ants scurried across the space that should have
been
filled
by
the non-existent
head terminated
mouth
in architecture
called
4^
whose
style of 1900.
(See p. 39).
The picture
is
50
was stuck an
was decomposed, and
in its place
is
It
Oil on panel, 50 x 54
Private collection
cm
of a
room
in the Figueras
certain pictures.
good performer
in
of the
first
order."
Sodomizing a Grand Piano, and remember that for Dali pianos were
female in gender and that, what was more, "musicians are cretins, cretins
49
Oil on canvas,
14 x 146
cm
painted in
still
and looks
like a
member
after coitus.
The
is
resting
on
a crutch
hard forms
construct.
of
51
cm
from
Dali
Private collection
worked hard
for a
was due
Then, without
to exhibit his
a
left
capital.
artists.
Nietzsche liked,
as has
50
Dali, pleased to
have escaped the social career Miro had lined up for him, told his fellowpainter: "I prefer to begin with rotten donkeys. This
wrote
like a
the
most urgent;
plunged
is
"The
film
produced the
as
effect that
I
later
wanted, and
it
is
fell at
'a girl's
having seen
Goemans (most
and 12,000
back
francs),
in Figueras.
For
long time, Dali was secretive about the origins of the breach
why
doubtless the motive for his secrecy was consideration for his father. His
picture
deliberately gave William Tell the features of Lenin, purely to anger the
Surrealists. In this
aim he succeeded.
1934 Salon des Independants, Andre Breton flew into a rage, seeing
it
as a
Tell,
1933
Tell
cm
The pope of
it
failed in the
attempt.
was doubtless a
amaze his fellow-travellers. During his
short stay in Paris in November, Dali had shown the Surrealists a holy
picture he had bought at the Rambla in Figueras, depicting the Sacred
Heart. Across it he had written: "Sometimes I spit on the picture of my
mother for the fun of it." Eugenio d'Ors, a Spanish art critic, described
this sacrilege in
father,
an
article
memory of a dead, beloved wife and mother, never forgave his son.
Dali's
defence was: "In a dream one can commit a blasphemous act against
someone whom one adores in real life, one can dream of spitting on one's
mother ... In some religions, spitting is a sacred act." But even the most
open-minded Figueras notary would have difficulty accepting an explanation of this kind.
is
is
a quota-
from Freud: "The hero is the man who resists his father's authority
and overcomes it." 53 Though Dali greatly admired his charismatic and
humane father, he had to make the break and turn his back on the years of
his youth. However, he loved his chalk-white village in the sun more than
anywhere else and refused even to look at other landscapes - which meant
he had to return as soon as possible. With the proceeds of the sale of The
tion
at
moved
there
is
morbid and
Once he knew
54
Le spectre du sex-appeal
Oil on canvas,
18x14 cm
in the
de traire du
lait
cm
Petersburg (Fla.)
56
The
Invisible
La harpe
invisible, fine et
moyenne
Oil on panel, 21 x 16
Private collection
57
cm
Meditation sur
la
harpe
Oil on canvas, 67 x 47
cm
Petersburg (Fla.)
58
Le
Good
59
Weather, 1934
du beau temps
cm
New York
Edible Beauty
Avida Dollars was not always rolling in money. There was a period (brief,
admittedly) between his father's allowance and the income from sales of
pictures when he was distinctly short of a peseta. The couple's financial
circumstances were always to remain complicated. The Dalis would make
considerable sums and promptly spend the money. Their "secretaries"
would see to it that large amounts disappeared into their own pockets.
When Dali died, his legacy to the Spanish state was, of course, staggering but he himself was personally poor and his bank account stood
"Beauty
will
at zero,
When
lively
its
refuge in Cadaques, leaving Paris behind "as one leaves a bucket of offal."
he had tossed
return:
sh
I still
At
prefer Chardin's."
that time,
56
where, defended him, and protected him against others and against himself.
He
was going
was
"The idea
that in
my own room
where I
who moved,
to
with senses,
it
it:
difficult for
me
57
that
Retrospective Bust of a
Woman
(present state),
1933 (1970)
Buste de
femme
strip,
bread and
cm
61
to
it's
going
to finish the
was
let
59
life
Lligat house!"
58
was
own explanation of it in
they wish to
It
show
that,
leg,
is
stricly necessary."
common
To them he
offered
even invented a
62
Museum,
cm
St.
Petersburg (Fla.
slanders to his
own
advantage.
The
first
him, while the second, the gossiping and intriguing upstarts, provided an
inexhaustible supply of material which he
was always
able to put to
good
use.
Negro
by Picasso and
the Surrealists, Dali urged the claims of decadent European art nouveau.
He even rediscovered the Metro entrances that dated from the turn of the
century, and saw to it that the Musee de la Ville de Paris bought one of
them. (Nowadays the museum considers itself lucky that it made the purchase when it did.) With profound logic he declared: "I have always
In response to the primitive
artefacts lauded
Greco-Roman decadence.
agitations,'
object of
'vital
shall
and souls of
a stupidity that
is
artistic
60
nouveau
work and restored its art nouveau look instead. Even in New York,
windows were being dressed in the style of yesteryear. But, as always,
Dali's influence went beyond his person and took on a life of its own; and
the
"I can
Oil on panel, 33 x 38
cm
no longer
canalize
it,
or even profit by
it. I
found myself
in a Paris
felt
all!"
61
Dali referred to this time as the period of "discouraging" innovations. Since the
without him.
Or
in;
fish
into prac-
transparent
swimming
window dummies
that could be
64
sales of his
at least
of the
moyen
sans
le plat, a
cm
le
plat
Oil on canvas, 24 x 33
be
cm
Loan
St.
Petersburg (Fla.)
Museum,
would
match
tactile
men - with
which
would
set
return
home downcast,
sell
tired,
Gala
would
His notions were dismissed as insane by everyone or else they could only be realised for an insane sum. Nevertheless,
most of his projects ultimately made the market: false fingernails, streamlined cars, and so forth. Shop windows have even been dressed using
transparent dummies that served as aquariums for fish - they were found
to be reminiscent of Dali! "This was the best that could happen to me,"
Dali said, "for at other times it was claimed that it was I who in my
sacrifice of her passion."
65
preferred
my
ideas
when,
after
it
society a
minimum
62
of
wanted
to tear
gold,
its
The
that
Columbus discovered
Maybe from fear of
his
out of bread.
museum
at
deprivation,
now
the Americas!"
He had
set
63
maybe because
of his frightful
a loaf,
hug it and
lick
it
and nibble
it,
and then
become gradually
bread-inkstand would be just the thing to stick the pens into when one
was through writing. And if one wanted always to have fresh crumbs, fine
pen-wiper-crumbs, one had only to have one's bread-inkwell-carrier
changed every morning
Upon arriving in Paris, I said to everyone who
cared to listen, 'Bread, bread and more bread. Nothing but bread.' This
they regarded as the new enigma which I was bringing them from Port
Lligat. Has he become a Communist, they would wonder jokingly. For
they had guessed that my bread, the bread I had invented, was not
precisely intended for the succor and sustenance of large families. My
bread was a ferociously anti-humanitarian bread, it was the bread of the
revenge of imaginative luxury on the utilitarianism of the rational practical world, it was the aristocratic, aesthetic, paranoiac, sophisticated,
Jesuitical, phenomenal, paralyzing, hyper-evident bread
One day I
said, 'There is a crutch!' Everybody thought it was an arbitrary gesture, a
stroke of humour. After five years they began to discover that 'it was
.
important.'
began
Then
in turn to
objectifying
Dali.
66
'There
is
a crust of bread!'
And
immediately
gift
it
of
my
finger."
64
explanations,
loyal
said,
tions,
Throughout
in
this time,
He had exhibitions
Nouveau
Architecture,'
nouncement: "Beauty
Above
his equally
Uage
at all."
memoire
Museum of Modern
cm
Art,
New York
65
d'or (The
dal.
Work on
la
Oil on canvas, 24 x 33
famous pro-
will
The
La persistance de
poor
start
watch."
Montres molles
cm
and then
car.
"At
this
!'
67
"Simultaneously, to the
air, at
the
same time throwing stench and tear-gas bombs. The film had shortly to be
stopped, while the audience was beaten with blackjacks by the Action
Frangaise demonstrators.
The
surrealist
glass
all
and thrown
panes of
in the
lobby of
it
it
When
But the
rest
me
The scandal of L 'age d'or thus remained suspended over my head like a
sword of Damocles." Dali decided never again to collaborate with anyone. If there had to be scandals, he preferred to provoke them singlehanded, with ideas that were purely his own. "I should have been willing
to cause a scandal a hundred times greater, but for 'important reasons' .
68
L'heure triangulaire
Oil on canvas, 61 x 46
Private collection
cm
As
to express himself,
ideas into
little
would have been understood by no one ... I had just made L'dge
d'or. I was going to be allowed to make The Apology of Meissonier in
69
Painting ," From that time on, people got into the habit of granting him
the film
Also
at
this
My the
tragique de
until 1963. It
was
his
work
as
cance
thoroughly
as
view
made its appearance practically instantaneously, displacother images. It made a deep impression on me, indeed devastated
and colourful.
ing
all
It
in
my
have seen of
it,
nonetheless seemed
it
enigmatic, compact
row
as
(astonishingly,
shape of a coffin).
He
did
it
landscape of which
is
a coffin
Millet's
work
in architectural guise,
one with
p. 78),
it
in the
Catalonian
Royal -
to be followed
in all the
by
major
it
in the
twenty-metre loaf
cities
of Europe
at
Oeus sur
logic:
70
le plat
sans
Oil on canvas, 60 x 42
le
plat
cm
Petersburg
(Fla.)
..
72
his
later.
fol-
The
it.
surrealist object
The
at this
surrealists of Central
all
nations took hold of these facile formulae of the never seen in order to
astonish their fellow-citizens
'I
want
to assassinate painting!'
Memory, 1932
Objet
surrealiste indicatcur
de
la
memoire
instantanee
unknown
73
you,
I'll
give
you
reality
'I'll
give
it
a little, don't
to
be
afraid.'"
The
and
Surrealists
after Dali
was Dalinian. A bizarre anguishing glance discovered in a painting by Le Nain was Dalinian. An
'impossibile' film with harpists and adulterers and orchestra conductors The bread of Paris was no longer the bread of
this ought to please Dali
74
Paris. It was my bread, Dali's bread. Salvador's bread."
The principle of "hardness" involved such things as the rocks and
cliffs at Cape Creus, where the Pyrenees meet the sea. It was there that
Dali and Gala would retire whenever they were exhausted or in despair,
or had no money. "The long, meditative contemplation of those rocks"
played a vital part in the development of his "morphological esthetics of
soft and hard," which is the same as the aesthetic of Gaudf's Mediterranean Gothic. If we compare Dali's beloved landscape with Gaudi's Sagrada Familia church or Giiell Park, there can be no doubt that the
architectural genius, Dali's fellow-Catalonian, must also have seen the
tattered, craggy rocks and cliffs of Cape Creus. The rocks were surely an
strange medieval object, of
unknown
use,
Commencement automatique
d'un portrait de
Gala (inacheve)
Oil on panel, 13 x 16
cm
saw them
inspiration. Dali
as "that principle of
paranoiac metamor-
deux
in
Equilibrium on
cotelettes d'agneau
as
so
monk,
the dead
cm
Loan
St.
Museum,
Petersburg (Fla.)
own
"In the past there had been three philosophic antecedents of what
75
aspired to build in
my own
brain: the
Jesuitical
Germany -
of Hegel in
What
moreover
it
which
is
'threatened
." 75
.
better
way could
Watches - which
hardening me,
shell
is
at
as life
and
And
in the supersoft.
soft,
Louvre, Paris
head-ache, which
It
is
the day
in the
I felt
We
tired,
and had a
were to go to
slight
moving
at the last
remained for
Anamorphosis, 1933
Gala
et
76
of
my
resources."
78
in the guise of
On
later
this occasion,
it
Fortune appeared
On
financial
And
my
his fellow-artist
from
back, either.
arrived at
New York.
Or, to
St.
it
to the birds.
But
in their
enthusiasm the journalists took no notice of his bread. Instead they asked
countless questions:
a pair of fried
true that
had
chops balanced on
78
with
was
answered yes, except that they were not fried, but raw.
raw, they immediately asked me. I told them that it was because my
her shoulder.
Why
my wife
if it
Kunstmuseum, Berne
cm
1935
Oil on panel, 32 x 39
St.
liked
handed out
cm
Loan
my wife, and that I liked chops, and that I saw no reason why I
80
should not paint them together." He saw New York as a giant Gothic
Roquefort cheese. He wrote as much in New York Salutes Me, which was
that
Museum,
at his
Levy
gallery
- adding by way of
York, too, as a
New
Petersburg (Fla.)
81
to put
He explained
thing that
On
18
my most arresting
is
and
you
erect
pyramids of democ-
December he gave
a lecture at the
my
head."
Wadsworth Atheneum
in
madman and me
is
that
am
not mad."
He
discovered
New
York's
"The
understand
fact that
my own
myself, at the
moment
mean
of painting, do not
no
meaning.
79
He
of
them
to
museums. For
New York,
three
were able to
treat
in
rarely impressed
pretended to be
wounded
On
- wore
a satin dress
beauty.
One
with a "living"
her cheek and back and in her armpits she had eyes like
terrible tumours.
pale, cerebral
own
When
hummingbirds flew
On
out.
was
table, a
a bathtub
with water, so shaky that it threatened to tip over and flood the
merrymakers at any moment. In the course of the evening a huge flayed
ox was dragged into the ballroom; its slit belly was supported on crutches
and contained a dozen gramophones. Gala was done up as a "choice
corpse:" on her head she had a doll (which made a very real impression)
that looked like a baby with its belly eaten away by ants, its head in the
filled
While the sensational couple were resting on the Normandie, relaxing on the Atlantic crossing after the wild time they had had in America, a
new Dali scandal was in the making in Paris. The Dream Ball had quite
unanticipated consequences: a correspondent for the Petit Parisien had
cabled a story to the effect that "at a
ball,
wore
scandal in
New
York. In point of
fact, his
there had been a scandal, no one but him had noticed. Still, interest in Dali
was high, and soon all Paris was filled with consternation, and occasionally with hostility. Yet again Dali's iconoclastic, scandalous public image
had backfired on him, and he noted: "I was no longer master of my
legend, and henceforth Surrealism was to be more and more identified
with me, and with me only
The group I had known-both Surrealists
And a
and society people - was in a state of complete disintegration
whole Surrealist faction, obeying the sloeants of Louis Araeon, a nervous
11
little Robespierre, was rapidly evolving toward a complete acceptance of
" 83
the Communist cultural platform.
.
ngeusoj
*>
L'Angelus de Gala
cm
The Museum of Modern
Oil on panel, 32 x 26
80
Art,
New York
if
Detail from:
^l*
Anamorphosis, 1933
mMBHHB
(p. 77)
Detail from:
Portrait of
(p.
189)
My Dead Brother,
1963
Detail from:
Detail from:
Tristan
(p.
141)
cm
OPPOSITE:
Geological Development, 1933
Le devenir geologique
Oil on panel, 21 x 16
Private collection
84
cm
La
charrette fantome
86
cm
Geneva
87
cm
cm
88
queue
Oil on canvas, 65 x 54
Perls Galleries,
89
cm
New York
Image mediumnique-paranoi'aque
Oil on panel, 19 x 22.8
Private collection,
cm
Geneva (formerly
Edward James
90
Collection)
the
Sun
Table,
1936
Table solaire
Oil on panel, 60 x 46
cm
Edward James
91
Collection)
"
Dali's enemies
ignore his
own
and
allies
Irrational
writings. Yet
when
common:
they largely
all
his extravagance
his
core reticence and his embarrassed revelations, and above all with the
man's unique brilliance - and often his statements contain vital information
on
life,
his tenderness
his
through
it
all
Secret Life of
first
The
life,
provocative and free-thinking mind that caused scandals from the outset,
cared nothing for the opinions of others, and tended to thrive on people's
stupidity.
The Diary of
own
is
effects. In the
formidable
which
his
abilities. It is fascinating
the
"from birth," writes Dali. He explains the reasons for the breach with
Breton - who (he concedes) was after an aesthetic of the unconscious, but
absurdities, the traps he laid for the public, his arrant lack of shame,
spite of his
as writer
and
in
In the Diary of a Genius, Dali explicitly states that he was aware from
Cover of Minotaur e' Magazine, no. 8, 1936
Couverture du n" 8 de la revue 'Minotaurc'
Oil and collage on card, 33 x 26.5 cm
Isodore Ducasse Fine Arts, New York
'
movement, would
try to
impose
restrictions
on him
when he
joined the
had
93
done. Gala had warned him that he "would have to put up with the same
restrictions
among
basically they
the Surrealists as he
were
hero
is
whoever
Philistines."
all
book with
would anywhere
and that
else,
JULIIN LEVY
GALLERY
84
0*
MADISON AVEHUt
NOV.
21 -
DEC. 10
85
- and then, having dealt with the most important writer of his times,
goes on to settle scores with his new father, Andre Breton.
Approaching his subject with a "quite Jesuitical" honesty, yet
"always with the thought at the back of my mind that I would soon
become the leader of the Surrealists," Dali "took Surrealism quite literally, rejecting neither the blood nor the excrement that was in their
manifestoes. Just as I had once endeavoured to become a perfect atheist by
reading my father's books, I now became so diligent a stud. surr. that I was
soon the only full Surrealist. So much so, that in the end I was expelled
from the group because I was overly-Surrealistic." 86
It was not difficult to be expelled by Breton - many others travelled
the same road, and they tended to be the best, the most independentminded. Small wonder: a gardener wants his shrubs trained in the style he
has chosen, after all. "When Breton discovered my art he was horrified at
it"
Genius}
"I
it,"
first
steps
sh
an auspicious
down on me
later. I tried
craftily to
bring the
as
in
movement good
digestive iconography
fortune. In vain
found
in all eras
Levy Gallery,
New York,
in
1934
laid the
tales.
But
it.
They
at anuses!
have
And
to dream of a Raphael
Madonna,
if it
was of
a mystical
among
the Sur-
totally at
odds with
their taste.
To
this
end he resorted
Whenever I made
a Surrealist
1934
Affiche surrealiste
in disguise
Surrealist Poster,
cm
Petersburg (Fla.)
95
The famous
lips sofa
originated in Dali's
made
in
a single
were made in
tion
things he hated.
96
Mae
West's Face
Surrealist
Apartment, 1934-35
The Art
Institute of
Chicago
Oil on panel, 19 x 23
Private collection (formerly
Collection)
98
cm
Edward James
Apparition of the
L'apparition de
la ville
Delft
cm
99
This was the origin of his countless acts of provocation, such as the
three-metre-long backside supported on
p. 53).
To
his intense
(cf.
con-
pointment.
It
who committed
answer to
a questionnaire that
in
one of
its first
issues
la lisiere
paranoiaque-critique: apres-
startling
cm
89
political subjects
more
seriously. It
Surrealists,
who
did
not understand that Dali was quite logically giving preference to regimes
de Fhistoire europeenne
Oil on panel, 46 x 66
Private collection
my
was
Banlieue de
midi sur
affirmation of
pomp and
rituals, liturgies,
public ceremony
Couple aux
tetes pleines
them
found
it
unacceptable.
ists
came
cm
ingly
de nuages
which he
To
increas-
the Surreal-
he confessed: "Very rich people have always impressed me; very poor
people, like the fishermen of Port Lligat, have likewise impressed me;
all."
He
were
attract-
PAGES
102/103:
cm
101
an exercise in black
People were to
tell
humour
was fascinated by
back, which was always so tightly strapped into the uniform," Dali
observed
in his
own
"Whenever
defence.
excitement that
The
Surrealists
91
group for an emergency meeting "at which the mystique of Hitler shall be
debated from Nietzsche's irrational standpoint and from that of the antiCatholics;" he was hoping that the anti-Catholic aspect
would
lure Bre-
ton.
"Furthermore,
of starting a
for
war and
one of those
group.
saw Hitler as
losing
it
in heroic style. In a
actes gratuits
My persistence in
paranoiac-critical analysis,
its
which threatened
to destroy
automatism and
me
in a
way
beyond mere
strictly
paranoiac and
if
at heart apolitical,
would
Germany,
damn me
as
an iconoclast. Similarly,
my
increased
104
Bronze with
tiroirs
plaster-like casting
rimmed knobs, 98 x
32.5
and
fur-
cm
And
and
Dali, to general
I
are
making
amusement,
love,
if I
dream tonight
shall paint
replied: "...
you
that
in the greatest of
ween his teeth, murmured angrily: "I wouldn't advise it, my friend." It
was a confrontation that once again pointed up the two men's rivalry and
power struggle. Which of them was going to come out on top?
Following
element and excluded from the Surrealist movement and opposed with
possible means."
93
Detail from:
(p. 112)
his
appearance
diving suit
New
the
at
all
all,
movement needed
the
as
Burlington Galleries in
in
Dali's
London wearing
appeared to be suffocating
suit
in
it
- and
posed
it
was
all
sup-
a well-rehearsed act.
in his Histoire
who
la
shock
show
a car, with an
ingenious system of pipes pouring showers onto two dummies, a chauffeur with a shark's head and, in the back seat, a blonde in an evening
hair tousled, reclining amidst lettuce
their wet, slimy trails across her."
tant
fat snails
gown,
leaving
94
At this time, Dali published a number of key texts. The most imporwas his seminal essay The Conquest of the Irrational 95 (1935), which
he was to achieve
real
fame
it
it
he
is
to
moment
activity:
He
stressed "Para-
critical intervention."
The
method can only originate in obsession. Dali concluded by seeming to do an about-turn, though in fact what
he said was a warning, and clearly anticipated the consumer society and its
infinite possibilities available to this
atavistic
is
Oil on panel, 35 x 27
cm
106
devour us
rediscovered later by
Andy Warhol,
all."
as its
was
cutlet
very
to be
own when
Tom Wesselmann
forth.
and
Autumn
Cannibalism, 1936
Cannibalisme de l'automne
Oil on canvas, 65 x 65.2
The Tate
Gallery,
cm
James Collection)
108
Premonition de
la
guerre civile
cm
PAGES
Sleep,
110/111:
1937
Le sommeil
Oil on canvas, 51 x 78
cm
109
The Art
Institute of
cm
Chicago
method had
provided Surrealism with "an instrument of prime importance." Even
Andre Thirion, 96 who was one of the dogmatic hard-liners of the group,
later conceded: "Dali's contribution to Surrealism was of immense
Andre Breton had
importance to the
life
at all.
Nor is
discouraging
what we
when he turned
ideology.
its
it
it
was
distinctly
He was
all
their
wanted money.
He
revolution.
Many
For me,
"Then you must become a snob. Like me
downright
strategy,
in Surrealist days
was a
snobbery - particularly
112
man who
was the only one who moved in society and was received in
high-class circles. The other Surrealists were unfamiliar with the milieu.
They had no entree. Whereas I could get up from their midst at any time
and say: 'I have an engagement,' and let slip the fact or allow people to
guess (next day they would know or, better still, would hear from a third
party) that I had been invited to the Faucigny-Lucinges' or other people
that the group eyed as if they were forbidden fruit because they were
never invited there. But the moment I arrived at the society people's
homes I adopted a different, more pronounced kind of snobbery. I would
say: 'Right after coffee I have to go, to see the Surrealists.' I would make
out that the Surrealists had far greater shortcomings than the aristocracy,
than all the people one knew in society, because the Surrealists wrote
abusive letters to me in which they said high society was nothing but
arseholes who understood absolutely nothing ... In those days, snobbery
was saying: 'Now I must be off to the Place Blanche. There's a very
because
was terrific. On
was going somewhere that they could not go, and on the other hand, the Surrealists. I was
always off to where the rest couldn't go. Snobbery consists in going to
places that others are excluded from - which produces a feeling of
important Surrealist meeting.' The effect of saying
the one
hand
complete mastery of
was concerned."
all
human
a situation.
relations there
is
way of achieving
my
civil
That was
97
do without
this
in Italy.
The
sance masters Dali saw in the great art galleries of Florence and
clearly apparent in the
Invention of Monsters
Oil on canvas, 51
Gift
from Dali
.2
x 79.3
cm
Rome
around
(p. 112).
The
latter is
one of
16) or
his paintings
is
in his
The
on the
James Collection)
The
artist
ground double figure holding a butterfly and hourglass was the PreRaphaelite version of the double portrait of Dali and Gala immediately
behind it. True to his principle of taking no interest in politics, Dali
viewed the civil war that was tormenting his country merely as a delirium
of edibles. He observed it as an entomologist might observe ants or
grasshoppers. To him it was natural history; to Picasso, by contrast, it was
political reality. What Guernica was for Picasso, The Burning Giraffe
(p. 107) and Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil
War) (p. 109) were for Dali. Dali was not interested in the war as such. His
only interest was
in the
paroxysms,
Dali's references to
human body,
ing
is
all
completed
Civil
War, being
a painter of
arms and
legs deliriously
"From
incense, of chasubles, of
all
huge
eloquently of smells:
98
Dali wrote
burned curates'
fat
and of quartered
spiritual
which mingled with the smell of hair dripping with the sweat of
flesh, concupiscent and as paroxysmally
quartered, of the mobs fornicating among themselves and with death."
But in respect of his political stance, Dali did concede: "I was
definitely not a historic man. On the contrary, I felt myself essentially
anti-historic and apolitical. Either I was too much ahead of my time or
much too far behind, but never contemporaneous with ping-pong-playing men." Dali wrote: "The Spanish Civil War changed none of my ideas.
On the contrary, it endowed their evolution with a decisive rigor. Horror
flesh,
114
cm
Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart
Nor
want
in
me
an almost
was
not: I did not 'react' - which is an attribute of unthinking matter. For I
simply continued to think, and I did not want to be called anything but
Dali. But already the hyena of public opinion was slinking around me,
demanding of me with the drooling menace of its expectant teeth that I
make up my mind at last, that I become Stalinist or Hitlerite. No! No!
No! and a thousand times no! I was going to continue to be as always and
until I died, Dalinian and only Dalinian! I believed neither in the communist revolution nor in the national-socialist revolution, nor in any
other kind of revolution. I believed only in the supreme reality of tradi-
pathological form.
did
it is
they disinter and recover fragments of the tradition that was believed dead
anew.
it
And
All
less
all
faith.
For
all
were
Spaniards."
in his
hometown
of Granada,
which was under occupation by Franco's forces. ("This was ignoble, for
they knew as well as I that Lorca was by essence the most apolitical person
on earth. Lorca did not die as a symbol of one or another political
ideology, he died as the propitiatory victim of that total and integral
phenomenon that was the revolutionary confusion.") Meanwhile, Dali
115
'
'-<^,
Le grand paranoi'aque
Oil on canvas, 62 x 62
cm
Edward James
Collection)
OPPOSITE:
Spain, 1938
Espagne
Oil on canvas, 91.8 x 60.2
cm
Edward James
117
Collection)
t.
/".
Gouache and
Collection)
118
cm
Edward James
119
Andrea Palladia:
Vicenza, c.1580
War out
his travels.
In 1938, a long-standing
But
psychological problems."
100
felt
fanatic!"
101
At this
time, Dali
all,
for the
Monte Carlo
Ballet;
was the time of the Munich agreement, and Dali was also
putting the finishing touches to The Enigma of Hitler (p. 113) and preparWagner.
It
New
meant and
after
me
Hitler picture
He
York.
that
it
announcing the medieval period which was going to spread its shadow
over Europe. Chamberlain's umbrella appeared in this painting in a
Palladio's Corridor of Thalia, 1937
James Collection)
120
In
cm
." 102
.
him
to dress
one of
III
\l)l
ss
Mi.M
human
hair taken
From
the Julien
Levy Gallery,
New York,
1939
was
like.
In this he
exhibit, he calmly
window and
(attracting another
crowd) tipped up the bathtub, which smashed the window, soaking the
onlookers. Dali climbed out through the hole in the
arrested.
who
my
tried
case betrayed
upon
"The judge
the amusement that
station.
my story afforded him. He ruled that my act was 'excessively violent' and
that since
had broken
Once
artist
but he
made a
103
again, Dali
was the
talk of the
American
art."
He
received a
Once
again,
however,
his licence to
work
as
Dream
of
honoured. His instructions were not followed, and the organizers of the
World's Fair refused to allow him to put a replica of
outside the pavilion, with a fish-head instead of her
Botticelli's
own; and
in
Venus
revenge
and
Own
now
grasped that
clients.
The
latest
publicity created
triumph:
"No
Arrangement in Black and Grey No. 1: The Artist's Mother was shown in
1934. The crowd gaped open-mouthed at pictures with bewildering titles
like Wreck of an Automobile Giving Birth to a Blind Horse Chewing a
Telephone or The One-eyed Idiot. A fortnight later, Dali, one of the
122
young
works to private
collectors for over $ 25,000. Two works remain to be sold: The Enigma of
Hitler ($ 1,750) and The Infinite Enigma ($ 3,000)." And The Art Digest
reported: "The Dali exhibition was preceded by the usual publicity
campaign, dreamt up in this case by the masters of publicity, Dali and
richest
Levy, for
after
Impressions d'Afrique
Oil on canvas, 91.5 x 117.5
cm
Edward James
Collection)
he
had smashed the store window, he stepped out through the hole onto the
sidewalk and into the front pages of the daily papers ..."
Dali returned to Europe. In spite of his experiences in
was convinced
that
hand there
is
its
that enjoyed an
exhausted with
New York he
masturbatory and
all
sorts of
sterile self-refinement."
104
123
et
Oil on canvas,
14.8 x 143.8
cm
124
fin
14.3 x 145
cm
125
Monster of
le
Gouache,
pastel
75 x 100
cm
126
Marche
du buste
invisible de Voltaire
cm
Petersburg
127
(Fla.)
la
guerre
Oil on canvas, 64 x 79
cm
128
cm
Loan
Petersburg
129
Museum,
(Fla.)
The Magic
Secrets of
Avida Dollars
The Second World War obliged Dali to leave Europe. "I needed, in fact,
immediately to get away from the blind and tumultuous collective jostlings of history, otherwise the antique and half-divine embryo of my
originality would risk suffering injury and dying before birth in the
degrading circumstances of a philosophic miscarriage occurring on the
very sidewalks of anecdote. No, I am not of those who make children by
halves. Ritual first
am
its
century
cm
Landesmuseum, Ferdinandcum,
Innsbruck
Once
in the
tion to stay at
diary for
for a visit?
cm
131
them. All the while, Mrs. Dali never raised her voice, never tried to seduce
or
flatter
them:
it
that
all
were there
to serve Dali,
107
Caresse Crosby reported that she was away for a few weeks, and
Hampton Manor
the Dalis at
novelist.
She was
far
left
in the
from surprised
going over The Secret Life of Salvador Dali, the autobiography he had
written there in July 1941, while Miller was busy painting watercolours.
mad
have to be practically
most
some
level.
Without
it
but
se;
if
command
That
this artist
every bit as
observer
at
chromo-
and unpredictable
A horse and a
state-
much
talent are
mad?
is
on
it
on
"And
his canvases as
this statement:
want
to be heard.
experiments,
all its
dramas. As
have
to
am
have lived
all
adventures,
its
all
its
day the
and
ideological short-cuts
first I
which
my
"Heaven
is
comment
in
each of the
that
is
extremely reveal-
what I have been seeking all along and through the density
my life - heaven Alas for him who has
And
When
first
time
with
my
saw
crutch
woman's
I
depilated armpit
and
Autoportrait
mou
avec lard
grille
cm
found exactly
moment I do
faith,
bosom
and
of the
fear
left,
man who
shall die
heaven
has faith!
is
to be
At
this
(cf. p.
138).
His
libretto
133
134
unknown
Melancholy, 1942
Melancolie
Oil on canvas, 80 x 60
Private collection
135
cm
Philippe Halsman:
Dali
in
an Egg, 1942
worked
good
for
now making
him - nourishing,
commercial commissions.
a great deal
as
He
it
were.
And he was
know
by the country of his exile. It was at this time that Breton quite
rightly thought up his famous anagram, Avida Dollars. Dali thought it
"auspicious." His break with the Surrealists was now complete. In the
New York magazine View (June 1941), Nicolas Calas raged: "I accept the
offered
is
a renegade!'
He
prisoner
is
songs or a dagger thrust into a woman's breast. The reason for Dali's
change
to us
is
all)
quite different:
for,
felt guilty,
still
could
happens
counter-revolution while he
(as
total
The
captive of his
triumphant
own
errors,
no longer capable of distinguishing what is modern in science and aesthetics from what is not, Dali is like a naive girl from the country who thinks
herself stylish
136
if
she puts a
new ribbon on
He
Due
de Verdura.
He
did regular
Insane.
He illustrated
in
Verlaine),
1943
l'homme nouveau
Oil on canvas, 45.5
x 50
la
naissancc dc
cm
Petersburg
(Fla.)
and Tristan
Marquis de Cuevas
on Paul
New Man,
first
novel,
Hidden Faces
New Hampshire. In
at the
home
of the
for Schiaparelli's
feature in
137
cm
138
139
cm
needy emigre
These
artists.
activities
gave a dinner
in aid of
some
a film
ballet: the
young
girl
When
at the
end of the
film.
another commission and designed the dream sequence in Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound.
About
this time,
At
their
meeting, Halsman asked: "Dali, you wrote that you can remember
womb. I would
inside the
Dalf:
like to
from
this
exchange
(cf. p.
136). Dali
extreme.
He would
his
that
ask:
it
is
own
is
would
is
be a surprise, a shock.
in his paintings.
His
is
the
more of
less
of the conquest of
which he defined the essence of the Dalf method of bewildering the public
and creating an absolute magic: "I believe in magic, which ultimately
consists quite simply in the ability to render imagination in the concrete
Our over-mechanized
terms of
real,
reality.
still
now
still
if
the people in
them were American. Dali had the audacity to paint a Coca Cola bottle
before anyone else, drew attention to race problems in the USA, and
poked fun at the cult of American football. All these subjects appeared in a
single painting. The Poetry of America (p. 2) - a title to which he added the
words The Cosmic Athletes shortly before he died.
140
now practically
the reverse of
He
in-
is
to say,
what
is
within,
hung game;
is
shell, the
little
Tristan
Tristan et Iseult
cm
glove of
rank, like
bacon
in the
and prompts
similarly, the
The
in the painting
Oil on canvas, 63 x
Atomica
Staatsgalcric
The dropping of
(p. 156).
the
first
PAGES 142/143:
The Apotheosis of Homer, 1944-45
L'apotheose d'Homere
1
16.7
cm
141
&LA
among
cm
OPPOSITE:
Dream Caused by
1944
le
Peveil
cm
Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection,
Lugano-Castagnola
144
f
>
L m
m*
I
t
1
_;
La tentation de
Saint
Antoine
1
19.5
cm
jm
My
which
Wife,
is
Naked, Looking
Transformed into
at her
Steps,
own Body,
Three Vertebrae
Ma femme,
architecture
Oil on panel, 61 x 52
Private collection,
148
cm
New York'
Galarina, 1944-45
Galarina
Oil on canvas, 64.1 x 50.2
cm
149
Detail from:
c.
1923
(p. 6)
Detail from:
Soft Construction with Boiled Beans, 1936
(p. 109)
Detail from:
Tristan
(p.
141)
Detail from:
Galarina, 1944-45
(p.
149)
atomique
et
uraniquc mclancolique
Oil on canvas, 65 x 85
cm
153
cm
OPPOSITE:
Dematerialization near the Nose of Nero, 1947
La separation de I'atome
Oil on canvas, 76.2 x 45.8
cm
155
For Dali, the atom bomb was the start of a new era. He succumbed to
mysticism - nuclear mysticism, as it were. The Hiroshima explosion
own classicist explosion. In its characteristically misway, Art News commented: "The possibility cannot be ruled
chievous
out that Dali will be giving more attention to the conscious realm from
now on
If this
nothing need prevent him from becoming the greatest academic painter of
the twentieth century." After the war, Dali did not immediately return to
Europe. The change from the psychoanalysis Dali to the nuclear physics
Dali was making heavy demands on him.
was occurring in him at that time: "Nothing more subversive can happen to an exSurrealist in 1951 than, firstly, to become mystical, and secondly, to be
In his Mystical Manifesto Dali described the change that
am experiencing both of these kinds of strength simultaneCatalonia has produced three great geniuses: Raymond de
able to draw.
ously.
modern
mysticism and,
painting.
from progress
as his Christian
The major
efficients
ogy.
(p. 155)
- the
of monarchic viscosity
insubstantial delusions
crisis
spirituality of substantiality in
name
Detail from:
in
the
."''
.
bomb on
of the scenes
took hold of
me when
this
my thinking. Many
used
my
paranoiac-critical
understand the
my
power.
weapon
at
A
my
disposal to help
mysticism - that
me
is
to say, the
profound
intuitive
moment
cm
157
Mine
the ecstasy!
bureaucratic rules of
ence of African
prophecy
it
The ecstasy
cry.
art,
its
Death
to academicism, to the
Mine,
art!
became
of
Teresa of Avila!
St.
clear to
me
that
...
means of
expression
pictorial
Spanish mysticism
the universe,
I,
consequence of scepti-
of mechanistic materialism.
By
reviving
by showing the
spirituality of
all
substance."
110
And
he was to be
life,
remained more of
as
good
as his
word; from
are
in the years
numerous masterpieces.
a Surrealist
that
own
(who
in
account -
manship,
Madonna and
Child, 1470-1475
on the art
praised by saying: "Reading it,
which was
he characteristically
almost
111
as well as
a regular treatise
Zurbaran." In the
treatise
now
knew how to make an atom bomb, but "no one knows what the mysterious juice was made of, the painting medium into which the brothers van
Eyck or Vermeer van
his
own
He went on
to provide
five different
stereoscopic painting.
Thanks
One
this
to
way
"When you
are painting,
the hierarchi-
The
impulse of
one's
own
art,
He
sense perception."
La Madone de Port
Lligat,
Lligat
cm
158
1950
He
Oil on canvas, 65 x 54
cm
Lligat.
set to
accepted, designing the sets and costumes for Peter Brook's production of
It.
Above
all,
new
now
to adopt his
new
his critics
160
Raphaelesque
Head Exploding,
1951
Oil on canvas, 43 x 33
cm
Edinburgh
While
Anthony
still
in
New York,
Max
Guy
won
in the entire
Ernst
if
various forms: a rearing horse, symbolic of power, but also (here) of the
Fountain of Desire on
its
woman, another
161
Detail from:
Detail from:
Galarina, 1944-45
(p.
149)
Detail from:
Detail from:
182)
bearing a
Roman
we
nuclear age.
decided to turn
my
quantum theory, and invented quanmaster gravity ... I painted Leda Atomica, a
tum
realism in order to
my
in
When He
Water to See a Sleeping Dog
Age of
Six,
seem
like foreign
spiritualized
it
bodies in space.
in
uranium. In
Drawing
of Christ, attributed to
St.
John of the
Cross
its
mineral with
it
tion of
my
is
Every one of
consists of.
my paintings
mystical
way
of seeing.
the
is
also a
is
maintain with
My
station at Perpignan.
believe in magic
pictures in the
new
and
series
in
full
conviction that
mysticism
not only
is
my visions of
my fate." 112
the railway
Divine Comedy.
My
first
subjects
The
my
Avila, Spain
religious,
a living
it
is
to
Pope
illustra-
who
who is
taken for granted that these remarks apply only to the early Dali,
disappeared around 1935 and has been replaced by the personality
better
who
known by
the
name
'artistic ideal
bosom
who nowadays
were others
critics
who
On
quotes
letters of
whose opinions
Bruno
Froissart wrote:
God is an intangible
idea, impossible to render in concrete terms. Dali is of the opinion that He
is perhaps the substance being sought by nuclear physics. He does not see
God as cosmic; as he said to me, that would be limiting. He sees this as a
heavens in order to communicate with God. For him,
Christ de Saint-Jean-de-la-Croix
164
itself,
to
.111
ex
become mysti-
am
simultaneously."
marized
needs
in a
tactile
preoccupied with the Assumption of the Virgin Mary for some time now,
it
angels'
as
as
is,
he puts
it,
in the
Raphael or
St.
me
as
compares
with other
it
artists'
Zeus
is
metamorphosed
myth
of Leda;
the underlying
is
is
life
the
knowledge
All of Dali's
works
as well as
and objects
The
not only to the Golden Section and contemporary physics, but also to
Dali's spiritual development. Dali, dualist as ever in his approach,
now
Roman
was
Catholic.
own birth). His parents gave Dali the same name as his
"An unconscious crime, made the more serious
my parents' room - a tempting, mysterious, awe-
by the
fact that in
166
whom
And
me
Salvadors
much
my dead
like
brother as
looked
like
my
since
began to look
as
My
became really aware that I was alive
preferred psychiatrist, Pierre Roumeguere, assures me that my forced
identification with a dead person meant that my true image of my own
body was of a decaying, rotting, soft, wormy corpse. And it is quite right
that my earliest memories of true and powerful existence are connected
with death
My sexual obsessions are all linked to soft bulges: I dream
of corpse-like shapes, elongated breasts, runny flesh - and crutches,
thought myself dead before
which were soon to play the part of holy objects for me, were indispensable in my dreams and subsequently in my paintings, too. Crutches
propped up my weak notion of reality, which was constantly escaping me
through holes that
even cut in
Thus
life
is
an indication of ambivalence."
115
much of
before his own
his
brother
Dali's
birth;
continued in the merging of Vermeer with the logarithmic, mathematically self-perpetuating spiral;
lace-maker,
his
new
and informed
word.
a crutch.
lost in
By squeezing up
filled
out
close to Gala,
it
my pictures
more."
'Gala-Dalf
my
116
For the creator of the Soft Watches, Dali and Gala were the incarnaborn of Leda's divine egg:
how Dali
Gala. And in
memory."
same
It is
price,
rhinoceros
One
Cross
felt
(p. 165).
The
is
bay
at
168
in ecstasy
cm
Bruno,
Carmelite monk,
the Cross;
saw the
St.
John of
sum
total of all
my
When
London, an influential
was badly damaged by
damned
None
drawn by
figure of Christ
critic
the painting
it
a fanatic in the
as banal.
was
first
And some
Glasgow Art
years later
He
relished
Coco Chanel's
it
Gallery.
profane matters.
my
exhibited in
more
reply,
added
was
to be
dimension to
his
mysticism: "Eroticism
is
spirit of
God."
He
homage
to the
began to write
wrote a
169
her
Own
Chasity
by
My
erotic delirium
most
beautiful of
women
to undress.
persuade
teries
continuum
is
am
happy
totally
can be present
if I
at a
my
important in
theatre,
ecstatically: 'This
strong youth
and she
is
is
expression, because
I sit
can see
how ill-founded
passionately working
is
it is
man who's inside your arse?' She instantly stops play-acting and cries out:
'Yes, I worship him!' And then I saw the most astounding thing one can
imagine as an expression of phenomenal beauty: the young woman, held
firmly by the hips and impaled
lifted
on
the
man,
raised her
lips
It
feeling that
tell this
was
a liana,
conveying an angelic
my
ends, to fascinate
my
protago-
months, and I put together the pieces of my jigsaw with great care.
the
most
artful of perversions,
foist
my weird
notions on others,
devise
I
talk
people into doing the craziest things and they agree unconditionally." 118
And:
"...
my
only problem
is
choice.
fish a vast
pond
in
New York or
170
where
cm
of Art,
New York
God
and
present in everything.
is
all
is
sister
and the
120
Ana Maria
published
Salvador Dali vh par sa sceur in Barcelona. The book opened old wounds:
the confrontation with his father, his blasphemies, marriage to a divorced
woman. Dali the showman, author of the Secret Life, was never to forgive
his sister her sentimental indiscretion;
my
owe my
family cast
me
Ampurdan, and
make sacrifices - my
God,
the light of
the plains of
woman
wife, Gala."
to
Was
it
perhaps a
spirit
now
of revenge that
between Christ of Saint John of the Cross (p. 165) and his version of
The Sacrament of the Last Supper (p. 1 78), a painting which is arguably his
late
most
(p.
erotic of
The
177)?
all,
is
Own
Chastity
ists
kind
looks as
is
if
lines of a
photograph
that
was
intelligence with
still
Ana
which
Revenge
in true
Catalonian
in turn
style.
in the
1954 picture, a
magazine.
indicative of the
memory
is
in a soft-porn
is
sister's
essential
life."
From then on, he used the rhinoceros horn in a number of ways - for
instance, in a film he made in 1954 with Robert Descharnes titled L'Histoire prodigieuse
de
la
Dentelliere et du Rhinoceros.
The
title
linked
Vermeer's Lace-maker
(cf. p.
Matila
Angelic Crucifixion, 1954
La croix de l'ange
Cruxifix of Chinese coral and other materials,
Height: 76
cm
Ghyka he became
At
same time, he
nuclear physics, and was
spiral.
the
Le coeur royal
Gold
cm
L 'elephant spatial
two 0.10-carat diamonds,
8-carat gold,
two
4-carat emeralds,
Dimensions unknown
174
made
a peaceful impression;
austerity
was
it
compositional
Vermeer had
most arresting
it
its
in Paris,
power and
the
ture
it
will be
own
121
"Yesterday
Diary of a Genius for 18 December 1955:
of
knowledge,
before a
evening, Daliesque apotheosis in the temple
words
in the
by thousands of
flashing cameras,
began to
have decided
Louvre, Paris
(I
say) to
life in
Paris,
is
the
such
cm
176
Own
as Picasso or
which accoring
pimples
at
to Dali
the very
is
moment
it
comes
its
cm
of Art, Washington
maker
to the sunflower,
the rhinoceros to
amount of
a certain
brain."
maker
critics
from
their lethargic
One of them, in an article headed 'Will Dali kill modern art?' wrote:
"Everything Salvador Dali says, everything he does, and almost everything he paints, at least has the merit of embarrassing, bewildering, even
annoying
all
those for
whom modern
who would never dream of questioning their own certainty on the matter.
Dali sets various movements going in a field where both
all
and
artists
eccentricity
critical
all
work
is
'a truth'
known as
and so
to be deceived
its
For
forth.
He makes no
wrong
'painting,'
178
critics
by the humorous or
kill
secret of
modern art.'
It
it;
quite
would be
ments. Dali
is
and the
'first-class intelligence'
cost
'modern
art'
the
which
in the service of
is
whole of
its
pre-
stige."
him
is
attention of
full
filled
ROME.
- Dali
is
from
a cubic
egg covered
dynamic
speech in Latin.
He
declares:
giants,
as
twenty-seven-foot-tall
descend the steps of the Bestegui Palace and dance with the crowd
And,
dipped
in
filling
flour and
breadcrumbs
he had just
said.
is
Spaniard - so
am
I!
Picasso
is
am
I!
Picasso
work
is
troversy.
NICE. -
harrow of Flesh, in which the leading lady falls madly in love with a
wheelbarrow.
PARIS. - Dali marches through the city parading a fifteen-meter
long loaf of bread, which is laid in the Theatre de TEtoile. There, he
delivers a hysterical speech on Eisenberg's 'cosmic glue.'
BARCELONA. - Dali and Luis Miguel Dominguin have planned a
surrealist bullfight, at the close of which a helicopter, dresses as an Infanta
179
He proclaims
Dali.
reveal that
had
in the skies of
Port Lligat
at the birth
of
Rumaguerra,
Gala and he are the incarnation of the cosmic and sublime myth
NEW YORK.
I,
we
122
One thing was certain: Dali loathed all things plain and conventional.
In the
from
showbiz
its
age,
apathy - even
if
infinitely various;
artist.
His gags
For years, one of the most spectacular of his gags was his
habit of taking his paintings to the United States himself. He had bought
an old warship from the Spanish navy for a song especially for the
purpose. In the depths of winter his ship would arrive in the bay at
Cadaques and anchor; there would not be a tourist far and wide, since it
was not the right season nor was the village on the tourist map at that date.
But that was of no concern to Dali. He would have the cannon fire three
rounds (of blanks) to inform the local people that he was setting off for the
New World. And in the evenings in Cadaques the enthusiastic villagers
would drink to their great man's health as he sailed past Gibraltar, the
anything
else.
who
in.
Of
As
the host,
would
lift
would
fish
plates.
it
up on
them, "this
is
Then he
my
soup."
"Never, never, never, never - not even for a quarter of a second - has
an excess of money, publicity, success or popularity made
plate suicide
friend of mine,
ing,
who
it
so happens that
this success?'
'No!'
And
feel
this
caused
me contem-
it.
Recently a
me no
suffer-
rich,
replied emphati-
it, I
could
180
all
like
123
Loan
Petersburg (Fla.)
181
cm
Museum,
Paths to Immortality
madness.
who
is
cannot say
it
often enough:
am
not mad.
My clear-sighted-
"It
sically,' to
upon
it."
whole of
no more heroic or more astounding personality than me, and apart from Nietzsche (who finished by going mad,
though) my equal will not be found in other centuries either. My painting
the century, there has been
proves
124
it."
first set
all
more
movements of modern
home
life
it is
when he
art,
not
felt
under-
country. And, like the Pompiers towards the end of the 19th
Columbus
(p. 182).
The
picture includes
St.
at
Santiago de Compostela and the patron saint of Spain. Dali explained that
(who,
Surrender of Breda.)
Two
in the
Colomb
in Barcelona.
is
Columbus, 1958-59
phy throughout my life. I stated years ago that painting is merely photography done by hand, consisting of super-fine images the sole significance
cm
Petersburg
(Fla.)
183
human
recorded by a
work
human
of art that
eye and
admire was
copied from a photograph. The inventor of the magnifying glass was born
in the
same year
as
And
am
this fact.
view
Vermeer.
Not enough
his subjects
all
Velazquez had
call
a painter
image of
reality,
extraordinary
life,
The
picture of
it
corresponding to what
Vermeer were
is
is
a reality
divisionists.
the
wrong.
Still, it is
who
is
They already
life
Modern
intuited
sensitive
science says
scientists passionately
debating
breathe
pervaded with
nature. So artists
a faithful
tomorrow will be
And
artist
must be capable
tomorrow."
prompted countless soft objects. The globe is being smothered in readymades. The fifteen-metre loaf of bread is now fifteen kilometres long
People have already forgotten that the founder of Dadaism, Tristan
Tzara, stated in his manifesto in the very infancy of the movement: 'Dada
is this. Dada is that
Either way, it's crap.' This kind of more or less
black humour is foreign to the new generation. They are genuinely
convinced that their neo-Dadaism is subtler than the art of Praxiteles."
Dali recalled: "During the last war, between Arcachon and Bordeaux, Marcel Duchamp and I talked about the newly awoken interest in
preparations using excrement; tiny secretions taken from the navel were
considered 'luxury editions.' I replied that I would have liked to have a
navel secretion of Raphael. Now a well-known Pop artist is selling artists'
.
excrement
184
in
When
An\
K
Mr,'
Le concile oecumenique
Oil on canvas, Dimensions unknown
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. A.Reynolds Morse,
Loan to the Salvador Dali Museum,
St.
Petersburg (Fla.)
Duchamp
realised that he
left
his
youth to the
men were
match of contemporary
art;
young
and then
And Dali observed: "At that time there were just seventeen people in
Paris who understood the ready-mades - the very few ready-mades by
Marcel Duchamps. Nowadays there are seventeen million who understand them. When the day comes that every object that exists is a readymade, there will no longer be any ready-mades at all. When that day
comes, originality will consist
in creating a
185
Galacidalacidesoxyribonucleicacid,
963
Galacidalacidesoxyribonucleidacid
cm
The major
project of 1961
Bank,
August
it
leaf
and stones. In
premiered
Bejart).
(libretto, set
Gala was
artist.
Hypercubus)
(p.
171) -
186
He
He
"
to
also
Virgin
The painting
Among
Fishing
(p.
The
The alchemi-
full
of dionysian figures,
Tuna Fishing
1967).
is
kind
means of visual expression. This immense picture (304 X 404 cm) painted
at Port Lligat combines all the styles Dali had worked in: Surrealism,
"refined Pompierism," pointillism, action painting, tachism, geometrical
abstraction,
Pop
art,
Op
art
and psychedelic
art.
Dali
left
an explanation
of his aims in this painting - which ranks in importance with the 1931
Persistence of Memory (p. 67),
York:
"It
subtitle
is
the
in the
Hommage
is
now
a Meissonier.
It is a
Museum
of
Modern
Art,
New
its
What finally made me decide to take the subject, which had been
painting.
me my whole life
long,
all
it
Hence
tuna, and
universe
cosmos
all
is
maximum
which
those
fish, all
those
that
is
to say,
all
the
of hyper-aesthetic energy in
cal spectacle
sea,
all
is
is
it.
my
is
totally red
is
a biologi-
with blood,
is
is
birth
is
sweeter than
who was
winner Watson
the
first
is
dead.'
in jest
" I26
would one day make it possible for Dali the genius to be restored to
am convinced that cancer will be curable and the most amazing
life.
"I
trans-
near future.
operation.
tience
To
restore
someone
shall wait in
my
to
life
liquid
will
helium without
a trace of
impa-
127
Death?? 1 * which speculated: "What if the body does not die? If our
corpse becomes a kind of life factory? There are people who are sheer filth
when they are still alive and smell terrible (in our consumer society this
applies particularly to bureaucrats, who smell worse than anyone else),
but saints, when they die, are metamorphosed into perfume factories. Not
only saints, but also great courtesans." According to Dr. Larcher, blood is
naturally related to the cosmos, and may well be the substance the
alchemists of old were looking for - in their retorts instead of within
themselves.
is
saints
who
died
'in
The corpses of certain saints have the property of secreting balms and
fragrant oils. They have numerous excellent properties and are known as
."
myrofacts. The most famous case is that of St. Theresa of Avila
fact.
He published
he
In
it,
is
their hibernation
excrement
in
is
to stop
first
up
And
this
is
also a
Portrait of
My Dead Brother,
Portrait de
mon
details as Stendhal
shitting
lines of Brueghel's
Oil on canvas,
frere
mort
75 x
75
1963
cm
Tower
of Babel,
Every inhabitant
who wanted
accordance with a
story below
who were
to
move
his
in
PAGES
190/191:
at Perpignan, 1965
La gare de Perpignan
cm
Museum Ludwig, Cologne
Oil on canvas, 295 x 406
:gaa
which was
contemporary developments
illustrated his
"Nowadays towers
machines into
theory:
space,
how human
because astronauts drink their pee and shit into small containers in which
algae and
shit
mushrooms grow to staggering sizes; they can then eat these and
them,
in a cycle. It
is
not a vicious
circle,
minimum
of errors
call
it
." I3
.
"When
astounded everyone
who
Dennis Gabor,
way, though,
wishes: to eat
organism, that
else
more than
exclaimed:
'I
usual, especially
Nobel Prize
want to
eat
my friend
it!'
This
Professor
my
The
maximum
of
'persistence of
make
happy
squirrel
person immortal."
was the very point Spain revolved about when the continents were torn
apart and the Bay of Biscay came into existence. If it had not been for this
phenomenon we should have drifted to Australia and would now be
living amongst the kangaroos - the most dreadful thought conceivable
Finally, so as not to become long-winded, I should like to second what
my friend Michel de Montaigne said: One must always see the ultra-local
in universal terms. And so I always conclude my writings with the words:
'Long live Perpignan railway station! Long live Figueras!' " The Railway
Station at Perpignan (pp. 190-1) was painted after a vision: "On 19
September 1963, at Perpignan railway station, I experienced a moment of
cosmogonic ecstasy: an exact vision of the constitution of the universe."
The painting also includes a variation on the Angelus theme, and on
phallic symbols and symbols of mortality.
Writing in L'Aurore, Michel Deon, a fellow member of the
Academie Franchise, said: "This Renaissance man may hide as much as he
likes behind his exhibitionist facade: what we like is his work, and it is on
his work that he will be judged and not on his moist derrieres, his prickly
sea urchins, his waxed moustache, his mink-lined capes, his Rolls-Royce,
.
192
He
will
respect Dali
is
painter
one of the
is
greatest.
Very few
of Velazquez or Raphael
will
a lost recipe,
cm
lie
de Bendor, France
in this
many
and that
is
his
who
lost,
common
is
a fool
because he
likes
can want.
his art
would
If
in significance.
He
Then we would
it
merits and
would doubtless
work
is
increase
among
the
193
who
man who
has
have a Dali
museum
in his
his
he walked
through Figueras, Dali could admire the mesh-like cupola atop the town
by Perez Pinero,
theatre, designed
whom
Detail from:
55)
Thus there
extremely
is
room
classical studies, a
ceiling paintings
which Dali
by
nude by Bougereau,
Dali, tiny
(as early as
illustrated. It
There
is
is
manufacturer, got to
museum
at Saint
it
know
Foundation Incorporated,
pictures
is
The curator
The museum,
if
the
museum
Petersburg
194
(Fla.)
is
known
is
mechanism
Still
its
suspended objects;
cm
no
has
"We have
says:
Le torero hallucinogene
it
and books
floods.
sets
The
paintings in
its
I'ceil
by Fortuny,
for
a picture
he
Mae
\i T2 15
k
OPPOSITE:
Gala's Castle at Pubol,
Le chateau de Gala
c.
1973
Pubol
from Dali
cm
196
PAGE
198:
Nude, 1974
Desnudo de Calcomania
PAGE
199:
197
>
\V
C^
museum supposedly
art
so
tempted.
final
period, in which he studied the phenomenon of the catastrophe. "Everything I have been doing since then is centred on the phenomenon of
catastrophes," Dali told one of the rare visitors he received at that time.
Thanks to the mathematician Rene Thorn, who had evolved a theory of
catastrophes, Dali developed a rigorously qualitative
way
of thinking
found himself
Thorn put
in a
it, it is
on an
appeal to Dali,
cherries in the
who had
same
was
light.
is
Three periods
his
flies,
grasshoppers and
Woman,
homage
Leda Atomica
to the
(p. 156),
woman who
had been
his Visible
(p. 159).
The great catastrophe that was impending in Dali's own life happened on 10 June 1982, when Gala died, leaving him alone. Dali tried to
commit suicide by dehydrating. How serious was the attempt? He was
convinced that dehydration and return to a pupal state would assure him
of immortality.
seen minute, seemingly dead creatures through the lens of his invention
creatures that were in a state of extreme dehydration and
restored to
life
which could be
Dali concluded (or at least liked the idea) that it was possible to live
on beyond the point of dehydration. What he had not foreseen, though,
was that, having consumed nothing for so long, it became impossible for
him to swallow anything at all. From then till his dying day he was fed
liquid nutriments through a tube up his nose. In his Dix recettes d'immortalite Dali had written of "immortality vouchsafed by dehydration and
temporary return to a pupal stage, as Collembole's discovery of a species
of micro-organisms showed in 1967. These are a living fossil group that
have been in existence since the Devonian (a geological system dating
back approximately 400 million years)." The truth is that Dali was not
concerned about his body. All that mattered was the immortality of the
"garden of his mind." Dali also attempted an auto-da-fe, ringing and
ringing the push-button bell that
summoned his
fire
Another
side effect
was
life.
He would become
nobody could understand what he was
if
200
his lips.
who
is
Perpetuated
in Six Virtual
Corneas
in Six
Real
work on two
cm
is
Transformed
Gala regardant
la
(Hommage
Rothko), 1976
Mer Mediterranee
qui a vingt
Lincoln
(Hommage
Rothko)'
202
cm
Odalisque cybernetique
Oil on canvas, 200 x 200
cm
203
Show Gala
Dali soulcvant
la
pour montrer
peau de
Gala
la
la
Mer Meditcrranee
naissance dc Venus
work on two
cm
204
A\ w
dans
les
nuages
work on two
Gift
from Dalf
cm
205
himself.
still
when
came to business,
was Salvador Dali
it
deals.
receptacle of the angels? Until the end he gave whatever instructions were
was the
monumental Newton
One of them
who were
management of his
business concerns and of the Gala-Dali Theatre-Museum, and suggested
that Dali was no longer capable of making his own decisions. Dali was
incensed. He summoned Pujol to the Torre Galatea and told him with a
smile: "I should like to give one of my most beautiful paintings, Concriticized the
Who would question the sanity of a man who had just made a
Catalonia."
gift
of a painting estimated
intellectuals
at half a
In fact, Dali
was
still
million dollars?
if
delighting in
life,
work and be
still
and
who
remained to be
assured of immortality. In
The Catalonian
their time.
done
to the province of
work and
person, the immediate retinue included the painter Antonio Pichot, his
pupil from the artistic family that had helped
secretary Maria Theresa,
who
Cadaques,
a painter; his
him become
its
a hotel, the
a car
workshop
in
shoot
... It all
206
is
Descharnes that
exactly linked to
its
it
matching
depends on
life is
felt
to see
my pictures
hidden
in
my work
state.
from Dali
cm
He observed:
"I
and
Gift
"Crowds go
will
them
go on doing so
in future
because
with
26 July 1982)
lies at rest
- among them
a Cadillac.
207
personnages conversant
Painted bronze, 90 x 70 x 38
cm
208
The
Pearl, 1981
La perle
Oil on canvas, 140 x 100
cm
209
I,
H *
Adam
on the
Rome, 1982
Rome, du
Michel-Ange
Oil on canvas, 60 x 75
Gift
*,.
from Dali
cm
210
la
ft
TV..
'i"jf-
Athens
is
Burning
Fire,
1979-8
Athenes brule!
du Borgo
work on two panels,
each 32.2x43.1
cm
211
212
Knidos
in a
from Dali
cm
213
Tables Ferociously
ferocement un
Oil on canvas, 73 x 92
cm
214
cm
215
Dali:
A Chronology
1904-1989
904
Salvador Dali
is
born 2
May
at
is
ap-
Buriuel.
1923
1918
An
exhibition of his
work
at the
He
Academy, and
also detained
under
is
year.
critics.
1919
He
ters in a local
magazine, and
Quand les
192
Dali's
Academy
mother
is
exhibition at
dies in February. In
accepted
at
of Art in Madrid.
He
lives in a stu-
expelled for a
arrest in
at
Cadaques
926
first
Dali with
his sister
is
in
time and
perma-
Academy.
about 1925/26
Dali
Gcrona
with Lorca. In
Bruits
s'endorment (poems).
October Dali
925
is
group of collectors
buys
his
933
and regularly
established,
is
work.
In Minotaure
magazine he publishes
He
934
exhibits
Surrealists
exhibition
is
936
The Spanish
Civil
War
December he makes
1937
(p. 2
in a diving suit. In
the cover of
Time
(p. 218).
Marx
Hollywood
begins. Lectur-
London, Dali
magazine
New York
triumphant success.
8).
Harpo Marx
in
Metamorphosis of Narcissus,
method.
wholesale exer-
He
1938
1927
condemn
his
comments on
Hitler.
He visits
don
number
(July)
and draws
Freud
in
of portraits of
nation
him.
1939
1928
Llui's
Montahya and
1929
Sebastia Gasch.
final.
premiered
at
the Metropolitan
Opera
set design
in
by Dali and
Un Chien
official accept-
is
The
in
1930
ical
He
la
extremists
1931
is
showing.
is
published in the
1 932
Dali exhibits in the first Surrealist
show in the USA. He writes Babaouo, a screenplay - though the film, like all his subsequent
Surrealists in Paris,
left:
Tristan Tzara,
Crevel,
Man Ray
is
New
P1FTB8N
NT.
mbl
14,
1VJ6
TIME
942
The
published
1946
in
is
America.
948
published
1949
in
Craftsmanship
is
America.
Lucino Visconti.
Brook and
of
195
Beginning of
1952
Exhibits in
Rome and
Venice. Nuclear
mysticism.
.
..
1953
Cover of Time Magazine, 14 December 1936
Triumphant
lecture
on the
1954
method
at the
Dali with
his father at
Cadaques, 1948
Sorbonne (December).
956
Exhibit
at
Washington, D.C.
1
940
After a brief
Gala return to
visit
remain
1959
1958
12
loaf of bread at a
happening
at
a fifteen-metre
of
Dali-Miro exhibition
Modern
Art,
in the
Museum
New York.
960
9).
works such
as
The
1961
Dali drawing Harpo Marx on a plate, Hollywood, February 1937
(p. 2
the Theatre de
l'Etoile, Paris.
1941
invented in Paris
Ballet de
Gala
is
(p. 185).
premiered
in
choreography by Maurice
lecture
at the
Paris Polytechnic.
962
Descharnes.
963
Millet's Angelus.
He begins
Myth of
to ascribe a decisive
964
Seibu
First
Museum, Tokyo.
in the
Diary of a Genius.
in
Cleveland,
978
work on
member
Paris.
1979
1982
is
created
to Gala.
1983
important retrospective
Barcelona.
May: Dali
The Swallowtail
is
An
(p. 215).
Diamanti, Ferrara
(Italy).
Dali presenting
1988
Union
1989
the Pushkin
bis
Museum, Moscow.
He is
Pubol
Theatre-Museum
castle.
living
interred in
in
Figueras as
In
May
a large retrospective
subsequently
is
state.
seen in Stuttgart,
in Zurich.
in
1970
Dali with
1983
Notes
94
45
Ibid, p. 241.
46
Ibid, p.
47
Ibid, p. 248.
95
48
Ibid.
96
49
Dali
244
(Paris, 1966).
The
97
S. Dali, Journal
98
S.
The
d'un genie.
were
51
Ibid, p. 212.
52
359
53
S. Dali, Journal
54
S.
ten
The
Dalf
(Paris, 1964);
(New
York,
Secret Life, p. 2
Dali,
The
3.
99
1974.
d'un genie.
Dali,
f.,
Secret Life,
p. 253.
E.
p. 465.
Ibid, p. 296.
1964).
56
Ibid, p. 258.
101
S.
57
Ibid, p. 257.
102
Ibid, p. 371.
58
Ibid, p. 282.
103
Ibid, p. 375
59
Ibid, p.
104
Ibid, p. 378.
60
Ibid, p.
287 f.
105
Ibid, p. 390.
61
Ibid, p.
289
106
Ibid, p. 383.
62
Ibid, p. 293.
63
Ibid, p. 306.
sions selon
4
Ibid.
S. Dali,
The
64
Ibid.
S.
10
Ibid.
S. Dali,
65
Passions.
Ibid, p.
260
ff.
f.
107
307 f.
la
beaute terrifiante
comestible de l'architecture
in ibid.
et
66
12
S.
13
S.
Dali,
14
Ibid, p. 2.
The Secret
Life, p.
1.
S.
Dali,
The
Ibid, p. 283.
68
S.
The Secret
15
69
S.
Ibid, p. 81.
70
Salvador Dali, Le
17
Ibid, p. 149.
Dali,
283
Anai's
vol. 3,
The Secret
110
Dali/Parinaud,
Craftsmanship
113
S. Dali, Journal
114
20
Ibid, p. 159.
72
Ibid.
21
Ibid, p. 158
73
Ibid, p. 313
22
Ibid, p. 160.
74
Ibid, p. 314.
23
Ibid, p. 162.
75
Ibid, p.
24
Ibid, p. 198.
76
Ibid, p. 317.
25
Ibid, p. 201.
77
Ibid, p. 327.
120
Ibid.
26
Ibid, p. 203.
78
Ibid, p. 327.
121
S.
27
Ibid, p.
Ibid, p. 328
122
Ibid, p. 403
28
Ibid, p. 205.
80
123
Ibid, p. 404.
29
Ibid, p. 206.
81
Ibid, p. 331
30
S.
82
31
S.
Dali,
32
Ibid, p. 206.
33
Ibid, p. 205.
83
S.
Dali,
34
Ibid, p. 207.
84
S.
35
Ibid, p. 216.
85
Ibid, p. 14.
36
Ibid, p. 207.
86
Ibid, p. 19
37
Ibid, p.
87
Ibid, pp.
38
Ibid, p. 212.
88
Ibid, p. 25.
39
89
S.
90
Ibid, p. 339.
The
208
ff.
41
Ibid, p. 229.
42
Ibid, p. 231.
Georges
ments,
44
220
S.
Dali,
7,
The
Com-
1973).
91
304
f.
f.
f.
The
Docu-
92
Dec. 1979.
Life, p. 232.
93
Ibid.
119
Ibid.
Comment on
devient
Dali/Parinaud,
Life, p.
338
f.
Comment
on de-
Comment on
devient
Dali.
125
Ibid.
126
Ibid.
127
Ibid.
128
quoted
129
ibid.
(Paris, 1973).
Ibid.
Ibid.
118
130
The Secret
S. Dali, Journal
S.
Ibid.
117
f.
20-23.
vient Dali.
116
124
f.
The Secret
Dali,
Dali/Parinaud,
Dali.
435.
43
115
Ibid, p. 330.
in:
d'un genie.
S.
79
Dali.
f.
Mythe tragique de
71
f.
on devient
Dali/Parinaud,
Ibid, p. 153.
204
Comment
112
Ibid, p. 149
f.
f.
18
The
Life, p.
1 1
19
Dali,
399
109
de-
f.
f.
Dali.
Comment on
Life, p.
Life, p. 25.
1951).
vient Dali.
16
The Secret
S. Dali,
67
Dali,
108
Modern
The
1987), p. 219.
100
Secret Life,
55
p. 349.
following
all
civil
369, 365.
sans re-
S.
The quotations
peinture sur-
S.
50
Dali,
la
f.
Ibid.
Bibliography
Maddox, Conroy,
New York,
Dali,
1979.
Selected
-,
Cleveland, Ohio,
art.
Ninety-three
oils
1917-1970,
1974.
Nin,
Arco, Manuel
del,
Salvador Dali,
ich
und die
Bataille,
7,
1929.
Anai's,
vol.
3 (1939-1944),
New
York,
1966.
und seine
religiose Malerei,
Munich, 1955.
Sanchez Vidal, Agostin, Bunuel, Lorca, Dali: El enigma
sin fin,
Bar-
celona, 1988.
Ana
la
-,
Dali), Sheisha,
-, 'Die
Eroberung des
Werk - sein
F.
Museum Boymans-van
W. James. Rotterdam,
Sammlung Edward
by
Paris, 1985.
1980.
Metamorphose des
Gallwitz, Klaus,
Hamburg,
Gerard,
Narzifl.
1971.
al).
1968.
vador Dali.
-,
Dali
Dali.
Dali.
(preface
by Dr. Roumeguere),
New York,
1974.
Gomez de
1979.
Manger,
Gomez de la Serna).
Jean, Marcel, Histoire de la peinture surrealiste, Paris, 1959.
New
York, 1969.
Museum of Art;
221
Museum
Museum,
1982 (articles by
Mamfeste mystique.
Paris, 1951.
Le
Descharnes).
My the de
Cuillaume
Tell.
Toute
groupe
surrealiste.
'Jc suis
un pcrvcrs polymorphe',
la verite
sur
mon
explusion du
1952 (unpublished).
May
New York,
1952.
1954.
Paloma Esteban
Leal, et
'Aspects phenomenologique de
al).
December
la
mcthodc
paranoi'aque-critique',
La
1956.
Le
al).
My the tragique de
Angelas de
I'
by Rafael Santos
Torrella,
v.
Maur,
Diary of
a genius,
New York,
1965.
Diirer,
Leonardo
'Sant Sebastia',
L'Amic de
July 1927.
Dix
(with Luis Bunuel) 'Un Chien andalou',
Paris, 15
December
Engl, ed.:
La Revolution
surrealiste, 12,
1929, 34-37.
The Dinners of
Gala,
New
York, 1973.
La femme
la
Revolution,
1,
Paris, July
1930.
L 'Amour et
la
'De
la
beaute terrifiante
et
Tell, ballet
histoire critique
du
comestible de l'architecture
Modern
Style,
de Millet', Minotaure,
1,
New
New York,
Paris, 1933.
1934.
Man
to his
'Total
camouflage for
York, 1939.
Hidden
Faces.
New York,
1944.
222
Irra-
New York,
1948.
1942.
1978.
The wines
of Gala,
New York
1936
Exhibitions
(2 objects in
an exhibition of Surrealist
objects)
New Burlington
London (The
Galleries,
International Surrealist
Exhibition)
MacDonald
Gallery,
London (Cezanne-Corot-Dali)
list
major group
Julien
Levy Gallery,
(6
works
in Fantastic Art,
New York
1937
1918
first
Renou
Galerie
et Colle, Paris
(8 paintings in
Origine
developpement de
et
I'
1922
Dalmau
gallery,
8 of Dali's
1938
paintings)
Dalmau
Madrid
1926
gallery,
(3
Barcelona (Dali's
works
in the First
first
Galerie Robert,
solo exhibition)
Dalman
Levy Gallery,
gallery,
Autumn
Julien
1940
1941
Julien
Dalmau
gallery,
Autumn
Levy Gallery,
Museum
Salon)
(3 paintings in the
first
27th Annual
1931
Autumn
und
first
Julien
1945
Bignou
retrospective
by
New York
New York
(European Artists
America)
Modern
works
in
Four
1947
States)
Levy Gallery,
Art,
retrospective,
gallery,
Cleveland
1932
Modern
1943)
Knoedler
1946
the
of
Miro
1943
Newer Superrealism,
March
Surrealistische Malerei)
United
in
Salon)
group exhibi-
Chicago)
with
(Group exhibition)
Salon)
1929
New York
1939
shown
1928
exhibition)
1927
Amsterdam (Group
Bignou
Museum
gallery,
of Art,
Ohio
New York
Galleria dell'Obelisco,
Bignou
1933
gallery,
Rome
New York
1950
Julien
Levy Gallery,
United
Palais des
et abstraction
Stedelijk
of the
in the
Museum, Amsterdam)
Carstairs Gallery,
States)
shown
New York
1934
Grand
Galerie
Andre
Weil, Paris
Lefevre Gallery,
du Cinquentenaire,
London
Aux
1952
Julien
Levy Gallery,
Kunstmuseum,
Basle (22
works
in Phantastische
Jahrhunderts)
Carstairs Gallery,
New York
New York (Jewellery)
Chants de Maldoror)
Galerie Jacques Bonjean, Paris
1953
Zwemmer, London
1954
Britain)
Julien
Levy Gallery,
New York
Great
Palazzo Pallavicini,
shown
in
subsequently
Carstairs Gallery,
New York
223
1955
Museum of Art,
1956
Opening
Denver, Colorado
1975
Salvador Dali
1977
(Erotism in Clothing)
Dale)
1957
(3
works
in Bosch,
Goya and
1978
the Fantastic)
1979
1958
960
Knoedler
gallery,
New York
New York
New York (International Surrealist
1981
shown
in the
Exhibition.
1982
Domain)
Sala Tiepolo,
Madrid (Obra
Musee de
la
963
Knoedler
gallery,
New York
Carstairs Gallery,
D'Arcy Gallery,
on Don Quixote)
Museum from
Cleveland,
Ohio
and A. Rey-
nolds Morse
1
New York
in
Japan (To-
quently travels to
subse-
1983
1965
Gallery of
Modern
Art,
works)
1910-1965)
Knoedler
gallery,
New York
1988
Pushkin Museum,
Moscow
1967
Louisiana
1989
Museum, Humlebaek
(6
works
in
Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart
Seks Surrealister,
1968
Museum
of
Modern
Art,
New York
Heritage)
1969
Kunstverein,
fangen
1970
Hamburg
An-
bis heute)
New York
Knoedler
gallery,
Musee de
l'Athenee,
Museum Boymans-van
Beuningen, Rotterdam
(First
major Dali
museums and
on the
following pages:
retrospective in Europe)
Robert Descharnes:
1971
Staatliche Kunsthalle,
Museum,
Cleveland, Ohio,
73, 74, 75, 77, 78, 79, 81, 84, 85, 87, 88, 91, 92, 95, 96, 99, 100, 109, 113,
141, 144, 148, 149, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 160, 161, 167, 171, 173, 174,
175, 181, 182, 185, 193, 195, 197, 199, 201, 202, 203, 204, 205, 207, 208,
209, 210, 211,212, 213, 214, 215, 216, 217, 218, 219;
1972
the
Basle: p. 107;
Cologne:
p.
Museum Folkwang,
Essen: p. 102/103;
Kunstmuseum
Museum Ludwig,
Staatsgalerie
don:
1973
23*24, 27,
114, 115, 117, 118, 119, 125, 128, 129, 130, 133, 134, 135, 136, 138, 139,
28, 29, 30, 35, 37, 39, 44, 45, 49, 50, 52, 55, 57, 58, 59, 60, 62, 63, 65, 69,
Louisiana
travels to
Museum, Humlebaek
p. 40/41,
The Tate
Gallery,
Lon-
p. 108.
Stockholm)
The reproductions on
lisher's archives: p. 22, 38, 42, 48, 51, 53, 56, 64, 67, 71, 86, 89, 90, 96, 97,
1974
Knoedler
gallery,
New York
224
98, 101, 105, 110/111, 112, 116, 120, 121, 123, 124, 127, 131, 137, 159,
165,177,179,187,196,198.
In this series:
Paul Cezanne
Hajo Diichting
Salvador Dalf
Robert Descharnes,
Gilles Neret
Otto Dix
Eva Karcher
Gustav Klimt
Gottfried Fliedl
Joan Miro
Walter Erben
Bauhaus
Magdalena Droste
Contemporary Art
Klaus Honnef
Expressionism
Dietmar Elger
Pop Art
Tilman Osterwold
Still
Lifes
Norbert Schneider
Antoni Gaudf
Rainer Zerbst
Photography: Frangois Rene Roland
Andrea Palladio
Wundram, Pape
Photography: Paolo Marton
Sembach,
Gabriele Leuthauser,
Peter Gossel
Package Design
Dieter Fricke (Ed.)
in
Japan
"The only
difference between
me and a madman is
that
am
Salvador Dali
not mad."