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Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dalí Domènech Marquis of Pubol (May 11,
1904 – January 23, 1989), popularly known as Salvador Dalí, was a Spanish artist
and one of the most important painters of the 20th century. He was a skilled
draftsman, best known for the striking, bizarre, and beautiful images in his
surrealist work. His painterly skills are often attributed to the influence of
Renaissance masters. His best known work, The Persistence of Memory, was completed
in 1931. Salvador Dalí's artistic repertoire also included film, sculpture, and
photography. He collaborated with Walt Disney on the Academy Award-nominated short
cartoon Destino, which was released posthumously in 2003. Born in Catalonia, Spain,
Dalí insisted on his "Arab lineage," claiming that his ancestors descended from the
Moors who invaded Spain in the year 711, and attributed to these origins, "my love
of everything that is gilded and excessive, my passion for luxury and my love of
oriental clothes."
Widely considered to be greatly imaginative, Dalí had an affinity for doing unusual
things to draw attention to himself. This sometimes irked those who loved his art
as much as it annoyed his critics, since his eccentric manner sometimes drew more
public attention than his artwork. The purposefully sought notoriety led to broad
public recognition and many purchases of his works by people from all walks of
life.
 Early
life
Dalí was born on May 11, 1904, at 8:47 am GMT in the town of Figueres, in the
Empordà region close to the French border in Catalonia, Spain. Dalí's older
brother, also named Salvador (b. October 12, 1901), had died of gastroenteritis,
nine months earlier, on August 1, 1903. His father, Salvador Dalí i Cusí, was a
middle-class lawyer and notary whose strict disciplinarian approach was tempered by
his housegirl, Felipa Domenech Ferres, who encouraged her son's artistic endeavors.
When he was five, Dalí was taken to his brother's grave and told by his parents
that he was his brother's reincarnation, which he came to believe. Of his brother,
Dalí said: "... resembled each other like two drops of water, but we had different
reflections." He "was probably a first version of myself but conceived too much in
the absolute."
Self-portrait — by teenaged Dalí in 1921Dalí also had a sister, Ana María, who was
three years his junior. In 1949 she published a book about her brother, Dalí As
Seen By His Sister. His childhood friends included future FC Barcelona footballers,
Sagibarbá and Josep Samitier. During holidays at the Catalan resort of Cadaqués,
the trio played football together.
Dalí attended drawing school. In 1916, Dalí also discovered modern painting on a
summer vacation to Cadaqués with the family of Ramon Pichot, a local artist who
made regular trips to Paris. The next year, Dalí's father organized an exhibition
of his charcoal drawings in their family home. He had his first public exhibition
at the Municipal Theater in Figueres in 1919.
In 1921, Dalí’s mother died of breast cancer when he was sixteen years old. His
mother's death "was the greatest blow I had experienced in my life. I worshipped
her... I could not resign myself to the loss of a being on whom I counted to make
invisible the unavoidable blemishes of my soul." After her death, Dalí’s father
married his deceased wife’s sister. Dalí did not resent this marriage as some do
think, because he had a great love and respect toward his aunt.
Madrid and
Paris
In 1922, Dalí moved into the Residencia de estudiantes (Students' Residence) in
Madrid and there studied at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts. A lean 1.72 m
tall dandy, Dalí already drew attention as an eccentric, wearing long hair and
sideburns, coat, stockings and knee breeches in the fashion style of a century
earlier. But his paintings, where he experimented with Cubism, earned him the most
attention from his fellow students. In these earliest Cubist works, he probably did
not completely understand the movement, since his only information on Cubist art
came from a few magazine articles and a catalogue given to him by Pichot, and there
were no Cubist artists in Madrid at the time.
Wild-eyed antics of Dalí and fellow surrealist artist Man Ray in Paris on June 16,
1934, photographed by Carl Van VechtenDalí also experimented with Dada, which
influenced his work throughout his life. At the San Fernando School of Fine Arts,
he became close friends with the poet Federico García Lorca, with whom he might
have become romantically involved, and filmmaker Luis Buñuel.
Dalí was expelled from the academy in 1926 shortly before his final exams when he
stated that no one on the faculty was competent enough to examine him. His mastery
of painting skills is well documented by that time in his flawlessly realistic
Basket of Bread, which was painted in 1926. That same year he made his first visit
to Paris where he met with Pablo Picasso, whom young Dalí revered; Picasso had
already heard favorable things about Dalí from Joan Miró. Dalí did a number of
works heavily influenced by Picasso and Miró over the next few years as he moved
toward developing his own style.
Some trends in Dalí's work that would continue throughout his life were already
evident in the 1920s. Dalí devoured influences of all styles of art he could find
and then produced works ranging from the most academically classic to the most
cutting-edge avant-garde, sometimes in separate works and sometimes combined.
Exhibitions of his works in Barcelona attracted much attention and mixtures of
praise and puzzled debate from critics.
Dalí grew a flamboyant moustache, which became iconic of him; it was influenced by
that of seventeenth century Spanish master painter Diego Velázquez.
1929 until
World War II
The Persistence of Memory (1931) is one of Dalí's most famous worksIn 1929, Dalí
collaborated with the surrealistic film director Luis Buñuel on the short film Un
chien andalou (An Andalusian Dog). He was mainly responsible for helping Buñuel
write the script for the film. Dalí later claimed to have been more heavily
involved in the filming of the project, but this is not substantiated by
contemporary accounts. Also that year he met his muse, inspiration, and future wife
Gala, born Helena Dmitrievna Deluvina Diakonova, a Russian immigrant eleven years
his senior who was then married to the surrealist poet Paul Éluard. In the same
year, Dalí had important professional exhibitions and officially joined the
surrealist group in the Montparnasse quarter of Paris (although his work had
already been heavily influenced by surrealism for two years). The surrealists
hailed what Dalí called the Paranoiac-critical method of accessing the subconscious
for greater artistic creativity.
In 1931, Dalí painted one of his most famous works, The Persistence of Memory.
Sometimes called Soft Watches or Melting Clocks, the work introduced the
surrealistic image of the soft, melting pocket watch. The general interpretation of
the work is that the soft watches debunk the assumption that time is rigid or
deterministic, and this sense is supported by other images in the work, such as the
wide expanding landscape and the ants and fly devouring the other watches.
Dalí and Gala, having lived together since 1929, were married in 1934 in a civil
ceremony (They remarried in a Catholic ceremony in 1958).
He became a friend to the historian and scientist Alexandre Deulofeu, also born in
Empordà as himself.
On Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second Before
Awakening (1944) Dalí said, "the noise of the bee here causes the sting of the dart
that will wake Gala"In 1936, Dalí took part in the London International Surrealist
Exhibition. His lecture entitled Fantomes paranoiaques authentiques was delivered
wearing a deep-sea diving suit. When Francisco Franco came to power in the
aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, Dalí was one of the few Spanish intellectuals
supportive of the new regime, which put him at odds with his predominantly Marxist
surrealist fellows over politics, eventually resulting in his official expulsion
from this group. At this, Dalí retorted, "Le surréalisme, c'est moi." André Breton
coined the anagram "avida dollars" (for Salvador Dalí), which more or less
translates to "eager for dollars," by which he referred to Dalí after the period of
his expulsion; the surrealists henceforth spoke of Dalí in the past tense, as if he
were dead. The surrealist movement and various members thereof (such as Ted Joans)
would continue to issue extremely harsh polemics against Dalí until the time of his
death and beyond. As World War II started in Europe, Dalí and Gala moved to the
United States in 1940, where they lived for eight years. After the move, Dali
returned to the practice of Catholicism. In 1942, he published his autobiography,
The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí.
Later years
in Catalonia
Dalí Theatre and Museum in FigueresStarting in 1949, Dalí spent his remaining years
back in his beloved Catalonia. The fact that he chose to live in Spain while it was
ruled by Franco drew criticism from progressives and many other artists. As such,
it is probable that at least some of the common dismissal of Dalí's later works had
more to do with politics than the actual merits of the works themselves. In 1959,
André Breton organized an exhibit called, Homage to Surrealism, celebrating the
Fortieth Anniversary of Surrealism, which contained works by Salvador Dalí, Joan
Miró, Enrique Tábara, and Eugenio Granell. Breton vehemently fought against the
inclusion of Dalí's Sistine Madonna in the International Surrealism Exhibition in
New York the following year.
Late in his career, Dalí did not confine himself to painting but experimented with
many unusual or novel media and processes: he made bulletist works and was among
the first artists to employ holography in an artistic manner. Several of his works
incorporate optical illusions. In his later years, young artists like Andy Warhol
proclaimed Dalí an important influence on pop art. Dalí also had a keen interest in
natural science and mathematics. This is manifested in several of his paintings,
notably in the 1950s when he painted his subjects as composed of rhinoceros horns,
signifying divine geometry (as the rhinoceros horn grows according to a logarithmic
spiral) and chastity (as Dalí linked the rhinoceros to the Virgin Mary). Dalí was
also fascinated by DNA and the hypercube; the latter, a 4-dimensional cube, is
featured in the painting Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus).
Dalí’s post-World War II period bore the hallmarks of technical virtuosity and an
interest in optical illusions, science and religion. Increasingly Catholic, and
inspired by the shock of Hiroshima, he labeled this period "Nuclear Mysticism". In
paintings such as The Madonna of Port-Lligat (first version) of 1949 and Corpus
Hypercubus, 1954, Dalí sought to synthesize Christian iconography with images of
material disintegration inspired by nuclear physics. “Nuclear Mysticism” included
such notable pieces as La Gare de Perpignan, 1965, and Hallucinogenic Toreador,
1968–1970.
Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) (1954)In 1960, Dalí began work on the Dalí Theatre
and Museum in his home town of Figueres; it was his largest single project and the
main focus of his energy through 1974. He continued to make additions through the
mid-1980s. He found time, however, to design the Chupa Chups logo in 1969. Also in
1969, He was responsible for creating the advertising aspect of the 1969 Eurovision
Song Contest, and created a large metal sculpture, which stood on the stage at the
Teatro Real in Madrid.
In 1982, King Juan Carlos of Spain bestowed on Dalí the title Marquis of Pubol, for
which Dalí later paid him back by giving him a drawing (Head of Europa, which would
turn out to be Dalí's final drawing) after the king visited him on his
deathbed.
Gala died on June 10, 1982. After Gala's death, Dalí lost much of his will to live.
He deliberately dehydrated himself—possibly as a suicide attempt, possibly in an
attempt to put himself into a state of suspended animation, as he had read that
some microorganisms could do. He moved from Figueres to the castle in Púbol which
he had bought for Gala and was the site of her death. In 1984, a fire broke out in
his bedroom under unclear circumstances—possibly a suicide attempt by Dalí,
possibly simple negligence by his staff. In any case, Dalí was rescued and returned
to Figueres where a group of his friends, patrons, and fellow artists saw to it
that he was comfortable living in his Theater-Museum for his final years.
The Temptation of St. Anthony (1946) contained Dalí's symbolic elephant, Musee
d'Art Moderne in BrusselsThere have been allegations that his guardians forced Dalí
to sign blank canvasses that would later (even after his death) be used and sold as
originals. As a result, art dealers tend to be wary of late works attributed to
Dalí. He died of heart failure at Figueres on January 23, 1989 at the age of 84,
and he is buried in the crypt of his Teatro Museo in Figueres.
Symbolism
Dalí employed extensive symbolism in his work. For instance, the hallmark soft
watches that first appear in The Persistence of Memory suggest Einstein's theory
that time is relative and not fixed. The idea for clocks functioning symbolically
in this way came to Dalí when he was staring at a runny piece of Camembert cheese
during a hot day in August.
The elephant is also a recurring image in Dalí's works, appearing first in his 1944
work Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second Before
Awakening. The elephants, inspired by Gian Lorenzo Bernini's sculpture base in Rome
of an elephant to carry an ancient obelisk, are portrayed "with long,
multi-jointed, almost invisible legs of desire" along with obelisks on their backs.
Coupled with the image of their brittle legs, these encumbrances, noted for their
phallic overtones, create a sense of phantom reality. "The elephant is a distortion
in space," one analysis explains, "its spindly legs contrasting the idea of
weightlessness with structure."...I am painting pictures which make me die for joy,
I am creating with an absolute naturalness, without the slightest aesthetic
concern, I am making things that inspire me with a profound emotion and I am trying
to paint them honestly. —Salvador Dalí, in Dawn Ades, Dalí and Surrealism.
The egg is another common Dalíesque image. He connects the egg to the prenatal and
intrauterine, thus using it to symbolize hope and love; it appears in The Great
Masturbator and The Metamorphosis of Narcissus. Various animals appear throughout
his work as well: ants point to death, decay, and immense sexual desire; the snail
is connected to the human head (he saw a snail on a bicycle outside Freud’s house
when he first met Sigmund Freud); and locusts are a symbol of waste and fear.
His fascination with ants has a strange explanation. When Dalí was a young boy he
had a pet bat. One day he discovered his bat was dead, and was covered in ants. He
thus developed a fascination with and fear of ants.
Endeavors
outside painting
Rinoceronte vestido con puntillas (1956), Puerto José BanúsDalí was a versatile
artist, not limiting himself only to painting in his artistic endeavors. Some of
his more popular artistic works are sculptures and other objects, and he is also
noted for his contributions to theatre, fashion, and photography, among other
areas.
Two of the most popular objects of the surrealist movement were the Lobster
Telephone and the Mae West Lips Sofa, completed by Dalí in 1936 and 1937,
respectively. The Scottish patron Edward James commissioned both of these pieces
from Dalí; James, an eccentric who had inherited a large English estate when he was
five, was one of the foremost supporters of the surrealists in the 1930s. "Lobsters
and telephones had strong sexual connotations for " according to the display
caption for the Lobster Telephone at the Tate Gallery, "and he drew a close analogy
between food and sex." The telephone was functional, and James purchased four of
them from Dalí to replace the phones in his retreat home. One now appears at the
Tate Gallery; the second can be found at the German Telephone Museum in Frankfurt;
the third belongs to the Edward James Foundation; and the fourth is at the National
Gallery of Australia.
Gala in the window (1933), MarbellaThe wood and satin Mae West Lips Sofa was shaped
after the lips of actress Mae West, whom Dalí apparently found fascinating. West
was previously the subject of Dalí's 1935 painting The Face of Mae West. The Mae
West Lips Sofa currently resides at the Brighton and Hove Museum in England.
During the years 1941 and 1970 Dali was also responsible for creating a beautiful
ensemble of jewels, 39 in total. The jewels created are intricate and many contain
actual moving parts. The most famous jewel created by Dali is "The Royal Heart".
This particular jewel is crafted using gold and is encrusted with forty-six rubies,
forty-two diamonds and four emeralds. This remarkable piece of art is highlighted
by the fact that the jewel is created in such a way that the center "beats" much
like a real heart and making the viewing of this jewel quite the experience. Dali
himself commented that "Without an audience, without the presence of spectators,
these jewels would not fulfill the function for which they came into being. the
viewer, then, is the ultimate artist." (Dali, 1959.) The Dali —Joies (The Jewels of
Dali) collection can be seen at the Dali Theater Museum in Figueres, Catalonia,
Spain, where it is on permanent exhibition.
In theatre, Dalí is remembered for constructing the scenery for García Lorca's 1927
romantic play Mariana Pineda. For Bacchanale (1939), a ballet based on and set to
the music of Richard Wagner's 1845 opera Tannhäuser, Dalí provided both the set
design and the libretto. Bacchanale was followed by set designs for Labyrinth in
1941 and The Three-Cornered Hat in 1949.
Dalí also delved into the realms of filmmaking, most notably playing large roles in
the production of Un Chien Andalou, a 17-minute French art film co-written with
Luis Buñuel which is widely remembered for its graphic opening scene simulating the
slashing of a human eyeball with a razor. Dalí's other major film work is the
Disney cartoon production Destino; clocking in at a mere six minutes, it contains
dream-like images of strange figures flying and walking about. Dalí also designed
the dream sequence in Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound which heavily delves into
themes of psychoanalysis.
Dalí built a repertoire in the fashion and photography industries as well. In
fashion, his cooperation with the Italian fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli is
well-known, where Dalí was hired by Schiaparelli to produce a white dress with a
lobster print. Other designs Dalí made for her include a shoe-shaped hat and a pink
belt with lips for a buckle. He was also involved in creating textile designs and
perfume bottles. With Christian Dior in 1950, Dalí created a special "costume for
the year 2045." Photographers with whom he collaborated include Man Ray, Brassaï,
Cecil Beaton, and Philippe Halsman.
A photograph from the Dalí Atomica series (1948) by Philippe HalsmanWith Man Ray
and Brassaï, Dalí photographed nature, while with the others he explored a range of
obscure topics, including with Halsman the Dalí Atomica series (1948)—inspired by
his painting Leda Atomica—which in one photograph depicts "a painter’s easel, three
cats, a bucket of water and Dalí himself floating in the air."
References to Dalí in the context of science are made in terms of his fascination
with the paradigm shift that accompanied the birth of quantum mechanics in the
twentieth century. Inspired by Werner Heisenberg's Uncertainty principle, in 1958
he wrote in his "Anti-Matter Manifesto": "In the Surrealist period I wanted to
create the iconography of the interior world and the world of the marvelous, of my
father Freud. Today the exterior world and that of physics, has transcended the one
of psychology. My father today is Dr. Heisenberg."
The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory (1954) was Dalí's way of ushering
in the new science of physics above psychologyIn this respect, The Disintegration
of the Persistence of Memory, which appeared in 1954, in hearkening back to The
Persistence of Memory and portraying that painting in fragmentation and
disintegration, summarizes Dalí's acknowledgment of the new science.
Architectural achievements include his Port Lligat house near Cadaqués as well as
the Dream of Venus surrealist pavilion at the 1939 World's Fair which contained
within it a number of unusual sculptures and statues. His literary works include
The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí (1942), Diary of a Genius (1952–1963), and Oui:
The Paranoid-Critical Revolution (1927–1933). The artist worked extensively in the
graphic arts producing many etchings and lithographs. While his early work in
printmaking is equal in quality to his important paintings as he grew older, he
would sell the rights to images but not be involved in the print-production itself.
In addition, a large number of unauthorized fakes were produced in the eighties and
nineties thus further confusing the Dalí print market.
Politics and
personality
Salvador Dalí's politics played a significant role in his emergence as an artist.
He has sometimes been portrayed as a fascist supporter. André Breton, in
particular, nicknamed him "Avida Dollars" (an anagram) and made a strong effort to
dissociate his name from surrealists proper. The reality is probably somewhat more
complex; in any event, he was probably not an antisemite, as he was a friendly
acquaintance of famed architect and designer Paul László, who was Jewish. He also
professed great admiration for Freud (whom he met), and Einstein, both Jewish, as
can be verified throughout his writings. In his critical review of Dalí's
autobiography Secret Life, George Orwell wrote "One ought to be able to hold in
one’s head simultaneously the two facts that Dalí is a good draughtsman and a
disgusting human being."
In his youth, Dalí embraced for a time both anarchism and communism. His writings
account various anecdotes of making radical political statements more to shock
listeners than from any deep conviction, which was in keeping with Dalí'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 Andre Breton who is said to have called Dali in
for questioning on his politics. In the 1970 'Dali by Dali' Dali was declaring
himself an anarchist and monarchist giving rise to speculations of
Anarcho-Monarchism.
While in New York in 1942, he denounced his surrealist, colleague filmmaker Luis
Buñuel as an atheist, causing Buñuel to be fired from his position at the Museum of
Modern Art and subsequently blacklisted from the American film industry.
Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War) (1936)With the
outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Dalí fled from fighting and refused to align
himself with any group. Likewise, after World War II, George Orwell criticized Dalí
for "scuttl off like rat as soon as France is in danger" after Dalí prospered there
for years: "When the European War approaches he has one preoccupation only: how to
find a place which has good cookery and from which he can make a quick bolt if
danger comes too near." After his return to Catalonia after World War II, Dalí
became closer to the Franco regime. Some of Dalí's statements supported the Franco
regime, congratulating Franco for his actions aimed "at clearing Spain of
destructive forces". Dalí sent telegrams to Franco, "praising him for signing death
warrants for political prisoners." Dalí even painted a portrait of Franco's
grand-daughter. It is impossible to determine whether his tributes to Franco were
sincere or whimsical; he also once sent a telegram praising the Conducător,
Romanian Communist leader Nicolae Ceauşescu, for his adoption of a scepter as part
of his regalia. The Romanian daily newspaper Scînteia published it, without
suspecting its mocking aspect. Dalí's eccentricities were tolerated by the Franco
regime, since not many world-famous artists would accept living in Spain. One of
Dalí's few possible bits of open disobedience was his continued praise of Federico
García Lorca even in the years when Lorca's works were banned.
Dalí was a colorful and imposing presence in his ever-present long cape, walking
stick, haughty expression, and upturned waxed mustache, famous for having said that
"every morning upon awakening, I experience a supreme pleasure: that of being
Salvador Dalí.". The entertainer Cher and her husband Sonny Bono, when young, came
to a party at Dalí's expensive residence in New York's Plaza Hotel and were
startled when Cher sat down on an oddly-shaped sexual vibrator left in an easy
chair. When signing autographs for fans, Dalí would always keep their pens. When
interviewed by Mike Wallace on his Sixty Minutes television show, Dalí kept
referring to himself in the third person, and told the startled Mr. Wallace
matter-of factly that "Dalí is immortal and will not die". During another
television appearance, on the Tonight Show, Dalí carried with him a leather
rhinoceros and refused to sit upon anything else.
Source : Some of the information on
this page came from a Wikipedia article and is licensed under the GNU
Documentation License. ©2008 www.geneticmatrix.com.
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Salvador Dali -
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