| Salvador
Dalí |
|
| Birth name |
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech |
| Born |
May 11 1904(1904--)
Figueres, Catalonia, Spain |
| Died |
January 23 1989 (aged 84)
Figueres, Catalonia, Spain |
| Nationality |
 Spanish |
| Field |
Painting, Drawing, Photography, Sculpture, Writing |
| Training |
San Fernando School of Fine Arts, Madrid |
| Movement |
Cubism, Dada, Surrealism |
| Famous works |
The Persistence of Memory (1931)
Face of Mae West Which May Be Used as an Apartment, (1935)
Soft Construction with Boiled Beans
(Premonition of Civil War) (1936)
Swans Reflecting Elephants (1937)
Ballerina in a Death's Head (1939)
The Temptation of St. Anthony (1946)
Galatea of the Spheres (1952)
Young Virgin Auto-Sodomized by the Horns of Her
Own Chastity (1954) |
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, 1st Marquis of Púbol
(May 11 1904 – January 23
1989), was a Spanish surrealist painter born in Figueres, Catalonia (Spain).
Dalí was a skilled draftsman, best known for the striking and bizarre images in his
surrealist work. His painterly skills are often attributed
to the influence of Renaissance masters.[1] 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.
Dalí insisted on his "Arab lineage", claiming that his ancestors were descended from the Moors
who occupied Southern Spain for nearly 800 years (711-1492), and attributed to these origins, "my love of everything that is
gilded and excessive, my passion for luxury and my love of oriental clothes."[2]
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.[3] The purposefully-sought notoriety led to broad public recognition and many
purchases of his works by people from all walks of life.
Biography
Early life
Dalí was born on May 11, 1904, at 8:47 am GMT[4] in the town of Figueres, in the
Empordà region close to the French border in Catalonia, Spain.[5] 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[6] whose strict disciplinarian approach was tempered by his housegirl (Dalí's mother), Felipa
Domenech Ferres, who encouraged her son's artistic endeavors.[7] When he was five, Dalí was taken to his brother's grave and told by his parents that he was his
brother's reincarnation,[8] which he came to
believe.[9] Of his brother, Dalí said: "… [we] resembled
each other like two drops of water, but we had different reflections."[10] He "was probably a first version of myself but conceived too much in the absolute."[11]
Self-portrait — by teenaged Dalí in 1921
Dalí also had a sister, Ana María, who was three years younger.[6] In 1949 she published a book about her brother, Dalí As Seen By His Sister.[12] 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.[6] 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 February 1921, Dalí’s mother died of breast cancer. Dalí was sixteen years old; he later said 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."[13] 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.[6]
Madrid and Paris
In 1922, Dalí moved into the Residencia de estudiantes (Students'
Residence) in Madrid[6] 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.
Dalí 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, whose homosexual advances he rejected,[14] 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.[15] His mastery of
painting skills is well documented by that time in his flawlessly realistic Basket of Bread, which was painted in
1926.[1] 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,[16]
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 through World War II
In 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.[17]
Also that year he met his muse, inspiration, and future wife Gala,[18] 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.[6][7]
In 1931, Dalí painted one of his most famous works, The Persistence of
Memory.[19] 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.[20]
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.
Dalí was introduced to America by art dealer Julian Levy in 1934, and the exhibition of Dalí
works (including Persistence) in New York created an immediate sensation. Social
Register listees feted him at a specially organized "Dali Ball". He showed up wearing on his chest a glass case containing
a brassiere. [21]
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.[22].
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. He commented that "I just wanted to show that I was 'plunging deeply' into the human mind." [23]
During the Spanish Civil War Dalí remained apolitical, striving to comprehend the
war in its minutiae.[18] His surrealist
fellows, being predominantly Marxist, eventually maintained his expulsion from this
group.[18] At this, Dalí retorted,
"Le surréalisme, c'est moi."[15] André Breton coined the anagram "avida dollars" (for Salvador Dalí), which more or less translates to "eager for
dollars,"[24] 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, Dalí returned to the practice of
Catholicism. In 1942, he published his autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí.
An Italian friar, Gabriele Maria Berardi, claimed to have
performed an exorcism on Dali while he was in France in 1947. [25] The friar's estate contained a sculpture of Christ on the cross which Dali had
given his exorcist to thank him. [26] The sculpture was
discovered in 2005 and two Spanish experts in Surrealism confirmed that there were adequate stylistic reasons to believe the
sculpture was made by Dali. [27]
Later years in Catalonia
Starting 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.[28] 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.[29]
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[30] and was among the first artists to employ holography in an
artistic manner.[31] Several of his works
incorporate optical illusions. In his later years, young artists like Andy Warhol proclaimed Dalí an important influence on pop art.[32] 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).[33] Dalí
was also fascinated by DNA and the hypercube - a 4-dimensional
cube - and an unfolding of a hypercube 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.[34] “Nuclear
Mysticism” included such notable pieces as La Gare de Perpignan, 1965, and Hallucinogenic Toreador, 1968–1970. 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.
Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) (1954)
In 1968, Dalí filmed a television advertisement for Lanvin chocolates[35] and in 1969 designed the Chupa Chups logo. 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 the television programme Dirty Dalì: A Private View broadcast on Channel 4 on 3
June 2007, the art critic Brian Sewell described his acquaintance with Dalí in the late
1960s, which included lying down in the fetal position without trousers in the armpit of a figure of Christ and masturbating for
Dalí who pretended to take photos while fumbling in his own trousers.[36][37]
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[38]
under unclear circumstances—possibly a suicide attempt by Dalí, possibly simple negligence by his staff.[15] 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 Brussels
There 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.[39] 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.[20] 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.[40]
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 carrying an ancient obelisk,[41] are portrayed "with long, multi-jointed, almost invisible legs of desire"[42] 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."[42] … 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;[43] 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.[43]
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.
Dalí was fascinated by Jean-François Millet's The Angelus , and wrote an analysis of it, The Tragic Myth of The Angelus of
Millet. Rather than seeing it as a work of spiritual peace, Dalí believed it held messages of repressed sexual aggression. Dalí
was also of the opinion that the two figures were praying over their buried child, rather than to the Angelus. Dalí was so
insistent on this fact that eventually an X-ray was done of the canvas, confirming his suspicions: the painting contains a
painted-over geometric shape strikingly similar to a coffin. (Néret, 2000) However, it is unclear whether Millet changed his mind
on the meaning of the painting, or even if the shape actually is a coffin.
Endeavors outside painting
Dalí 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.[44] "Lobsters and telephones had strong sexual
connotations for [Dalí]" according to the display caption for the Lobster Telephone at the Tate
Gallery, "and he drew a close analogy between food and sex."[45] 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.[44]
The wood and satin Mae West Lips Sofa was shaped after the lips of actress Mae West,
whom Dalí apparently found fascinating.[18]
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 between 1941 and 1970 Dalí was also responsible for creating a striking ensemble of jewels, 39 in total. The
jewels created are intricate and some contain actual moving parts. The most famous jewel created by Dalí 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. Dalí 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." (Dalí, 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.[46] 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.[47]
Bacchanale was followed by set designs for Labyrinth in 1941 and The Three-Cornered Hat in 1949.[48]
Dalí also delved into the realms of filmmaking, most notably playing a large role in the
production of Un Chien Andalou, a 17-minute French art film co-written with
Luis Buñuel that is widely remembered for its graphic opening scene simulating the slashing
of a human eyeball with a razor. Dalí collaborated again with
Luis Buñuel on the 1930 film, L'Âge d'Or, and went on to write a number of
filmscripts, very few of which made it past conception. The most well-known of his film projects is probably the dream sequence
in Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound, which heavily delves into themes of psychoanalysis. He also worked on a
Disney cartoon production Destino;
completed in 2003 by Baker Bloodworth and Roy Disney, it contains dream-like images of
strange figures flying and walking about. Dalí completed only one other film in his lifetime: Impressions of Upper
Mongolia (1975), in which he narrated a story about an expedition in search of giant hallucinogenic mushrooms. The imagery
was based on microscopic uric acid stains on the brass band of a ballpoint pen on which Dalí had been urinating for several
weeks.[49]
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."[47] Photographers with whom he collaborated include Man Ray, Brassaï, Cecil Beaton, and
Philippe Halsman.
With 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."[47]
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."[50]
In 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.[50]
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.
One of Dalí's most unorthodox artistic creations may have been an entire person. At a French nightclub in 1965 Dalí met
Amanda Lear, a 6'3" transsexual fashion model then known as Peki D'Oslo.[51] Lear became his protege and muse,[51] writing about their affair in the authorized
biography My Life With Dalí (1986).[52]
Transfixed by the mannish, larger-than-life Lear, Dalí masterminded her successful transition from modeling to the music world,
advising her on self-presentation and helping spin mysterious stories about her origin as she took the disco-art scene by storm.
According to Lear, she and Dalí were united in a "spiritual marriage" on a deserted mountaintop,[51] and it has been speculated that Dalí financed Lear's sex reassignment
surgery. Referred to as as Dalí's "Frankenstein,"[53] some believe Lear's name is a pun on the French "L'Amant Dalí," or Lover of Dalí. Lear took the
place of an earlier muse, Ultra Violet (Isabelle Collin
Dufresne), who had left Dalí's side to join the Factory of Andy Warhol.[54]
Politics and personality
Salvador Dalí's politics played a significant role in his emergence as an artist. He has sometimes been portrayed as a
supporter of the authoritarian Franco.[28][55] André Breton, leader
of the surrealist movement, made a strong effort to dissociate his name from surrealists proper. The reality is probably somewhat
more complex; in any event, he was 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."[56] The misunderstanding probably arises
from Dalí's deliberately provocative scorn for the communist leanings of his peers, and the fact that he painted Hitler on more
than one occasion. However, as he correctly pointed out to his critics at the time, it was impossible for him to have been a
supporter of Hitler, who would have "done away with hysterics" such as Dalí.
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 Dalí in for questioning on his politics. In his 1970 book Dali by Dali, Dalí was declaring
himself an anarchist and monarchist giving rise to speculations of Anarcho-Monarchism.
While in New York City in 1942, he denounced his colleague, surrealist 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.[57]
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[ing] 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."[56] 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."[28] 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.[14]
Some critics alleged Dalí was motiviated not by art but greediness, which led Breton to nickname him "Avida Dollars" (an
anagram).
1960s alway making antics
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."[58]. 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.
Listing of selected works
Dalí produced over 1,500 paintings in his career,[59]
in addition to producing illustrations for books, lithographs, designs for theater sets and costumes, a great number of drawings,
dozens of sculptures, and various other projects, including an animated cartoon for
Disney. Below is a chronological sample of important and representative work, as
well as some notes on what Dalí did in particular years:[1]
In Carlos Lozano's biography, Sex, Surrealism, Dalí, and Me, produced by the collaboration of Clifford Thurlow, Lozano makes it clear that Dalí never stopped being a surrealist. As Dalí said of
himself: "the only difference between me and the surrealists is that I am a surrealist."[24] Everything, including his support for Franco and telegrams to
Ceauşescu must be seen in this light.
- 1910 Landscape Near Figueras
- 1913 Vilabertin
- 1916 Fiesta in Figueras (begun 1914)
- 1917 View of Cadaqués with Shadow of Mount Pani
- 1918 Crepuscular Old Man (begun 1917)
- 1919 Port of Cadaqués (Night) (begun 1918) and Self-portrait in the Studio
- 1920 The Artist’s Father at Llane Beach and View of Portdogué (Port Aluger)
- 1921 The Garden of Llaner (Cadaqués) (begun 1920) and Self-portrait
- 1922 Cabaret Scene and Night Walking Dreams
- 1923 Self Portrait with L'Humanite and Cubist Self Portrait with La Publicitat
- 1924 Still Life (Syphon and Bottle of Rum) (for García Lorca) and
Portrait of Luis Buñuel
- 1925 Large Harlequin and Small Bottle of Rum, and a series of fine portraits of his sister Anna Maria, most notably
Figure At A Window
- 1926 Basket of Bread and Girl from Figueres
- 1927 Composition With Three Figures (Neo-Cubist Academy) and Honey is Sweeter Than Blood (his first important
surrealist work)
- 1929 Un chien andalou (An Andalusian Dog) film
in collaboration with Luis Buñuel, The Lugubrious Game, The Great Masturbator, The First Days of
Spring, and The Profanation of the Host
- 1930 L'Âge d'Or (The Golden Age) film in
collaboration with Luis Buñuel
- 1931 The Persistence of Memory (his most famous work, featuring the
"melting clocks"), The Old Age of William Tell, and William Tell and Gradiva
- 1932 The Spectre of Sex Appeal, The Birth of Liquid Desires, Anthropomorphic Bread, and Fried Eggs on
the Plate without the Plate. The Invisible Man (begun 1929) completed (although not to Dalí's own satisfaction).
- 1933 Retrospective Bust of a Woman (mixed media sculpture collage) and Portrait of
Gala With Two Lamb Chops Balanced on Her Shoulder, Gala in the window
- 1934 The Ghost of Vermeer of Delft Which Can
Be Used As a Table and A Sense of Speed
- 1935 Archaeological Reminiscence of Millet’s Angelus and The Face of Mae
West
- 1936 Autumn Cannibalism, Lobster Telephone, Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil
War) and two works titled Morphological Echo (the first of which
began in 1934).
- 1937 Metamorphosis of Narcissus, Swans Reflecting Elephants, The Burning
Giraffe, Sleep, The Enigma of Hitler, Mae West Lips
Sofa and Cannibalism in Autumn
- 1938 The Sublime Moment and Apparition of a Face and Fruit Dish on the Beach
- 1939 Shirley Temple, The
Youngest, Most Sacred Monster of the Cinema in Her Time
- 1940 The Slave Market with Disappearing Bust of Voltaire, The Face of
War
- 1941 Honey is Sweeter than Blood
- 1943 The Poetry of America and Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man
- 1944 Galarina and Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a
Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening
- 1944–1948 Hidden Faces, a novel
- 1945, Basket of Bread—Rather Death Than Shame and Fountain of Milk Flowing Uselessly on Three Shoes; This year
Dalí collaborated with Alfred Hitchcock on a dream sequence to the film
Spellbound, to mutual dissatisfaction.
- 1946 The Temptation of St. Anthony
- 1948 Les Elephants
- 1949 Leda Atomica and The Madonna of Port Lligat. Dalí
returned to Catalonia this year.
- 1951 Christ of St. John of the Cross and Exploding
Raphaelesque Head.
- 1952 Galatea of the Spheres
- 1954 The Disintegration of the Persistence of
Memory (begun in 1952), Corpus Hypercubus Crucifixion and Young Virgin Auto-Sodomized by the Horns of Her Own
Chastity.
- 1955 The Sacrament of the L
