Global Dali
By Valery Oisteanu
A diary of surreal insignificance by Valery Oisteanu
The Black Hole of Dali
One recent Sunday afternoon I was invited to join "the traveling dalinians" by the publisher of NY Arts magazine Abraham Lubelski and later by William Jeffett, the curator of the Dali Museum in St.Petersburg, Florida. Both of them said I am the right person to go on a St. Dali pilgrimage to St.Petersburg, Florida and then to Barcelona, Spain. Coincidently, at that time and proving them right, I was downloading photos of naked models arranged in the form of a skull by Dali and Halsman from the show "Halsman/Dali" at Howard Greenberg gallery. Three days later I was on the plane to Tampa.
On the first day I was whisked away by a Dali-shuttle to the Poynter Institute for Media Studies where a grand auditorium filled with participants. Assorted American, English, Spanish, Italian and French speakers from academia were ready for the opening statements of the Dali-conference, "Persistence and Memory," from the Director of the Salvador Dali Museum Hank Hine. Conveniently across the street the turn-style of the entrance to the Salvador Dali Museum was clicking 1000 visitors per day for the "Dali Centennial: The American Collection," curated by Joan Kropf. A selection from the print collection was exquisitely curated by Dirk Armstrong and Kelly Reynolds . The Museum’s founders Eleanor R. & A. Reynolds Morse were friends of Gala and Dali and purchased the main holdings starting in the 40s and became Dali’s major patrons.
This was the first ever American international event organized about Dali with the help of the willing coalition: Foundation Gala-Salvador Dali-Figueres, Centre d’Estudias Daliniana, the Palazzo Grassi(Venice), the AHRB research center for the study of Surrealism (England), University of South Florida, Centre George Pompidou, Picasso Museum Malaga and many other official local and international entities.
Deconstruction of Dali of Academic Proportions
Dali as an academic subject well rationalized and institutionalized, which is hard to imagine for a man as eccentric as Dali, but the PhD-power at this conference reveals that Dali knew how much homage to pay to the classics to be compared to them. It is an impossibility to do justice to all the speakers. I apologetically acknowledge that some are not mentioned below.
The keynote speaker Dawn Ades ("Dali & Duchamp," from the university of Essex) legitimized Dali as a surrealists-scholar’s subject. The artists’ collaboration and friendship lasted longer than their membership in the movement. As an example, she points out that Dali bought a Duchamp, Box in a Valise, in 1934. Duchamp is the only fellow surrealist exhibited in his private collection in the Museum in Figueres.
Jeremy Stubbs from the University of Manchester presented a humorous paper "Automatism, Paranoia, Simulation: Surrealism between Breton and Dali." "The face is the battleground," boomed his deep voice, "Delusion of persecution…pathogenic narcissism-a path to homosexuality …Super Id-self-punishment."
The next speaker, Robert Lubar, the author of the Dali-2004 museum collection catalogue, read "Dali’s Paranoia: Between Freud, Leonardo and Lacan." He psychoanalyzed some of Dali’s paintings using Shriver’s "corporeal voluptuousness" vis-à-vis sexual persecution; paranoia as a trap in the world of Freudian mirrors; and imaginary structure of oneself–ego formation as an object of knowledge–according to Lacan.
"This harrowing and colossal question of Einsteinian space-time" was Gavin Parkinson’s, of Birbeck College, lecture. He offered the premise that Dali’s understanding of the time-space continuum created a temporal fourth dimension, either through multiple frames, simultaneous actions, or, as Einstein put it, time dilation—a sort of non-Euclidean morphology used by Dali as a burlesque science in the depiction of movement and time past.
The afternoon session started with Vincenc Altai� and Ricardo Mas—"The Birth of the Dalinian Aesthetic 1918-1932." Ricardo Mas begin his presentation by taking off his shoes and his jacket in protest of the elimination of some of his footnotes. Ricardo and Vincenc are both from Barcelona and members of a group called KrTU, Generalitat de Catalunya. Together they organized a research trip for several American writers/journalists, to travel to Barcelona and beyond, so they can participate in the spectacular events of Dali-2004.
Alyce Mahon of the University of Cambridge asked Dali, "tell me Salvador Dali, are you God?" In her lecture she conveys that Dali replied: "Dali is intelligent. God is not."
Pilar Parcerisas of the Centre d’Art Santa Monica presented stills of the surrealist film Babaouo, written by Dali in 1932 but made in 1997 after Parcerisas’s adaptation. In her lecture she points to influences from Alfred Jarry and Raymond Roussel. Dali’s ironic story within a story is an exercise in anti-artistic cinema.
The panel discussion "Emerging Perspectives on Late Dali," moderated by William Jeffett, started with Robert Cozzolino’s "Why are Salvador Dali’s "Late Works" his most Contentious." Other offerings were Jordi Falgas’ "The Other Madonna in Wisconsin: Dali’s Variation on El Greco" and Carmen Garcia de la Rasilla’s "Dali’s Autobiographical Metamorphosis" in which she analyzed his book The Secret Life of Salvador Dali in terms of narcissism and neuroticism. He referred to his paintings as "hand painted dream photographs." After reading the book myself I arrived at the conclusion that it is impossible not to admire this painter as a writer. Ultimately he communicates his snobbishness, self-adoration and fanaticism—in short a total picture of himself. He was a relentless self-promoter, ready at any moment to design theater sets, shop interiors, jewelry, as readily as he made paintings or films.
The evening continued with a reception and a gallery tour by Joan Kropf, the exhibition curator. "The Dali Centennial: An American Collection" (through September 26, 2004) consists of a retrospective from the museum’s permanent collection (plus a selection of rare and less frequently seen art) following a timeline from 1904 to 1989 features significant events in the artist’s career and life. Along with paintings and drawings there is also a selection of prints including Grasshopper Child (1933), several prints from Les Chants de Maldoror (1934), and the recent acquisition Limp Cranes and Cranium Harps (1935).
Didier Ottinger in her lecture "Dali and William Tell," a well done vignette on a very complicated subject, mentions the names of several mystic writers that Dali read. "Desire is an irrational force," contends Ottinger. Dali, a mystic of aphrodisiacal participation, created a dinner jacket to which he glued shot glasses and draped over a photo of a brassiere, creating a "repressed desire" fetishistic altar-piece.
Next was the panel "Emerging Perspectives on Late Dali"—brilliantly moderated by William Jeffett—on science and religion in Dali’s work and his prints from abstract expressionism to cubism to levitating particles. Ingrid Schaffner ,the writer of the new book Salvador Dali’s Dream of Venus (Princeton Architectural Press) presented "Funhouse Ambition: Salvador Dali’s 1939 Dream of Venus and Contemporary Art."
On the same topic Lewis Kachur added a much needed academic dimension with "Staging Dali: The Dream of Venus Pavilion and the Performative at the 1939 World’s Fair." We learned that Dali hired 17 models that rehearsed semi-nude at the hotel Roosevelt pool till 2 am. Two of the models were related to Charles Henri Ford (American surrealist poet), one was his mother, the other his sister. The mother played the role of the Dragon, fed outside Dali’s fun house three times a day as a show. And Ruth Ford, the sister, was a topless mermaid.
William Jeffett, with "Surrealism’s Legacies," also legitimizes Dali’s position in the world of surrealist art quoting Guy Debord’s Society as Spectacle. He describes how in Dali’s work inorganic becomes organic when ants eat watches; sculpture becomes tactile and soft and huggable or edible; and sculpture in the age of doubt turns into installation art.
Jean-Jacques Lebel sent a video created by him about a tradition in Catalonia, going back to the Middle Ages, of placing a young boy defecating as Caganet under the Christmas tree. In his humoristic research Jean-Jacques Lebel discovered the inspirational source of scatological narratives in several of Dali’s drawings and paintings. He ends his video with a collection of antique, folk Caganets dolls including a small kitsch, terra cotta sculpture of Gala and Dali dressed like nobility defecating simultaneously.
The Guest Artist Panel was moderated by Anne d’Harnoncourt, the director of Philadelphia Museum of Art. James Rosenquist delivered the best speech of the evening. Under his spell we discovered that Dali’s brushes were made of sable fur. This was the secret of his detailed strokes of oil paint. He had visited Dali at the St. Regis Hotel’s bar at the special table where Gala sat speechless and described how Dali used to drive through Manhattan in a taxi with Segal’s plaster cast sculptures. Also, once Dali created a scandal by crashing through Bonwit Teller’s windows while rearranging his exotic display. Rosenquist remembers how Dali gave a speech at his birthday party where he said, "Modern art started in Espagna, cubismo started with Juan Gris, surrealismo with Dali."
Last day of the Conference-The Textual and The Marvelous
Montse Aguer from the Center of Dalinian Studies spoke about the expulsion of Dali from the surrealist movement, "Dali’s Exclusion from Surrealism." In 1934 Breton in a letter criticizes Dali’s antihumanism, his defense of academic painting, and, consequently, his critique of modern art. In regards to his position in favor of Hitler, Breton stated that he needed to "obtain from you (Dali), immediately, a very explicit written answer to these questions." On February 3, 1934, Breton communicated to the surrealists his decision to finally expel Dali. A special meeting was held on the 5th of February at Breton’s house. Somehow Dali avoided expulsion for another five years. Finally in 1939 in the last number of "Minotaure" in the article signed by Andre Breton, "The Most Recent Tendencies in Surrealist Painting," Breton clearly expressed his disagreement with Dali’s thoughts and works. This marks historically the end of Dali’s relationship with the movement but not with many of its members.
"There are four Dali’s and the best one is the fifth," (Diary of a Genius), and this is what I discovered at the end of the conference. Dali as a multiple personality disorder—Dali the writer, with an excellent autobiography and many great books; Dali the promotional master; Dali the immortal; and Dali the Saint.
The rest of the story of my travel to" El pays de Dali" will continue in the second part of my surreal diary about Barcelona’s beatifaction of St. Dali, with the cathedral-museum in Figueres and Cadaques, Pubol, Port Ligat and Cape Creus as the stations of the cross in dalinian pilgrimage.
Where to find Salvador Dali:
by Valery Oisteanu
1.Dali Centennial: An American Collection- Dali Museum Exhibition (trough 26 September 2004) St.Petersburg, Tampa Florida
2.Dali: A Retrospective The Palazzo Grassi-Venice Italy (Sept 10-Dec 31,2004)
This exhibition will be presented exclusively at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Feb.-may2005)
3.Dali and Mass Culture- Dali Museum St.Petersburg (Oct1-January12, 2005)
The only American venue of an exhibition traveling from Barcelona (Caixa foundation), to Madrid (Reina Sofia-museum) and to Rotterdam (Boijmans-museum)
4.Dali-100 at The Ludwig Museum Cologne. (June-august2005)
5.�Dali, Lorca, and Bunuel: Madrid, Paris, New York�(1917-1936) Madrid (fall 2004)
6. New publications:
*Complete Works: Eight-volume edition in Catalan and Spanish (nov2003-2006)
*Catalogue Resonne by the Fondation Gala Salvador Dali-2004
*The first Salvador Dali (1918-1930) by Rafael Santos Torroella
*�Dali-Elective Affinities� edited by Pilar Parcerisas, published by Autonomous government of Catalonia, Dept of Culture, Barcelona 2004
*Dali cultura de masses-Fundacio Caixa
