(Dali's only novel. In richly visual language, Dali descri...)
Dali's only novel. In richly visual language, Dali describes the lives and loves of a group of aristocratic characters, who, in their beauty, luxury and extravagance, symbolize the decadent Europe of the 1930's.
Salvador Dali was a Spanish Surrealist painter, photographer, sculptor, printmaker and writer, influential for his explorations of subconscious imagery. He created more than 1500 paintings during his lifetime and many works in other mediums, including prints, drawings, sculpture, book illustration and theater set designs.
Background
Salvador Dali was born on May 11, 1904 in the town of Figueres, near Barcelona, Spain. His father, Salvador Rafael Aniceto Dali Cusi, was a middle-class lawyer and notary, whose strict disciplinary approach was tempered by his wife, Felipa Domènech Ferrés, who encouraged her son's artistic endeavors. The young Salvador Dali drew from an early age and was encouraged by his sympathetic mother. She died of cancer, when the artist was just 16 though and his father remarried the sister of his mother.
Education
Dali studied painting at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid, responding to various influences, especially the metaphysical school of painting, founded by Giorgio de Chirico, and at the same time dabbling in cubism. Gradually, Dali began to evolve his own style, which was to execute in an extremely precise manner the strange subjects of his fantasy world. Salvador was expelled from the Academy in 1926.
In 1926, Dali made his first visit to Paris, where he met Pablo Picasso, whom the young Dali revered. As he developed his own style over the next few years, Salvador made a number of works, heavily influenced by Picasso and Miro.
After a brief period from 1925 to 1928, when Salvador was influenced by the abstract art of his compatriots Pablo Picasso and Joan Miro, he returned to his earlier interest in the "Metaphysical School" of Italian painting, especially the work of Giorgio di Chirico and Carlo Carrà, whose strong concern with the evocative power of symbols suggested deliberate investigation of dream imagery according to the principles of Freudian psychology.
In 1929, Dali moved to Paris and became officially a Surrealist. In contrast to the usual Surrealist preoccupation with the phenomena of unconscious thought, Dali insisted upon a more consciously objective presentation of the psychotic experience of paranoiac obsession. Depicting with great precision familiar objects in illogical settings and combinations, he described his own paintings as "handmade photographs", executed according to the "paranoiac-critical method". Each object was drawn with painstaking exactness, yet it existed in weird juxtaposition with other objects and was engulfed in an oppressive perspectival space, which often appeared to recede too rapidly and tilt sharply upward. He used bright colors, applied to small objects, set off against large patches of dull color.
In 1929, Dali painted some of his finest canvases, when he was still young and excited over his surrealist ideas and had not yet developed so extensively his elaborate personal facade. The same year, he collaborated with surrealist film director Luis Bunuel on the short film "Un Chien Andalou" ("An Andalusian Dog").
Surrealists saw in Dali the promise of a breakthrough of the surrealist dilemma in 1930. He put forth his "Paranoic-Critical method" as an alternative to having to politically conquer the world. Dali felt, that his own vision could be imposed on and color the world to his liking so that it became unnecessary to change it objectively.
Specifically, the "paranoic-critical method" meant, that Dali had trained himself to possess the hallucinatory power to look at one object and "see" another. For example, the story of William Tell is generally considered to symbolize filial trust, but Dali's version had it as a story of castration. It became his deliberately cultivated main influence, both in his personal life and in many of his paintings.
In 1931, Dali painted one of his most famous works, "The Persistence of Memory", which introduced a surrealistic image of soft, melting pocket watches.
Dali was introduced to the United States by art dealer Julien Levy in 1934. The exhibition in New York of Dali's works, including "The Persistence of Memory", created an immediate sensation. Social Register listees feted him at a specially organized "Dali Ball".
Toward the end of the 1936, Dali's romantic and flamboyant view of himself began to antagonize the surrealists. There was a final break on political grounds, and André Breton angrily excommunicated Dali from the surrealist movement. The same year, the painter took part in the London International Surrealist Exhibition. His lecture, titled "Fantomes paranoiaques authentiques", was delivered, while wearing a deep-sea diving suit and helmet. He had arrived, carrying a billiard cue and leading a pair of Russian wolfhounds, and had to have the helmet unscrewed as he gasped for breath.
At the 1939 New York World's Fair, Dali debuted his "Dream of Venus" surrealist pavilion, located in the Amusements Area of the exposition. It featured bizarre sculptures, statues and live nude models in "costumes", made of fresh seafood, an event, photographed by Horst P. Horst, George Platt Lynes and Murray Korman.
In 1940, as World War II tore through Europe, Dali and his wife, Gala, moved to the United States, where they lived for eight years. They were able to escape, because, on June 20, 1940, they were issued visas by Aristides de Sousa Mendes, Portuguese consul in Bordeaux, France. Salvador and Gala Dali crossed into Portugal and subsequently sailed on the Excambion from Lisbon to New York in August 1940.
Dali's arrival to New York was one of the catalysts in the development of that city as a world art center in the post-War years. Robert and Nicolas Descharnes wrote, that, during this period, Dali never stopped writing. Salvador worked prolifically in a variety of media during this period, designing jewelry, clothes, furniture, stage sets for plays and ballet and retail store display windows.
Dali spent the winter of 1940-1941 at Hampton Manor, the residence of bra designer and patron of the arts Caresse Crosby, near Bowling Green in Caroline County, Virginia. During his time there, he worked on various projects.
In 1941, Dali drafted a film scenario for Jean Gabin, called "Moontide". In 1942, he published his autobiography - "The Secret Life of Salvador Dali". Moreover, he wrote catalogs for his exhibitions, such as that at the Knoedler Gallery in New York in 1943.
In 1948, Dali and Gala moved back into their house in Port Lligat, on the coast near Cadaqués. For the next three decades, the painter would spend most of his time there, painting, taking time off and spending winters with his wife in Paris and New York.
In 1959, André Breton organized an exhibit, called "Homage to Surrealism", celebrating the fortieth anniversary of Surrealism, which contained works by Dali, Joan Miró, Enrique Tábara and Eugenio Granell. Breton vehemently fought against the inclusion of Dali's "Sistine Madonna" in the International Surrealism Exhibition in New York the following year.
Late in his career, Dali did not confine himself to painting, but explored many unusual or novel media and processes: for example, he experimented with bulletist artworks. Many of his late works incorporated optical illusions, negative space, visual puns and trompe l'oeil visual effects. Salvador also experimented with pointillism, enlarged half-tone dot grids (a technique, which Roy Lichtenstein would later use) and stereoscopic images. He was among the first artists to employ holography in an artistic manner.
Dali's post-World War II period bore the hallmarks of technical virtuosity and an intensifying interest in optical effects, science and religion. He became an increasingly devout Catholic, while, at the same time, he had been inspired by the shock of Hiroshima and the dawning of the "atomic age". Therefore, Dali labeled this period "Nuclear Mysticism". In paintings, such as "The Madonna of Port Lligat" (first version, 1949) and "Corpus Hypercubus" (1954), Dali sought to synthesize Christian iconography with images of material disintegration, inspired by nuclear physics. His "Nuclear Mysticism" works included such notable pieces, as "La Gare de Perpignan" (1965) and "The Hallucinogenic Toreador" (1968-1970).
In 1960, Salvador started to work on his Theatre and Museum in his home town of Figueres. It was his largest single project and a main focus of his energy through 1974, when it opened. He continued to make additions through the mid-1980's.
In 1980, at age of 76, Dali's health took a catastrophic turn. His right hand trembled terribly, with Parkinson-like symptoms. His near senile wife allegedly had been dosing him with a dangerous cocktail of unprescribed medicine, that damaged his nervous system, thus causing an untimely end to his artistic capacity. In early January 1989, Dali returned to the Teatro-Museo and on his return, he made his last public appearance.
Man Holding Up a Baby as Though He Were Drinking from a Bottle
1921
Villa Pepita
1922
Portrait of My Father
1920
Still Life with Pears
1922
Bird
1928
Young Girls in a Garden
1921
Self-Portrait Being Duplicated into Three
1927
Two Gypsy Lads
1921
Cadaques
1923
Cubist Self-Portrait
1926
Still Life - Fish
1922
Landscape (Cadaques)
1920
Figures Lying on the Sand
1926
Romeria Pilgrimage
1921
Cubist Composition - Portrait of a Seated Person Holding a Letter
1923
Port Alguer
1924
Cabaret Scene
1922
Portrait of My Sister (original State)
1924
Nude in a Landscape
1923
Still Life
1925
Scene in a Cabaret in Madrid
1922
Festival at San Sebastian
1921
Siphon and Small Bottle of Rum
1924
Female Nude
1928
Apparatus and Hand
1927
Neo-Cubist Academy (Composition with Three Figures)
1926
The Garden at Lyane
1921
Figure on the Rocks
1926
Rocks of Liane (first version)
1926
Abstract Composition
1928
Back the Girl
1926
Portrait of a Gipsy
1919
Honey Is Sweeter Than Blood
1927
Motherhood
1921
Punta es Baluard de la Riba d'en Pitxot
1919
Study of Nude
1925
Artist's Mother, Dofia Felipa Dome Domenech De Dalí
1920
Plant
1924
Playa Port Alguer from Riba d'en Pitxo
1919
Venus and Sailor
1925
Tieta
1920
Portrait of Luis Bunuel
1924
Figure from the Back
1925
Bay of Cadaques
1925
Landscape Near Cadaques
1921
Dutch Interior
1914
Pierrot Playing the Guitar
1925
Rocks on the Coast Lyane
1926
Nude Woman in an Armchair
1927
Don Salvador and Ana Maria Dali
1925
Fiesta in Figueres
1916
Ana Maria
1924
Port Alguer
1919
Portrait of a Girl in a Landscape
1926
The Burning Giraffe
1937
Tuna Fishing
1967
Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening
1944
Galatea of the Spheres
1952
Metamorphosis of Narcissus
1937
Christ of Saint John of the Cross
1951
The Great Masturbator
1929
Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War)
1936
Swans Reflecting Elephants
1937
The Persistence of Memory
1931
Religion
Dali was Catholic, becoming increasingly religious as time went on. His religious views were a matter of interest. In interviews Dali revealed his mysticism. In his later years, while still remaining a Roman Catholic, Salvador also claimed to be an agnostic.
Politics
Salvador Dali's politics played a significant role in his emergence as an artist. In his youth, he embraced both anarchism and communism, though his writings tell anecdotes of making radical political statements more to shock listeners than from any deep conviction. This was in keeping with Dali's allegiance to the Dada movement. As he grew older his political allegiances changed, especially as the Surrealist movement went through transformations under the leadership of the Trotskyist writer, André Breton, who is said to have called Dali in for questioning on his politics. In his 1970 book, "Dali by Dali", he declared himself to be both an anarchist and monarchist. With the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Dali fled from the fighting and refused to align himself with any group. He did the same during World War II, for which he was heavily criticized. After his return to Catalonia post World War II, Dali moved closer to the authoritarian regime of Francisco Franco. Some of Dali's statements were supportive, congratulating Franco for his actions, aimed "at clearing Spain of destructive forces".
Views
Quotations:
"There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad."
"A true artist is not one, who is inspired, but one, who inspires others."
"You have to systematically create confusion, it sets creativity free. Everything, that is contradictory, creates life."
"There comes a moment in every person's life, when they realise they adore me."
"Each morning, when I awake, I experience again a supreme pleasure - that of being Salvador Dali."
"Great wine requires a mad man to grow the vine, a wise man to watch over it, a lucid poet to make it and a lover to drink it."
"One day it will have to be officially admitted, that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion, than the world of dreams."
Membership
Royal Academy of Science, Letters and Fine Arts of Belgium
,
Belgium
1972
Académie des Beaux-Arts
,
France
1978
Personality
When signing autographs for fans, Dali always kept their pens. Salvador Dali frequently traveled with his pet ocelot Babou, even bringing it aboard the luxury ocean liner SS France.
Dali was also known to avoid paying tabs at restaurants by drawing on the checks he wrote. His theory was the restaurant would never want to cash such a valuable piece of art and he was usually correct. Besides visual puns, Dali shared in the surrealist delight in verbal puns, obscure allusions and word games. He often spoke in a bizarre combination of French, Spanish, Catalan and English, which was sometimes amusing, as well as arcane. His copious writings freely mixed words from different languages with terms entirely of his own devising.
Interests
natural science, mathematics
Connections
In August 1929, Dali met his lifelong and primary muse, inspiration and future wife, Gala, born Elena Ivanovna Diakonova. She was a Russian immigrant, who, at that time, was married to surrealist poet, Paul Eluard. Dali and Gala, having lived together since 1929, married in 1934 in a semi-secret civil ceremony. They later remarried in a Catholic ceremony in 1958. In addition to inspiring many artworks throughout her life, Gala would act as Dali's business manager, supporting their extravagant lifestyle, while adeptly steering clear of insolvency. Gala seemed to tolerate Dali's dalliances with younger muses, secure in her own position as his primary relationship. Dali continued to paint her as they both aged, producing sympathetic and adoring images of his muse. Gala died on June 10, 1982, at the age of 87.
Salvador Dali
This work represents reproductions of paintings by one of the 20th century's most famous artists, It includes such works, as "The Visage of War", "The Enigma of Desire", the well-known "Persistence of Memory" and 13 others.
1998
Salvador Dali: The Late Work
This is a highly anticipated publication, that seeks to reassess the legacy of one of the greatest artists of the 20th century.
2010
The Shameful Life of Salvador Dali
The most thorough and ambitious biography of Salvador Dali ever written, a remarkable evocation of the outlandish personality, paranoia and sexual torment, lurking behind the nightmarish images, that shook the world.
1997
Salvador Dali: The Making of an Artist
This extensive volume uncovers Dali's influences, artistic development and legacy, offering unprecedented access inside the world of the man behind the mustache. Through astute analysis of Dali's work and how the events of his time converged with his drive to become a legend, this volume examines one of the most significant contributors to twentieth-century art.
2012
Salvador Dali: A Mythology
Published to accompany a major exhibition of Dali's work, in Liverpool and St. Petersburg, this study presents Salvador's engagement with myth, legend and belief.
Salvador Dali
This work, by Mike Venezia, briefly describes the life and work of the twentieth-century Spanish surrealist painter, describing and giving examples of his art.
1993
World of Salvador Dali
Written while Dali was still alive, this magnificent book explores, in pictures and text, the forces, that shaped Dali's life and work.