Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ross, Michael Elsohn, 1952–

Salvador Dalí and the surrealists : their lives and ideas : 21 activities / Michael Elsohn Ross.—1st ed.

p. cm.

Summary: Examines the lives and creative work of the surrealist artist Salvador Dalí and other artists and friends who shared his new ways of exploring art. Features art activities that engage the subconscious thoughts and spontaneity of the reader.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 1-55652-479-X

1. Dalí, Salvador, 1904—Juvenile literature. 2. Artists—Spain— Biography—Juvenile literature. 3. Surrealism—Juvenile literature.

[1. Dalí, Salvador, 1904–2. Artists. 3. Surrealism.] I. Title.

N7113.D3R73 2003

2002155628

Front cover, clockwise from top right: Salvador Dalí, Lobster Telephone, 1936, mixed media, 17.8 x 33 x 17.8 cm, Tate Modern, Purchased 1981, © 2003 Salvador Dali, Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Salvador Dalí, The Persistence of Memory, 1931, © 2003 Salvador Dali, Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Dalí in the Theatre Museum, photograph by Melton Casals; René Magritte, Time Transfixed, 1938, Oil on canvas, 147 x 98.7 cm, The Art Institute of Chicago, Joseph Winterbotham Collection, 1970.426, photograph courtesy of The Art Institute of Chicago, © 2003 C. Herscovici, Brussels / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Salvador Dalí, The Weaning of Furniture-Nutrition, 1934, Collection of Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida. © 2002 Salvador Dalí Museum, Inc. Back cover: Fur Covered Cup, Saucer, and Spoon (1936), by Meret Oppenheim. © 2003 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ProLitteris, Zurich

Cover and interior design: Joan Sommers Design

© 2003 by Michael Elsohn Ross

All rights reserved

First edition

Published by Chicago Review Press, Incorporated

814 North Franklin Street

Chicago, Illinois 60610

ISBN 1-55652-479-X

Printed in Singapore by CS Graphics

5 4 3 2 1

To my son Nick

May your life be full of surreal humor and creativity

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Foreword by Peter Tush, Curator of Education, The Salvador Dalí Museum

Time Line

Introduction

1 KING DALÍ

Pictures Everywhere

Art Studio

Crystal Eyes

2 LESSONS FOR A YOUNG ARTIST

Free Association Fun

Inkblots

Splotch Art

3 A LEAP INTO THE SUBCONSCIOUS

Automatic Writing

Poetry from the Deep

Solar Prints

Video of Dreams

Dream Journal

4 DALÍ AND THE SURREALISTS

The “Exquisite Corpse” Drawing

Poem Objects

Surreal Objects

Art in a Box

Host a Dream Ball

Impressive Art: A Frottage

5 DALÍ THE CLOWN PRINCE

Unreal Comedy

Dalíesque Fashion Collage

Double Image Art

Dreamscape

6 CELEBRITY ARTIST

Hair Art

Glossary

Resources

Bibliography

Museums

Web Sites

Image Credits

Index

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many thanks to Peter Tush and the staff of the Salvador Dalí Museum for advice and access to archives. I am grateful to the students of Mariposa Middle School who field-tested the activities and inspired me to complete the project.

I offer hugs to my wife and son, who shared the joy of exploring Dalíworld and supported my efforts to create this book.

FOREWORD

As the curator of education at the Salvador Dalí Museum, I am thrilled to have the opportunity to recommend Michael Ross’s wonderful new work on Salvador Dalí. For years I have waited for an appropriate book to recommend to students and teachers that communicates Dalí’s truly remarkable life and ideas without compromising his complexity in its presentation. I believe that Ross has achieved this delicate balance, providing an exciting context in which to discover the fascinating world of this internationally celebrated Catalan surrealist.

Drawing on more than 25 years of experience as a science educator at Yosemite National Park, Ross has brought a unique sensibility to the world of Dalí. His background in ornithology, geology, botany, and entomology has given him the ability not just to present Dalí’s fascinating story, but to capture and engage with Dalí’s ideas. With his lengthy experience of working with children and writing children’s books, Ross opens the door to Dalí’s ideas for a new generation. The joy of discovery associated with scientific research translates well to the world of Dalí, an artist who constantly applied scientific information to his paintings. Using extensive hands-on projects and art activities, Ross invites young readers to reexperience Dalí’s discoveries firsthand, providing opportunities to engage in the creative processes of Dalí’s approach to art and living.

Michael Ross is a gifted storyteller as well, and he makes Dalí’s life come alive for young readers. Whether explaining the complex world of surrealism, exploring Spanish and Catalan culture, covering the entangled historical figures from Dalí’s life, analyzing the optical phenomena and symbolism in Dalí’s work, or elucidating the surrealist’s interest in the unconscious, Ross succeeds where other authors have fallen short. Not only is Dalí and the Surrealists appropriate for students and teachers, it will be enjoyed by anyone wishing to rediscover why Dalí has fascinated generation after generation of art lovers worldwide.

—Peter Tush, Curator of Education
The Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida

TIME LINE

1874 | First Impressionist Exhibition in Paris
1900 | Sigmund Freud publishes Interpretation of Dreams
1904 | Salvador Dalí born on May 11
1914 | World War I begins
1917 | Dalí begins formal art studies Russian Revolution
1929 | Dalí meets Gala Stock market crashes and the Great Depression begins Buñuel and Dalí's first film, Un Chien Andalou, is shown in Paris
1930 | Buñuel and Dalí collaborate on the film L'Age d'Or, which is later banned
1931 | Dalí paints The Persistence of Memory Establishment of a Republic in Spain
1934 | Dalí makes first trip to New York Right-wing riots in France
1936 | Surrealist exhibition in New York Beginning of Spanish Civil War
1937 | Dalí visits Hollywood and Harpo Marx Guernica bombed by Germany
1939 | Dalí breaks away from surrealist group World War II begins
1942 | Dalí publishes Secret Life of Salvador Dalí Jews sent to concentration camps in Germany
1945 | Atom bomb dropped on Japan World War II ends
1954 | Dalí's Mustache by Philippe Halsman and Dalí is published
1962 | John Glenn is first astronaut to orbit the Earth
1965 | Major retrospective of Dalí's art held in New York
1974 | Theater Museum¯Dalí opens in Figueres, Spain
1975 | Franco dies and Spain begins its change to a democracy
1982 | Salvador Dalí Museum opens in St. Petersburg, Florida
1989 | Dalí dies on January 23
1991 | Communist government of Soviet Union collapses

INTRODUCTION

“She real purpose of surrealism was not to create a new literary, artistic, or even philosophical movement, but to explode the social order, to transform life itself.”—Luis Buñuel, filmmaker

The Weaning of Furniture-Nutrition (1934), by Salvador Dalí

It’s the beginning of the 21st century and a new alternative rock band, Death by Chocolate, has just released its debut CD. It contains poems and tracks with strange titles such as “The Salvidor Dalí Murder Mystery.” Many of the lyrics are free-flying word associations such as “Mustard yellow/marinas and Volvos/waistcoats and snug nylon polo necks/deadly gas and the sound of cardboard tearing.” There’s a 1960s feel to the band, but its roots go even deeper. They go back to a group of young men and women in post–World War I Paris who sought a new way to create art in a world that had lost its meaning. This group of creative artists was called surrealists, a name that fit their passion for seeking creative expressions that went beyond reality, or that seemed to be something more than ordinary and real.

André Breton (bre-TAHN), the leader of the surrealists, said that surrealism is the expression of the true functioning of the mind. Beneath our surface thoughts lie subconscious feelings and ideas. These sometimes express themselves when we make a “slip of the tongue” and say something that we did not consciously want to say. Our subconscious also speaks in our dreams. And if you are a surrealist musician, painter, poet, filmmaker, or just plain artist, you happily allow this “deeper mind” to express itself in your creations.

Jump back in time to September 27, 1974. Outside a renovated theater in Figueres (Feegare-ace), Spain, Salvador Dalí’s hometown, majorettes, dancers, musicians, and even an elephant parade in the streets. The town is swarming with hippies, television camera crews, and a large crowd waiting for the famous artist to arrive for the opening of the Dalí Theater-Museum. Dalí, the world-famous artist and clownish celebrity, has created a museum to showcase his art, memories, and new ideas. At age 70 he is a celebrity who hangs out with the Beatles, Alice Cooper, Mick Jagger, and other rock stars. Dalí arrives with an entourage of young admirers. After receiving a gold medal from the city of Figueres, Dalí ushers the crowd into his unique museum. Three years earlier, the Salvador Dalí Museum had opened in St. Petersburg, Florida, in the United States. Both have attracted crowds ever since. Who was this magnetic artist? How did he so magically capture the interest of the public, both young and old?

Surrealist Poster (1934), by Salvador Dalí

Today, some 80 years after the birth of surrealism, Dalí’s paintings and other surrealism-inspired images stare at us from billboards and rock music CD covers. They scream at us from television commercials and magazine ads. What are some examples? Little dogs asking for burritos are surrealistic. An advertisement that shows army helicopters changing into hornets is surrealistic. Scissors dressed as dancers in silk petticoats are surrealistic. These images are like the strange combination of objects and happenings we experience in our dreams.

In this book, you will discover the life of the surrealist artist Salvador Dalí, and those of other artists and friends who shared his new ways of exploring art. You’ll learn about the events, places, and people who informed and transformed Dalí’s art—art that continues to make him a significant influence on our world. Take time to experiment with the activities found throughout the book. You will find yourself on an unusual journey into the dreamy side of reality.

Dalí in the Theater-Museum.
Photograph by Meliton Casals

1 KING DALÍ

“At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.”—Dalí

Salvador Dalí, age 4.
Salvador Dalí Museum

Pictures of tiny swans and ducks appeared on the tabletop as young Salvador scratched lines into the red paint. It didn’t matter to his mother that her six-year-old son had marked the table. She was proud of his artistic skill. “When he says he will draw a swan, he draws a swan, and when he says he’ll draw a duck, it’s a duck.”

Salvador Dalí was born on May 11, 1904, in Figueres, Spain. This small town is at the edge of the vast Upper Empordá plain in the region of Catalonia (cat-ah-LO-nee-ah). Salvador was the second son born into the Dalí family. His older brother, also named Salvador, had died nine months earlier of a stomach infection when he was only 22 months old. It had been a devastating loss to his parents. They were delighted about the birth of Salvador, but worried about his health and that the same tragedy might befall him.

Dalí’s father, Salvador Dalí Cusí, made a comfortable living as a lawyer. He loved music and arguing about politics. Dalí’s mother, Felipa Domenech Dalí, was a gentle woman who enjoyed raising canaries and doves. For Salvador’s amusement, she drew funny pictures on long strips of paper and folded them, like an accordion, to make little books.

Young Salvador was afraid of his father, who was known throughout the town for his bad temper. He could, however, always go to his mother, the household cooks, or his nursemaid, Lucia, for comfort. His mother may have been particularly protective of young Salvador because of the death of his older brother. All these women served his every need. When Salvador was three years old, his little sister, Anna María, was born. Later, when he was seven, his grandmother, María Anna Ferrés, and a young aunt named Catalina came to live with his family. Among these women, Salvador was treated like a little king. No matter how spoiled he acted, they would always try to grant him his every wish. One of his uncles even sent him a king’s costume, so he had the clothes to fit his role in the household.

His mother encouraged his role as a spoiled child. Each morning when he awoke she would ask, “Sweetheart, what do you want? What do you desire?” He would often reply that he wanted to watch a film. His first films were viewed at home. His mother had a hand-operated projector, and from it he watched actors perform in their silent pictures. In 1914, when Dalí was 10, the first movie theater opened in Figueres, and he would go there frequently to view new films.

From his family’s apartment window, Dalí could stare out at the beautiful views of the surrounding countryside and the sea. He could see all the way to the Bay of Roses many miles away and also across the Empordá Plain to the Pyrenees mountains. These vistas made an impression on the young Dalí. It was the beginning of his passion for vast open landscapes, and they would later appear as backgrounds in many of his paintings.

Life as a little king in a household of women was comfortable, but it soon came to an end. When Dalí was seven, his father sent him away to school. Most of the children of well-to-do families were enrolled in Catholic school. Señor Dalí decided, however, to send his son to a nonreligious communal school. No matter which school it was, Salvador wanted no part of it. He had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to his classroom. Somehow Dalí managed to survive in the school, though he spent most of his time exploring his own imagination instead of studying.

The teacher, Señor Trayter, was a very odd man who had a braided beard hanging down to his knees. He often fell asleep in class, and the townspeople knew that he broke into churches to steal statues of saints and other items to decorate his home. At school, there were other types of strange objects that Trayter collected, including a mummified frog on a string and a stereoscopic viewer, which made pictures appear three-dimensional. Through this viewer, Dalí saw all kinds of scenes, but one image particularly intrigued him: that of a little Russian girl, covered in furs and sitting on a sleigh that was being followed by wolves. The photograph was so vivid, it looked as if a real girl was there in this world of snow. He thought about this girl often. The image of her would stay with him throughout his life, and when he was older, he was convinced that it had been a picture of his future wife, Gala.

Unlike the other students, Dalí went to school each day dressed in a neat little sailor suit, a typical outfit for a well-to-do child. He was small for his age and was not used to the rough-and-tumble life of the poorer children who were his fellow classmates. The children began picking on him because he was different. They threw snails at him and did other mean things. To escape from these horrors, he spent hours daydreaming.

After completing one year at the school, Dalí had learned little. He could neither read nor write. Upset by his son’s slow progress, Señor Dalí pulled him out of this school and enrolled him in a school run by a French teaching order called the Christian Brothers. The Christian Brothers had been banned from teaching in France because at that time the only priests allowed to operate schools in France were another order called the Jesuits. All instruction at Dalí’s new school was in French, so now the young boy began learning his third language (Catalan [ka-TA-lan], a regional language of Spain, was spoken in his home, and he had learned some Spanish in Trayter’s class). No doubt this added to his confusion. Having parts of so many languages in his head without knowing any single language fluently made learning to read and write even more difficult.

Despite the change in schools, Dalí continued to daydream. He was constantly staring off at clouds or at cracks in the ceiling. Frequently he saw objects or scenes “hidden” in these everyday views. He often stared out the window at two cypress trees, fascinated by the way the light changed on the trees just before sunset. To him, the trees appeared to be black flames. When darkness fell, he stared across the room at a reproduction of a painting, The Angelus, by the French realistic painter Jean-François Millet (mee-YAY). In the picture a man and woman, both peasants, stand praying in a field at sunset. The painting gave Dalí an uncomfortable feeling. This image made such an impression that it would later appear in many of Dalí’s paintings.

Dalí was terribly bored by the rote learning and memorization that was typical of schools at that time.

Everything had to be memorized, including math, historic dates, and grammar. Dalí was a curious boy, and he wanted to really learn, not repeat lessons like a parrot. The teachers quickly labeled him a lazy student. They kept him back in the lowest grade, but young Dalí didn’t seem to care. He later said that he even wrote very poorly on purpose to aggravate his father.

Not only were his lessons torturous, but at the new school Dalí continued to be teased and pestered by his fellow students. He was deathly afraid of grasshoppers and threw fits when his classmates brought them to him. Once he even jumped out of a first-floor window in terror to escape the frightening creatures. Eventually he was expelled from this school for his dramatic behavior. Salvador was anything but a success at school, but as he grew older, his parents began to realize that their son possessed special artistic talents.

At age nine, Dalí convinced his mother to allow him to use an old laundry room located on the roof of their home for his very own art studio. It was a tiny room, filled almost completely by a cement tub that had previously been used to wash laundry. In this tub he sat, on a chair, with an old washboard on his lap for a table. During hot summer days he stripped off his clothes and sat on the chair with water up to his waist. On the walls of the room he hung his paintings. They were done on the lids of wooden hatboxes, which he had taken from his Aunt Catalina’s hat shop.

The Angelus (1859), by Jean-François Millet

“To gaze is to think.”—Dalí

Activity

Pictures Everywhere

Have you ever stared at the ceiling or a cloud and discovered an “image” of a person or object? Throughout his life, Salvador Dalí was fascinated by images that seemed to just appear as he looked at his surroundings. Sometimes these images inspired him to create pieces of art.

Use this technique of finding images in everyday objects to create your own art.

Materials

Paper

Pencil

As you go about your daily activities, let your eyes wander. Look at the sky, the wall of an old building, or cracks in the sidewalk. Look for figures or forms that suggest pictures.

Rest your eyes for a minute on each image. If you discover forms or figures, sketch them onto paper. Do you see an entire figure, such as an elephant, or just part of it, such as an elephant’s trunk? Maybe the rest of the body you draw for the elephant will be different than a real elephant’s body. Maybe you will draw your elephant with a pussycat’s body or with wings and human ears. Let your imagination fly!

Save these sketches. They may come in handy when you are looking for ideas for a painting or other art project in the future.

To encourage his son, Señor Dalí gave young Salvador a series of small books about great artists, such as Titian (tih-shen) and Rubens. Although the pictures were reproduced in black and white, they fascinated Salvador and he spent hours studying them. He memorized the paintings and imagined he was living in the pictures themselves. The paintings took on a life of their own and merged with his memories of life in Figueres. Years later, when he was a teenager, he wrote in one of his journals about the images in the paintings. “I feel like I’ve really seen all this and that I’ve known these people for ages and very intimately.”

Señor Dalí had spent part of his childhood living in the small coastal fishing village of Cadaqués (ka-da-KAYS), not far from Figueres. From the time Salvador was a young boy, the Dalí family spent part of each summer there. It took a full day to travel by horse and cart over the rough and winding mountain roads to reach the coast. To young Salvador, the trip was well worth it. Cadaqués was a paradise where he could roam barefoot on the beaches and through the village. There were orchards and olive groves bordered by slate walls. Salvador, Anna María, and other children explored the beaches and the plant and animal life on the seashore.

They became friends with the local fisherman and net makers. Salvador met wild characters, such as the smuggler Josep Barrera, and Noi de Tona, a tramp who pulled teeth for a living. Most intriguing of all was Lidia Nogueres, a fisherman’s widow who many people believed was a witch because of her strangely bulging eyeballs and her habit of fortune telling.

One of Dalí’s favorite places was the wild landscape of Cape Creus, near Cadaqués. He would later describe this area as the “spot where the mountains of the Pyrenees come down to the sea, in a grandiose geological delirium.” He meant that this was where the mountains meet the sea in a crazy and grand way. It was like a playground for the mind. Sculpted by winds and rain, the rocks of Cape Creus had eroded into strange shapes, such as monster-like blobs that seemed to stand on stubby legs. Others looked very much like animals, and locals gave these odd rocks names such as “the eagle,” “the camel,” and “the rhinoceros.” As Dalí explored this geological wonderland, his imagination transformed the rocks into hunched-over men, lions, human heads, and odd creatures.

Señor Dalí’s best friend, Pepito Pichot, had a family home in Cadaqués. Pichot’s brother, Ramon, was an impressionist painter who lived in Paris. Other family members were well-known musicians, and Pepito himself was admired for his creative garden designs. Salvador roamed the village each summer with the children of the large Pichot clan. They listened to family concerts along the bay and met well-known artists and writers. Dalí may have even encountered Pablo Picasso (pic-AH-so), the famous Spanish artist, who came to Cadaqués in 1910 to visit with Ramon Pichot. If so, then Dalí was only six years old when he met the artist who would have such a big impact on his own art.

Activity

Art Studio

To young Dalí, it was sheer joy to spend hours alone in his own rooftop art studio, painting and studying the pictures in his art books. Maybe you can find a space in your home, with your parents’ permission, to create a special art studio for yourself. Here are the supplies you will need.

Paper. It is nice to have different kinds of paper. Watercolor paper and a sketchpad are useful, but if you can’t afford to buy these, scrap paper will do. Collect tissue paper from packages, the unprinted side of junk mail, cardboard, and the blank side of discarded posters.

Paint. Equip yourself with a variety of paints. Watercolors and poster paints are inexpensive. You can buy acrylics in tubes at relatively low prices at some art stores. Pastels are also fun to work with.

Paintbrushes. It’s a good idea to try to have a lot of different-sized brushes. If you have the money, buy good brushes because they will last longer. Be sure to clean your brushes with soapy water after each use. Store them in a jar or can, always with the bristles pointing up.

Other Items. Glue, tape, bits of string, scraps of foil and fabric, scissors, a stapler, a scraper, a ruler, old magazines and newspapers, plastic containers and lids (for using as a palette)—all are useful tools in an artist’s studio. Egg cartons make good containers for sorting bits of materials and small objects.

Decorate your studio with things that inspire you. Hang your own art, the art of friends, and pieces by your favorite artists to excite you about working on new art projects.

Dalí Begins Painting

Dalí painted his first oil painting when he was 10 years old. It was an impressionistic landscape that was probably influenced by the paintings of Ramon Pichot. This painting, titled Paisaje (Spanish for landscape), has a perspective and depth that are quite amazing for the work of a young untrained boy. The painting shows a path leading through a green field of cypress trees with buildings behind them. High mountains, one of them snow covered, rise in the background. Large birds soar in the sky.

School continued to be emotionally difficult for Dalí, and after completing his exams he was a nervous wreck. His doctor recommended a rest in the country. Pepito Pichot offered to care for him in his country manor outside town. Surrounded by acres of wheat fields and olive groves, the manor also featured an old mill tower that fascinated Dalí. This would inspire the beginning of Dalí’s impressionist stage.

Dalí family portrait. Dalí is seated in the middle, in front of his parents. His sister, Anna María, is seated on Aunt Catalina’s lap. To the right of Anna María is Dalí’s maternal grandmother seated in a chair. On the top left is his Aunt Anna María Theresa.

On the walls of the Pichot dining room, where he ate each day, hung the impressionistic paintings of Ramon Pichot. In that same dining room, Dalí discovered a crystal stopper on a carafe that gave him a new way of looking at the world around him. Gazing through it was like peering into a prism. Everything became impressionistic. Instead of seeing precise details he saw wonderful splotches of color and blurry shapes. Dalí carried the stopper in his pocket and observed scenes to see what they would look like in the eyes of an impressionist painter.

View of Cadaqués with Shadow of Mount Pani (1917), by Salvador Dalí

Señor Pichot encouraged Dalí’s interest in art by letting him use a storeroom as a studio. It had beautiful morning light and smelled like dry corn. Dalí spent hours there. Before long, the walls were covered with his paintings. One day, after he had used up all his canvases, he decided to paint a picture on the panel of a large door that was leaning against one of the walls. Using three colors— vermilion (scarlet red), carmine (purplish red), and white—he painted directly from the tubes. Examining the morning light shining on a pile of cherries, he quickly painted one gleaming cherry after another onto the old, worm-eaten wood.

The painting astonished everyone, including the peasants who came in from the fields to view it. Someone pointed out, however, that Dalí had forgotten to include the stems. Suddenly Dalí had an idea. Quickly, as he munched the real cherries, he attached each stem with glue to a painted cherry. This may have been his first collage (a composition made of a variety of different materials assembled together). More important, this simple creative act was the beginning of Dalí’s lifelong passion of blending the real and the unreal.

Dalí’s visit to the Pichot manor was a momentous transition in the young artist’s life. He had never been away from his family before. He had never known such independence. He had survived his illness. It was obvious that Dalí was gaining a new strength and an independent vision as an artist. He identified himself as an impressionist, and his works of the next few years show his youthful skill. The painting titled View of Cadaqués with Shadow of Mount Pani shows the village glittering below a pine-topped ridge. In this piece, which is painted on burlap, the land glows in warm afternoon light. In a self-portrait completed at this time, Dalí depicts himself as a fragile youngster—his narrow hands rest limply on his lap as he rests his head against the back of a chair—but by the end of his stay he had regained a new strength. At age 12, Dalí was truly becoming an artist.

Activity

Crystal Eyes

If you look at impressionist paintings up close, often all you will see is a blur of color. Back up and view them from farther away, and you can then see the compositions come to life. You can make the everyday world around you take on a new look by playing around with how you see it. Below are some tricks you can try to alter the way you see the world.

Materials

Prism (available at craft supply or science museum stores)

Crystal wine glass or stopper

Glass of water

Clear plastic bottle

Pastels or watercolor paints

Paper

Water

Begin by simply squinting your eyes. Notice how your view becomes a blur of colors, like those of an impressionist painting.

When Dalí was young he liked to peer at things through crystal bottle stoppers and other materials. This activity helped him to see the world around him in a new and entertaining way. Normal scenes looked magical. These tools enabled him to get a different sense of colors and composition. Try looking at the world around you through some of the materials listed above. (Be safe, though. Don’t walk around with water glasses or other objects in front of your eyes, or you might crash.)

Use the pastels or watercolor paints, water, and paper to create pictures of what you see.

IMPRESSIVE TIMES

By the mid-nineteenth century, the world of art began to go through dramatic changes. Cameras could now record images of people and landscapes more easily than paintings. Photographs captured exact details. Painters were no longer needed to record the minute particulars of the world around them. Younger artists who had been trained to paint like great masters of past centuries soon began to revolt. They were searching for new meaning in a world that had radically changed.

In the 1880s the French artists Claude Monet (moh-NAY), Paul Gauguin (go-GAN), Paul Cézanne (say-ZANNE), and Pierre Auguste Renoir (ren-WAH) rejected their conservative art schooling, which dictated that artists were supposed to paint only in their studios and sketch statues rather than live models. Instead, they chose to paint real people and use the outdoors as a studio. They were particularly interested in light and its constant changes. Capturing the special quality of light required a faster, looser style and brighter colors. They abandoned the earthy browns and blacks for dazzling hues, and their compositions became simpler. The results were paintings with quickly dabbed strokes of bright colors with rough textures.

In another move to reject the old ways, Monet and others exhibited their work in an independent show apart from the traditional Salon, which favored classically styled paintings. In the first of these public group exhibitions in France, Monet displayed a painting called Impression: Sunrise. In the piece, Monet’s swift brushstrokes capture the light reflecting on the water and the mist and smoke that blur the sailboats in the harbor. One art critic objected to the colors and the composition, and disdainfully dubbed the new style “impressionism.” By the turn of the century, both the term and the new style had taken hold, and the word impressionism invoked excitement rather than disdain.

Impression: Sunrise (1872), by Claude Monet. Shown at the First Impressionist Exhibition in Paris.

2 LESSONS FOR A YOUNG ARTIST

“So little of what could happen does happen.”—Dalí

Detail of Still Life: Sandia (1924), by Salvador Dalí

Although life was good in Figueres, that certainly wasn’t the case north of the border in France or in other neighboring countries. World War I had been raging for a couple of years, but Spain had remained neutral (had not chosen sides) and stayed out of the conflict. Elsewhere in Europe, people lacked basic necessities such as food and water, but in Figueres people could still attend school, feast on fine foods, and continue to lead a fairly normal life.

After Dalí’s return to Figueres in the fall of 1916, his father enrolled him in evening classes at the municipal school for drawing. Dalí was excited to learn the new drawing skills and techniques that Professor Juan Núñez (NOON-yez) taught him. Dalí respected his new teacher, and Núñez realized that Dalí was a special student.

During that same year Salvador studied other subjects at the Figueres Institute. At age 13, Dalí finally achieved success at school. He started to pay attention in class, he earned good grades, and he even received a special certificate of achievement from the municipal school for drawing. He earned his bachelor’s certificate (the equivalent of a high school diploma). To celebrate Salvador’s achievements at the drawing school, Señor Dalí held an exhibition of his son’s artwork at their apartment. Guests gathered on the terrace to feast on Salvador’s favorite meal of sea urchins.

Professor Núñez was impressed by young Dalí and encouraged his father to help him become a painter. But while Señor Dalí bought his son art books, tools, and other materials to support his artwork, he refused to make a decision about his son’s future as an artist. Señor Dalí wanted to make sure that Salvador would have the educational background to do something besides being a starving painter. He knew his son had talent, but he didn’t think painting was the proper career for him. At the same time he realized that young Dalí would not be able to succeed in a profession such as law or medicine because he was too dreamy and uninterested in the world outside of art. The only thing that Salvador seemed interested in other than painting was reading. He devoured works by the French writer Voltaire and many other philosophers.

Salvador was succeeding in new ways, yet his rebelliousness toward authority continued and often led to some interesting discoveries. One day while the students in his art class were drawing an old man with a white beard, Señor Núñez suggested to Dalí that he use a lighter pencil stroke and make use of the whiteness of the paper. This, he said, would allow Dalí to get an effect of white down for the elder’s beard. As soon as the professor left, Dalí did the opposite. He made his drawing darker and darker, and then covered the whole thing with black ink. He then used a penknife to scratch away the black and reveal the old man in white lines. The technique used to create this type of art, which is called scratchboard, is taught in many art classes today. White paper or cardboard is painted black, and then white lines are scratched into the paint using a sharp instrument.

Dalí’s Artistic Vision Grows

The next few years were a great period of experimentation for Dalí and his art. Like many young people, he was fascinated by the new philosophies born out of the changes in the world due to war. Dalí moved away from the artistic style of impressionism and toward the new style of cubism, which he had read about in a magazine. He tried innovative collage techniques such as attaching real stones onto his paintings. In one of the paintings, which hung in his family’s dining room, the sky was filled with painted stones of all sizes. Sometimes, as the Dalí family lounged in the parlor during the evening, they would be startled by something dropping onto the floor. Señor Dalí would remark, “It’s nothing; it’s just another stone that has dropped from our child’s sky. The ideas are good, but who would ever buy a painting which would eventually disappear while the house grew cluttered by stones?”

Word of Dalí’s strange new techniques spread around the town of Figueres. Despite his odd behavior, at the young age of 16 Dalí was asked to exhibit some of his art in the town theater of Figueres. This was his first public exhibit, and the local newspaper’s art critic praised his paintings and drawings. The critic particularly praised the strength of his charcoal drawings, especially one titled The Bastion. In this shimmering black and white work, Cadaqués appears like a magical city from mythology. The critic also mentioned a colorful painting titled The Drinker as an example of young Dalí’s special artistic ability.

Dalí was constantly drawing. In his notebooks are sketches of everything from cars, bullfighters, and caricatures of teachers and schoolmates to Dalí himself in the company of elegant, long-legged ladies. In one of his autobiographies, Dalí portrays himself as a tortured teenager without friends or anything resembling a normal social life. His journals from the same period, however, reflect an intelligent, sociable teenager with friends. He writes about playing soccer and watching girls with his pals. In reality, Dalí was probably as complex as most young people who are busy seeking a comfortable identity. His lifelong fascination with lobsters, sea urchins, and other crustaceans might reflect his feelings about himself. Perhaps he tried to create a hard shell on the outside to protect his soft, sensitive feelings.

In the spring of 1920, when Salvador was 16, Señor Dalí promised that once Salvador completed his bachelor program he could next attend the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid. Señor Dalí had chosen this school because it offered a certificate that allowed graduates to teach at art schools. Dalí’s father did not have faith in Salvador’s ability to make a living as a painter, but, given his son’s personality, it is surprising that he thought he would succeed in a teaching career. For his part, young Dalí was excited about the new school. In his journal he wrote that he wished to work hard at school so he could win an opportunity to study in Rome. He believed that Rome was the true center of the art world where he could learn to paint like the great Italian painters. He dreamed that he would later return to Spain, and he fantasized, “I’ll be a genius and the world will admire me. Perhaps I’ll be despised and misunderstood, but I’ll be a genius, a great genius.” Later in his life Dalí would comment, “If you play at [being] a genius, you become one.”

To this end, Dalí began wearing the uniform of a genius artist. He grew his hair long, inspired by a portrait of the Italian painter Raphael, and powdered his face white to appear more dramatic. He also used a black makeup pencil to darken the shadows around his eyes. In this time period there were no teenagers who dressed in gothic, hippie, or punk styles. Everyone conformed to the same fashion standards—so Dalí was a standout. He was a pioneer in creating a special style of dress. A self-portrait he painted at age 18, for example, shows him smoking a pipe and wearing a broad hat. Salvador had decided to dress the part of the eccentric artist, and he would continue to play this role for the remainder of his life. In later years he would write that how one dresses is vital for success.

The year 1921 was devastating for Dalí. In February tragedy struck his family when Salvador’s mother,

Self-portrait (Figueres) (1921), by Salvador Dalí

WORLD WAR I AND DADA

World War I, which lasted from 1914 to 1918, devastated Europe. Over 37 million people died and billions of dollars worth of property was destroyed. A whole generation of young men who had survived the war carried both physical and psychological scars. Many had lost limbs, and others had almost lost their minds. The great European powers of France, Germany, Italy, Britain, and Russia regarded themselves as the pinnacle of civilization, but they had only proved that modern nations could be more savage and destructive than any in the past. During and after the war, young artists in Europe tried to find a new meaning of life through art. They sought to create new truths by rejecting traditional European beliefs in the importance of nations, war, and rational thought because they thought that these beliefs had resulted in this devastating war.

The Dada movement, a new artistic philosophy, began in Switzerland in 1916. One of its leaders, Tristan Tzara, proclaimed, “Dada means nothing.” Perhaps Dada was nothing or everything. In dadaist performances, anything was permissible. Artists hiccupped, mooed, read poems, played invisible violins, and dressed as they pleased. To dadaists, the art of children, insane people, and “primitive” cultures was as important as the “great art” of western civilization. The French artist Marcel Duchamp (doo-SHAHM) introduced the idea of “ready-mades” as an element of dadaism. He claimed that everyday objects such as a urinal, bicycle wheel, or bottle rack could become art by simply displaying them in a gallery. Some dadaists in Germany created photo-collages (also known as photo-montages) using newspaper illustrations and packaging materials. These collages attacked the values of society and government. Newspaper photos of soldiers and weapons might be pasted together with photographs of mothers and babies. Other artists, such as George Grosz, drew pictures that mocked a German society that had lost a senseless war. In one drawing, Grosz shows a group of fat generals drinking. Some of them have donkey or monkey heads. Some artists also assembled sculptures from trash. One artist, Kurt Schwitter, crammed most of his studio with junk and called the piles art.

To dadaists, irrational or chance occurrences had more value than rational thought and art that came from ordered ideas. The war had convinced them that civilization, and therefore order, were illusions, a joke. Many modern inventions such as the airplane had simply turned out to provide better ways to kill people. Modern ideals had not prevented mass destruction. Dadaists were outraged at society in general and did everything they could to mock it. But soon, the movement began to fall apart. Artists began to question the need for an organized group to promote dadaism. If Dada was “everything,” and was focused on uncovering the stupidity of believing in order, why did it need to be ordered and organized itself? Many artists began to look for other ways to see the world around them. In 1922 some of the dadaists, including Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray, Jean Arp, and others, joined up with a group of writers, including André Breton and Paul Eluard. A new movement, surrealism, emerged. This joining of visual and written artistic voices incorporated some dadaist ideas, such as collages and sculptures made from everyday objects, into a new way of looking at the world.

The Tottering Woman (1923), by Max Ernst

“Have no fear of perfection—you’ll never reach it.”—Dalí

Felipa Domenech Dalí, died of cancer. She was only 47 years old, and Dalí was just 16. His aunt Catalina, Felipa’s sister, had a nervous breakdown and went to Barcelona to recover. To Salvador, it was the most difficult period of his life. His mother had been his nurturer and a protector from his father’s fierce temper. All of a sudden, he was on his own in a household where his father ruled like a dictator. Then in June, Pepito Pichot died suddenly. Within the span of a few months, Salvador lost both his beloved mother and his special benefactor and friend.

Dalí Grows as an Artist

Later in his life, Dalí wrote that the loss of his mother made him determined to become famous no matter what the cost. Perhaps this was a way to forget his sorrow over her death—by replacing it with ambition. In February 1922, with the encouragement of his teacher, Juan Nuñez, Dalí sent eight of his pieces to a student art show at the Dalmau Gallery in Barcelona. This was his first exhibit in the Catalan capital. One newspaper editor praised Dalí’s work and predicted his rise to fame. Other critics made favorable comments as well. Best of all, he earned a prize for one painting, and he sold all of the pieces. Dalí’s father, who loved to feel important, must have been very pleased indeed with the praise given his only son.

Professor Núñez recommended Dalí to the Royal Academy of San Fernando in Madrid, but Salvador still had to perform a drawing exam to be admitted. That fall, Dalí went to Madrid to take the exam. Candidates were allowed six two-hour sessions to complete a drawing of a sculpture. The drawing had to meet the exact measurements prescribed by the school. Halfway through his drawing, Dalí realized that his picture was smaller than the required size. He erased it and started over, but in the end the final piece was even tinier than his first attempt. Nervous and fearing rejection, he presented it to the judges. Although they scolded him for not having followed the size guidelines, they praised his work, and he was admitted to the school. Dalí was ready to start a new life in Madrid.

Still Life: Sandia (1924), by Salvador Dalí

A few weeks later, in late September 1922, 18-year-old Dalí signed up for his first session at the Royal Academy. The Academy did not have dormitories, but in Madrid there was a special residence for students. True to form, when he arrived Dalí caused a stir. The “Resi” (as it was called by the students) was home to more than one hundred young men who attended a variety of schools in Madrid. Most of them dressed in tweed jackets and wore ties, like students at English colleges. In contrast, Dalí’s appearance— with his long hair, sideburns, cape, and gilded cane—was unique. It was not long before other students began calling him the “Pole” or the “Czechoslovak artist,” referring to his strange looks and manner.

Dalí’s initial excitement about being at the new school wore off quickly. He wrote in a journal, “I immediately understood that those old professors covered with honors and decorations could teach me nothing.” Dalí respected only one teacher, Professor Carbonero, who taught drawing in the manner of the old masters. Dalí had hoped for an academic education where he would learn discipline, new techniques, and the science of composition. He wanted to develop his artistic skills. Instead he found an open, liberal teaching staff that had just become enamored with impressionism. Dalí was already finished with impressionism. He had painted his first piece at a young age under the influence of Ramon Pichot. His passions now pointed in two directions. He wanted to study the craft and techniques of the old masters, and he wanted to explore the new ideas of pioneer artists, such as Juan Gris (gree) and Georges Braques (brok), who were all experimenting with cubism. The other students and professors had not even heard of cubism. But Dalí knew that young artists (including fellow Spaniard Pablo Picasso, who had embraced impressionism) were beginning to play with new ideas about form and space.

Dalí was caught between two worlds. He believed in the need to learn the classical skills of the old master painters, but he also believed in the importance of investigating new art movements. Impressionism had been a new idea years before. It had been avant-garde (in the forefront), but now other new styles were taking its place. The school in Madrid seemed to be out of step with the times.

THE CUBISTS

Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and other artists who were living in Paris in the 1920s had been influenced by geometric forms in traditional African masks and the art of other cultures. They experimented with using geometric forms to create their own style. One art critic complained that Braque’s paintings had reduced everything into little cubes. Thus was born the name for a new art style: cubism.

The forms in cubist paintings often defied the traditional representation of perspective in art. Instead of buildings being made to look three-dimensional, in cubist compositions they seem to be flat and layered one atop another like paper. In addition to playing with form, the cubists experimented with light. Light creates shadows, which help show three dimensions. Light usually comes from one direction, but the cubists created paintings in which light came from many different directions. In cubism, art no longer conforms to rules of reality, but creates a world in which the viewer can see many perspectives at once. A portrait, for example, might show both a front and a side view of a nose on the same face.

These experiments with form and perspective created art that showed a new kind of movement and emotion, but it was not easy for the public to understand. Marcel Duchamp’s cubist piece, Nude Descending a Staircase, caused an uproar when it was exhibited at the first major showing of modern art in New York in 1913. The painting shows a human figure walking down some stairs. The figure is not clear, but its movement is powerful. The painting consists of a series of figures, each flowing into the next like a film in slow motion. One critic described the painting as “an explosion in a shingle factory.”

Cubism was part of the continuing revolution in art, which opened up more ways for artists to explore the world around them without the restrictions of previous beliefs in art, or even the reality of how things appear in the world.

Young Dalí was ready to open up his art explorations. In his classes, he worked harder and faster than the other students. At night he worked alone in his room at the Resi on his own work. Although the other students commented on his appearance, they basically left him alone.

One day the maid forgot to close Dalí’s door. Pepin Bello (BAY-yo), a fellow student, peeked in and noticed two cubist paintings in the room. He couldn’t wait to tell his friends. Bello was part of a crowd of students at the Resi with an interest in the artistic and literary avant-garde. This group included Fredrico García Lorca, Luis Buñuel (boon-WELL), and others. Before long, Bello had gathered a crowd outside Dalí’s open door. What a surprise it was for them. The “Pole,” they discovered, turned out to be a cubist!

Dalí had never before been part of a group of young people who shared his artistic and intellectual ideals. At first he was so shy that he kept his distance from this group, but before long he became a happy part of it. He was younger than many of his new friends, and his fellow residents immediately became fond of his eccentricities and strange humor. They were amused by the way he dressed and charmed by his totally inept way of dealing with the real world. For example, one time Dalí was shocked to discover that he couldn’t buy pencils and drawing papers at a certain store. It was a fish shop. Dalí had no idea that he had to go to special store for art supplies. His subject matter was odd, too. He was constantly drawing images of whatever came into his mind, whether it was a picture of vomiting dogs or a comic drawing of people he saw in a café. Dalí became a mascot of sorts to the other students. When anyone in a café or other public place made fun of Dalí, his friends, particularly Buñuel, would stand up for him. Buñuel was athletic and obsessed with physical fitness. It didn’t take much of a reason for him to start a fistfight.

Before long, Salvador decided to become a dandy, a fancy dresser, like the others in his crowd. They all dressed like English school students, in tailored jackets, and wore neatly combed hair. Dalí replaced his cape with a tweed jacket and cut his hair. He spent hours slicking down his hair and even used varnish to keep it in place.

Now Dalí’s evenings were spent at cafés discussing art, literature, and politics. At the Resi, he and his group of friends drank homemade rum and listened for hours to American jazz. They performed plays and played foolish pranks on other students. They even invented words, like putrefacto (putrid), to refer to people that they disliked.

Fredrico García Lorca was the unofficial leader of the group. Not only was he the oldest, he had already achieved success as a writer of poetry and plays. His simply titled Book of Poems had received rave reviews in Madrid. He was a clever talker and a remarkable pianist and singer. He and Luis Buñuel were inseparable friends. Buñuel had switched from studying engineering to the study of insects, but would eventually end up a filmmaker. Buñuel was a born rebel who loved to talk. He introduced his friends to the nightlife of Madrid and then to Toledo, a city to the southwest of Madrid. Buñuel enrolled them in his self-created “Noble Order of Toledo.” Their mission was to dress up in strange clothes, get drunk, and explore the narrow streets of the old city at night. Buñuel often wore the frock of a priest and Dalí usually found something equally odd to wear. During this year in Madrid, Dalí learned about the glamour of nightlife, sophisticated city women, and witty conversation. All of this added up to a new understanding of the value of playing a role and the power of snobbery and appearance. He discovered that if he acted like someone special, people treated him with more regard and, in turn, they become more interested in his creations.

Despite his new social life, Dalí continued to work hard. He spent hours studying old works in Madrid’s main art museum, the Prado Museum. There he discovered the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, a fifteenth-century Dutch artist who used fantastic and even demonic images in his art. These paintings would be an influence on Dalí’s art. Bosch created strange pink blob-like figures in his paintings, and similar structures appear in Dalí’s later work. Dalí also began to feel free enough to create art as he saw fit, rather than always following the orders of a professor. One day in class the students were asked to draw a picture of the Virgin Mary. Dalí made his teacher angry when he drew a picture of a pair of scales instead. “Perhaps you see a Virgin Mary like everyone else,” he said to his teacher, “but I see a pair of scales.” Dalí was tuning into his inner visions, which only he could see. Somehow, the concept of the Virgin Mary made him think of scales, in the same way another person might look at a picture of a car and be reminded of a tiger.

Despite such rebelliousness, it had been a successful year for Dalí. He had passed his exams, explored new directions in his art, and earned a reputation among his friends and fellow students as an eccentric, outspoken artist.

Artistic Rebel

The year 1923 was Dalí’s second year at the academy, and his lack of respect for most of his professors became more and more obvious. This would soon get him in trouble. A group of students became very upset when the school hired a new teacher who they thought was not very talented. They started yelling and throwing things at the hiring committee, and the police were called in. The school authorities believed that Dalí was the ringleader. After all, he looked and acted like a rebel. Dalí said he was innocent, but he did agree that a better teacher should have been hired. Despite his claim of innocence, the school suspended him for the rest of the year, and Dalí returned home.

Back in Figueres, Dalí asked his old professor Juan Nuñez to instruct him in engraving. Dalí continued to be fascinated by new ideas, yet he respected the importance of learning traditional skills. It didn’t take long before Dalí became familiar with the basic engraving process.

Dalí was far from being through with trouble, however. In Catalonia, the part of Spain where Figueres is located, there had been talk of a revolution for years, and many Catalonian citizens, including Dalí’s father, wished for Catalonia to break free from Spain and become an independent nation. The Spanish army had recently put down an uprising by Catalonian rebels. The situation in Figueres and other Catalonian towns was tense.

Señor Dalí was an important person and an election official in the town. He also openly supported Catalonian independence. In May the army started to arrest people who they thought might cause more trouble. Salvador was one of the young men thrown in jail. Señor Dalí believed the army had arrested his son as a warning to himself and others that the army could arrest them all. In less than a month the situation had calmed down, and Salvador was released from jail in time to visit Cadaqués for summer holidays.

When Dalí returned to Madrid in the autumn of 1924 for the next year of school, he was regarded as a hero for his political imprisonment. Although his friends welcomed him, he was unable to enroll at the San Fernando Academy because he had been labeled a troublemaker. Instead, he took classes at the Free Academy. There he began a series of portraits, using a new style that was sweeping Europe. It was called neoclassical realism. This new style, a reaction to the modern art of the first part of the twentieth century, was an effort to return to the stylistic order of classical art. It seemed natural for Dalí to explore this style because of his interest in the old masters. Unlike impressionism, neoclassical realism used a reduced palette of colors. In his new paintings Dalí used only browns, blacks, white, and olive greens. In this style, he painted portraits of Buñuel, his father, and his sister. Dalí continued to have an interest in cubism, however. In one painting, Neocubist Academy, he seems to have blended both styles. The painting features classical figures that look like ones found in Greek art, but they are angular, like objects in a cubist painting. Rocks and fish in the painting look like they could have been found in any cubist picture.

Soon after his return to Madrid, Dalí began reading the work of Sigmund Freud (froyd), which had just been translated into Spanish.

Freud’s writing was a major discovery for Dalí. He began to see his life in a whole new way. Dalí’s interest in Freud made him pay attention to every dream he had and to try to interpret their meanings. Everything in his life, even apparently accidental happenings, now appeared in a different light. Freud had changed Dalí’s way of examining his own life and the lives of those around him.

Freud also influenced the thoughts of the French writer André Breton, who published his Manifesto of Surrealism in the fall of 1924. Breton realized that Freud’s techniques of using free association and interpretations of dreams to work with mental patients could be used to stimulate the writing of poetry.

The following winter, Dalí was not only immersed in the works of Freud, but he was also becoming aware of the new art movement of surrealism. The term surreal means “super real” or “beyond reality.” The surrealists sought to release the creative impulses of the artist’s subconscious mind. They felt that the creativity that came from deep within a person was more powerful than creativity that was the result of conscious thinking. One way they explored the subconscious mind was by tuning in to the world of dreams. Surrealists tried to remember their dreams and to use them for inspiration.

SIGMUND FREUD

(1856–1939)

At the beginning of the twentieth century, a Viennese doctor, Sigmund Freud, introduced ideas that would forever change the way people thought about the human mind. In the late 1800s Freud began to treat mental patients suffering from what was called hysteria. Working with another doctor, Josef Breuer, he developed the theory that the symptoms of a hysterical person were the result of repressing emotional anguish from past psychological traumas. For example, a person who experienced a violent event in his or her family, such as a murder, might be holding inside all the anger, fear, or sadness connected to the event. Freud and Breuer used hypnosis to help the patient remember and reenact the trauma as a way to let go of the buried emotions. This work, called psychoanalysis, was the beginning of a new method of treating mental problems.

During the next few years, Freud further developed psychoanalysis. Instead of hypnotizing patients, he encouraged them to describe their thoughts through the process of free association. In free association, the patient says whatever comes to mind in response to hearing a word or seeing a picture. For example, the psychoanalyst might say “dog.” The patient would say anything that the word “dog” makes him or her think of, such as “bite,” “friend,” or “purple.”

As he worked with patients, Freud became aware that many of them had repressed unpleasant or painful memories—that although they had them, they were not consciously aware of their own memories. Freud observed that his patients resisted becoming aware of their repressed memories to avoid the emotional pain that the thoughts would cause, but he also realized that the subconscious mind would explore these memories in dreams, and sometimes allude to them through slips of speech, later called Freudian slips. (A Freudian slip occurs when a person means to say one thing, such as “teacher,” but his or her subconscious mind replaces the word with another, and what is actually said is something else, for example, “mom.”

For three years Freud explored not only the dreams of others, but his own dreams. In 1900 he published his most important book, The Interpretation of Dreams. This book explains the main concepts and methods of psychoanalysis. Freud is perhaps best known for his theories relating to children’s developing sexuality and their relationship to their parents. These ideas were shocking to many people, but they paved the way for new explorations about the role of sexual feelings in mental illnesses.

At first many doctors working with mental patients rejected Freud’s ideas, but within the next 10 years many other psychiatrists, including Carl Jung2 and Alfred Adler, began to incorporate his ideas into their own work. Soon, psychoanalysis spread throughout Europe and the United States. As the years passed, Jung and others developed new and often separate ideas about psychoanalysis. Freud’s proof of the power and importance of subconscious thought, however, was one of the great breakthroughs of the twentieth century, and artists, writers, and filmmakers, particularly the surrealists, were heavily influenced by his ideas.

Dalí continued to visit the Prado Museum to examine Bosch’s strange paintings. It would take a few more years for all these new influences to settle inside his mind and later come out as art that would release the power of his subconscious mind.

Dalí, Buñuel, and García Lorca were becoming close friends within the larger group of surrealist artists. Dalí was particularly close to García Lorca, and in the spring of 1925 he invited his friend to visit the Dalí family in Cadaqués for the holidays. During his visit, García Lorca wrote poetry as Dalí sketched and painted. Over the next few years, García Lorca would be the subject of many of Dalí’s paintings. One of the first was a cubist work that was simply titled Portrait. Another, which showed García Lorca in a death-like pose, was titled, Still Life (Invitation to Sleep). And Dalí was the subject of a poem, Ode to Salvador Dalí, that García Lorca wrote the following spring.

Activity

Free Association Fun

Sigmund Freud and other psychoanalysts used a variety of techniques to discover the subconscious thoughts of their patients. The surrealists used many of the same techniques to open their minds to the subconscious as a way to stimulate their writing and other art. One of the best-known ways to do this is called free association. If you are interested in exploring the subconscious world, you can try this activity.

Materials

Paper

Pencils

A friend

Magazines to cut up

Scissors

Copy five of the following words onto a sheet of paper and read them to your friend one at a time. Instruct your friend that after you say a word, he or she should respond with the first word that comes to mind. Jot down your friend’s responses next to each word on the paper. Then switch parts. Have your friend copy the remaining five words onto a separate sheet of paper and then jot down your responses as each word is read off.

Octopus

Stoplight

Gooey

Armpit

Swings

Mirror

Mushroom

Skull

Rubber gloves

Cottage cheese

Try this activity using your own list of unrelated words. After trying these words on each other, you and your friend can read the same list to other people. Compare the answers and the feelings that the words brought up for each person. Can you draw any conclusions about the people or their personalities by their responses? How are people’s responses to the same words different? How are they similar?

Repeat this same activity using pictures cut out from the magazines. How does this compare to your response to the words for you and for your friend? Can you draw any conclusions about how your subconscious responds to words versus pictures?

Activity

Inkblots

In the days of Sigmund Freud and the surrealists, people used nib pens and ink from bottles for writing. Nib pens had metal points that, when inserted into a container of ink, allowed a person to write a sentence or two before the nib, or metal tip, needed to be redipped. Sometimes ink would leak out from the nib and cause a messy inkblot. It was common for people to look at these blots and “see pictures.” For instance, a blot might look like a cat, or the shape of a country. Psychotherapists were interested in what people saw in inkblots, and used them to delve into the subconscious minds of their patients. Each patient usually saw something different. In this activity, you’ll make your own inkblots.

Materials

Paper (at least 10 sheets)

Nib pen (available at art supply stores)

Black ink (available at art supply stores)

Pencil

Note: You can substitute black watercolor paint and an artist’s paintbrush for the nib pen and black ink.

Drop a bit of ink or very wet watercolor paint onto the middle of a sheet of paper. Fold the paper down the middle of the blot, pressing the two halves together, and then unfold the paper. Repeat with a new piece of paper. Make at least 10 inkblots and let them dry.

Show your inkblots one at a time to people, and ask them what they see. Write down their answers. How are their answers different? How are they similar? You might be surprised at the differences.

For extra fun, draw some pictures of things that come to mind when you look at your inkblots.

Student-made inkblot

After García Lorca returned to Madrid, Dalí got busy painting. He had been asked by the prestigious Dalmau Gallery in Barcelona to display his newest art in a one-person show. (He had previously exhibited his art there in a student show in 1922.) He worked like a madman that summer and fall to produce the new pieces. In the show he displayed works including Figure at the Window and Venus and the Sailor. Figure at the Window was a painting of Dalí’s sister, Anna María, in a precise and careful neoclassical style. Seen from behind, she gazes at the sea. Venus and the Sailor, on the other hand, was a cubist composition. Dalí’s hard effort and new ideas paid off. The show was a great success. He sold paintings, received excellent reviews, and was asked to return for another show in a year.

PABLO PICASSO

(1881–1973)

Pablo Picasso, who was 22 years older than Dalí, had also shown his artistic talent at a young age—10. When he was 15 years old he entered the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona, Spain, and soon won a gold medal for one of his paintings. After finishing school, Picasso settled in Paris in 1904 and remained in France for the rest of his life. Throughout his life, his painting style transformed from one art phase or period to another. Two of his well-known periods, the blue and rose periods, correspond to his first years as a painter in Paris.

The paintings of his blue period were created soon after moving to Paris. Picasso was having difficulty selling his art and was very depressed. By using mostly blue colors Picasso was able to express his unhappiness. In his paintings done during this time, the misery of beggars, alcoholics, and blind people is vividly shown. Later, when Picasso fell in love with a young woman, his art color changed to rose, and his subjects became clowns and other circus performers.

Picasso was involved in several major art movements, from Post-impressionism to cubism and surrealism. He had been a struggling artist during his first years in Paris, but by the 1920s, when Dalí met him, he was a great success.

“It is either easy or impossible.”—Dalí

As a reward for his hard work, Señor Dalí decided to send Salvador on his first trip to Brussels and Paris. His aunt Catalina, who had married his father four years earlier, and sister Anna María would accompany him. Luis Buñuel, who had moved to Paris to work as a film assistant, met them at the train station. The journey’s biggest treat was Dalí’s vist with the artist Pablo Picasso. Picasso was one of Dalí’s great heroes. He felt as if he were meeting a king!

On meeting Picasso, Dalí said, “I have come to see you before going to the Louvre,” the great French museum of art. Picasso replied, “You were not wrong.” For 15 minutes the great artist examined a small painting of Dalí’s without making a single comment. Later, he showed the young artist his latest works. Dalí was very impressed, and many of his paintings from that year show the influence of Picasso’s style. Picasso was impressed with Dalí’s work as well. Later that year, he even recommended Dalí to his art dealer.

Dalí’s trip to Paris and Brussels was thrilling. At the Louvre (lewv), in Paris, he viewed paintings of the master artists Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael. In Brussels he closely examined the techniques of Flemish painters such as Jan Vermeer. It’s not known if Dalí went to any of the galleries exhibiting the works of the surrealist artists Joan Miró, Yves Tanguy (tawn-GEE), or Max Ernst, but it is likely that he viewed some of this radical new work as well.

After returning home he painted The Basket of Bread, using the precise techniques of old master painters. The woven strands of the basket and the folds of the tablecloth are painted in fine detail. The black background makes the breadbasket almost appear to be floating. The bread itself seems to glow. Dalí’s painting makes a very common object seem almost magical. The Basket of Bread celebrates the wonder of something as ordinary as the daily loaf.

Another new painting, Femme Couchée, showed the influence of his visit to Picasso. It is a blend of cubism and classical ideas. The female figure that is depicted is sprawled across rocks in a position like Christ on the cross, a subject of many classical paintings, and her toga is a classical style of dress. Yet the woman and the rocks are composed of triangles. The whole scene is distorted, like the figures and backgrounds in a cubist painting by Picasso.

The Basket of Bread (1926), by Salvador Dalí

Activity

Splotch Art

The surrealist painter Joan Miró often began a new painting by making random splotches on his canvas. He would drop paint on it or touch a brushful of paint to it so a blob would appear. The shapes of these irregular marks opened his mind to images that he may not otherwise have considered creating. Have you ever doodled in a notebook during class, while watching television, or when you are bored? Miró’s process of making blotches is similar to doodling, but it allows for more opportunity to use your imagination and a greater variety of materials.

Materials

Paint (watercolor, poster, or acrylic) or ink

Paintbrush or nib pen (available at art supply stores)

Paper

Pencil

Using the paintbrush or nib pen, drop very wet paint or ink on the paper to create splatters, or dab the paper with paint to make a blob. Create a few splotches of different shapes and sizes.

After they are dry, you can start adding to them using paint or other materials. Let the shapes of each splotch suggest a new form. The forms can be abstract (not representing anything at all) or they can be an animal or some other real object. Fill the paper with shapes and figures using whatever colors and patterns you wish to make art that is truly your own and unique to you.

In the spring of 1926, Dalí was readmitted to the San Fernando Academy. His expulsion had not been permanent. The school decided he could return to take exams in June so he could graduate. Señor Dalí was proud of Salvador’s artistic achievements, but was looking forward to the security that a teaching certificate from the academy would give his son. Young Dalí, on the other hand, had his heart set on Paris and the success he believed awaited him there. Being an art teacher in some small Spanish town was the last thing he wanted. Soon there would be a showdown between father and son.

When Dalí showed up for his exam on June 14, 1926, he was asked to choose an artistic theme to demonstrate his knowledge of art. Dalí refused. “Since all the teachers at the San Fernando Academy are incompetent to judge me, I’m withdrawing!” he said. Understandably, the judges were outraged, and they decided to expel Dalí for good. Gone were his father’s hopes for a teaching career for his son. (Later in his life, Dalí admitted he had intentionally been expelled so he wouldn’t have teaching to fall back on and would have to succeed as an artist.) Salvador, on the other hand, was excited about new prospects. A well-known Spanish writer, Count Edgar Neville, had just commissioned him to do a painting.

Dalí was now ready to throw himself into his art, and Paris. Paris, however, would have to wait. For the next two years, Dalí worked on developing his ideas and artwork to a point where he would be ready to take the great city by storm. He had spent years following the ideas of other artists. He now needed to produce art that was different, that was truly his own. During the summer of 1927, Dalí showed his paintings to the Spanish painter Joan Miró and Miró’s Paris art dealer, Pierre Loeb. Miró had heard of this fellow Catalan artist, Salvador Dalí, and wanted to see his newest art. A meeting was arranged in Figueres through a mutual friend. Both Miró and Loeb became interested in helping Dalí further his career. Dalí and his father were elated by the interest of two such important people from the Paris art world.

A month after meeting with Miró, Dalí’s hopes for an easy welcome in Paris were squashed when he received a letter from the art dealer Pierre Loeb. He told Dalí that his work was “confused and lacked personality.” Loeb was stating the obvious. Despite his skill, Dalí was dabbling in many art styles, from cubism to realism to classicism. He was was trying out other people’s ideas, but what he really needed to do was create art that was totally original.

Miró was more encouraging. He urged Señor Dalí to send his son to Paris, where, he assured him, his son’s future would be successful. Salvador had to be patient, however, before his dreams of leaving Spain would come true.

JOAN MIRÓ

(1893–1983)

Like Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró was from Catalonia. He was born and raised in Barcelona and eventually studied art there. In 1919 he moved to Paris. Although he was a close friend of Picasso’s he was not attracted to cubism. Once he said of the cubists, “I will break their guitar.” He was referring to the guitar so often used in cubist still-life paintings, and to his own desire to create something more powerful. He became inspired to try new ideas after he met dadaist poets in Paris in the early 1920s. Not long afterward, he joined the surrealists. His first sur-realist art show in 1925 opened at midnight in a Paris gallery and was a tremendous success.

Miró painted colorful scenes composed of odd-shaped figures and symbols. He used bright colors (mainly blue, red, green, black, and yellow) on flat, neutral backgrounds. His figures and objects were often distorted and shared the space with strange amoeba-like forms and geometric shapes, lines, curlicues, and dots. Miró painted on any surface he could find. He used black paper, card stock, wood, copper sheets, and flour sacks. He also assembled sculptures of found materials and painted on them.

Unlike other surrealist works, which were somber or even shocking, Miró’s art expressed humor and brightness. Some of his paintings, such as Dutch Interior, were parodies of the paintings of old masters. A parody is a humorous imitation of a person, movie, or anything else. The old masters painted in a precise and realistic style. In Dutch Interior, Miró uses some of the same objects—a dog and musical instrument—that are found in some of the old master’s paintings, but the style is completely different. Instead of being realistic and precise, they are abstract and the objects are distorted. Some of Miró’s portraits, such as Head of a Woman, look like paintings of strange monsters. In Person Throwing a Stone at a Bird, the human figure depicted has become a single large foot with an armless body.

Often Miró would start his paintings by making random splashes and blobs of paint, which stimulated his imagination and connected him to his own subconscious feelings and ideas. Eventually, from these disorganized beginnings would come wild and childlike, but organized, compositions.

Dutch Interior (1928), by Joan Miró

3 A LEAP INTO THE SUBCONSCIOUS

Detail of Apparatus and Hand (1927), by Salvador Dalí

It was 1927. World War I was over, but Dalí, like other young men in Spain, was still required to serve a nine-month mandatory service in the military. Being the son of an influential man, Salvador had the option of living at home while serving. Despite having to perform such unpleasant duties as cleaning latrines, he had time to think about his art and continue to experiment.

Dalí’s art was moving away from more traditional themes and toward the dreamlike work of the surrealists. His paintings done in 1927 and 1928 appear to be influenced by the surrealistic styles of Jean Arp, Joan Miró, and Yves Tanguy. Dalí’s paintings of this time have blob-like shapes that are similar to those in all of the three other artists’ work. Some of these paintings are dreamlike or even nightmarish. Even the bright colors and materials that Dalí chose to use in a few of his works were like those used by Miró. It was the art of Yves Tanguy, however, that seemed to have affected Dalí’s compositions the most.

Before becoming an artist, Yves Tanguy served as an officer cadet in the French Merchant Navy. Unlike Dalí, he was self-trained in art. His paintings, which are full of odd amoeba- and bone-shaped figures in dreamlike imaginary landscapes, earned him instant recognition. Many of his landscapes give the feeling of the barren, war-torn countryside of Europe following World War I. (Never in human history had a war been so incredibly destructive. In France alone, eight million acres of rich farmland had been transformed into a desert-like wasteland covered in craters, trenches, and the debris of war battles.)

Jean Arp also painted blob-like shapes in distinctively flat colors, and he created similar shapes in wood reliefs. He had first become involved with André Breton and Marcel Duchamp in the Dada movement. Both Arp and Joan Miró were friends with André Breton and Paul Eluard, whose writings were having an influence on young Dalí. Eluard and Breton wished to discover how their unconscious minds would express themselves through writing. They tried a variety of techniques to stimulate the hidden mind. The most successful, called automatic writing, consists of simply writing whatever comes to mind without pausing to choose the right words or grammar. This easy activity produced fantastic results for many writers. Dalí, who also had an interest in writing, composed a poem that shows the influence of this type of writing process. Below are a few lines from it. were having an influence on young Dalí. Eluard and Breton wished to discover how their unconscious minds would express themselves through writing. They tried a variety of techniques to stimulate the hidden mind. The most successful, called automatic writing, consists of simply writing whatever comes to mind without pausing to choose the right words or grammar. This easy activity produced fantastic results for many writers. Dalí, who also had an interest in writing, composed a poem that shows the influence of this type of writing process. Below are a few lines from it.

My girlfriend’s knees are of smoke.

The sugar dissolves in the water, is tinged red with the blood

and jumps like a flea.

My girlfriend has a wristwatch made of puddy.*

*Putty is a soft, clay-like substance that is used to glaze windows.

Many people have difficulty understanding poems that come from a writer’s subconscious thoughts. Often even the writer has no idea what his or her words really mean. They are open for all to interpret as they wish.

Mama and Papa Is Wounded (1927), by Yves Tanguy

Activity

Automatic Writing

The process of automatic writing is easy and fun. Many writers have used it to help release subconscious ideas and thoughts. Are you ready to tap into your subconscious thoughts and record them on paper?

Material

Paper

Pencil

Sit in a quiet place with your paper and pencil. Try not to think about what you might write. Just write. Simply start scribbling without any concerns about neatness, spelling, or grammar. Keep writing without stopping for at least three minutes. To make this really work, your pen or pencil must be writing the entire time. Let anything that comes into your mind flow onto the paper. Don’t select which thoughts to write down. Record it all. This writing should feel as natural and uninterrupted as breathing. Don’t worry if you repeat a word many times. It’s no problem if you don’t use periods or other punctuation or complete sentences. Neatness is not important; just continuously write.

After a little while you will discover that thoughts, sometimes surprising ones, will just pop into your head and your hand will automatically write them down. Now you’re really getting the hang of automatic writing!

Automatic writing is an exercise for you to do by yourself. You don’t need to share it with anyone. Sometimes it will help you work out a problem, come up with an idea for a story, or create a series of nonsensical ideas or images. There’s no right or wrong here, there’s just write!

As Dalí became more attracted to the surrealists, he started to drift away from his close friend Fredrico García Lorca. Dalí had decided that, although he was drawn to the techniques of master artists of the past, his art must speak about the modern world. He wanted to paint the present and future. The 1920s felt like a thoroughly modern time. The number of automobiles and airplanes increased every year. People listened to new jazz records from America, not the old European folk songs of the past. Dalí was attracted to both the old and the new, but now he was ready to commit himself to being on the cutting edge of new art. As part of this commitment, he decided that he had to sever his creative relationship with García Lorca. To Dalí, it now seemed that his friend represented the past. García Lorca had just published a book of poetry based on old gypsy ballads. Critics throughout Spain praised the book, but Dalí rejected any idea of drawing inspiration from the past. In a strongly worded letter to García Lorca, he dismissed the book as being “too wrapped up with ancient poetry.” Dalí ended the letter by stating that he himself was moving toward surrealism. The letter hurt García Lorca deeply and, as a result, it would be many years before the two friends saw each other again.

Dalí’s fascination with Freud and the subconscious mind became a stronger and stronger influence on his art. Apparatus and Hand, painted in 1927, has a dreamlike quality, and in fact the floating objects that appear in the work are probably images from his dreams. One of them, the rotting donkey or “putrefacto,” is an element that would appear over and over again in his art. It represents his disgust for the conservative people in society.

In 1928 Dalí finished his military service. He began to paint distorted human forms, which he called bathers. They are barely recognizable as nude bathers on a beach. In some of the paintings Dalí actually glued real sand on the picture.

Distorted human forms and rotting animals were too much for Barcelona’s art establishment to handle. Although they had praised him earlier, galleries in Barcelona even refused to exhibit one painting, titled Dialogue on the Beach. The painting, later titled Unsatisfied Desires, shows two fleshy-colored shapes resting across from each other on patches of sand. One shape looks like breasts, the other like a hand, or maybe a penis. The galleries were afraid that the picture was too sexual and would cause the police to close their businesses if they exhibited it. Dalí’s art was hotly discussed in Barcelona and he was enjoying the fact that he was making people uncomfortable. He was pushing the limits.

Activity

Poetry from the Deep

The wide door of her face
The sight of precious stones
The game of weaker as stronger
—From the poem Round by Paul Eluard

Surrealists composed poems without concern for rhyming, length, or sense. They simply wished to release images that appeared in their dreams or deep within their minds and write them down on paper. You can create a surrealist poem by jotting down words as they come to you in your dreams or when you let your mind wander.

Materials

Paper

Pencil

Scissors

Magazines to cut up

Keep paper and a pencil by your bed to describe your dream images as soon as you wake up. Just record the words that come into your head—don’t worry about how they sound.

Another fun way to create a poem is to cut out words or phrases from magazines. When you have a collection of 20 or so words or phrases you can play around with arranging them on a piece of paper. You can make a series of poems by placing the words in different combinations. How many different poems can you create from the same set of clippings?

Dalí said that people were glued to his art like flies to flypaper. Even though they might find his images shocking, they couldn’t keep themselves from looking at them. He explained, “The poetic fact held them, moved them subconsciously, despite the violent protests from their culture and their intellect.” Dalí remained ever confident about his relevance and significance in the world.

Meanwhile, Luis Buñuel was living in Paris, writing about films and learning to make them. He started to hang out with the surrealists, and was soon invited to join the group. The surrealists in Paris were like a club of artists and writers. The poet André Breton was their leader. Breton and the others, such as Max Ernst, Yves Tanguy, Paul Eluard, and Man Ray, welcomed newcomers, including Buñuel, who seemed to have new ideas and talent.

Apparatus and Hand (1927), by Salvador Dalí

Luis Buñuel also wanted to make films based on dreams, and he wasted no time in getting to work. In February of 1929 he visited Dalí in Figueres to get assistance in developing ideas for a film project. Dalí was only 24 years old, but Buñuel respected his ideas and felt that together they could create something very special.

The two men knew that, to be surreal, the ideas for the film must come from their subconscious thoughts. As they discussed what might be in the film, Dalí mentioned a dream he’d had the night before, in which ants were swarming all over his hands. At the same time, Buñuel remembered a dream he’d had where he had sliced somebody’s eye. From that point on in their deliberations, they kept their minds open to thoughts that lurked just beneath the surface of their conscious awareness. They hoped for images that would shock the viewer. The images came to them. Within six days, they had completed the script.

MAN RAY

(1890–1976)

Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitsky), an American, had met Marcel Duchamp in New York during the days of Dada. In 1915 he began to use photography to express his artistic ideas. Photography became his main interest soon after he moved to Paris and joined the surrealists. Through a technique called rayography, Man Ray was able to create with images what surrealist writers had accomplished with words. He placed objects on light-sensitized paper and then exposed the paper to light. The resulting rayograph has a ghostly appearance, like something from a dream. This technique allowed Man Ray to play with chance and to create images through the playful placement of objects on the photographic paper. The imprint of overlapping objects and their shadows created unusual compositions from everyday objects. The process was spontaneous and magical. Hands, unidentifiable objects, and patterns all merged together in otherworldly compositions.

Man Ray also made several surrealist films. In Les Mysteries du Chatêau de Dé (The Mysteries of the Château of Dice), the action takes place at a house in the country. We see a mannequin that is holding dice, and two masked men who are playing dice in a bar. The men decide to drive to Paris. They travel through the countryside, finally coming across a magnificent house. At the house all is quiet—at first. Then one strange thing after another begins to happen, just like the chaotic, disjointed events in dreams. People seated on a lawn toss enormous dice. A ball moves all by itself. There is no clear plot, because everything appears to happen by chance.

Activity

Solar Prints

Man Ray and other artists made photographs without using a camera. These are called photograms, or rayographs. You can do this, too. Collect a variety of objects from around your house and from outside. Try to select things that just appeal to you for no reason at all (in other words, let your subconscious mind help you decide).

Materials

Variety of household objects, such as a clothespin, comb, and scissors

Variety of natural objects, such as leaves, sticks, and rocks

Nature print paper (available from several art and photo supply companies including www.dickblick.com and www.porters.com)

In a darkened room, place the objects on the paper. It is OK to overlap them.

Once everything is on the paper, carefully take the paper outside and expose it to the outdoor light for one or two minutes.

Follow the instructions on the paper package to “fix” or make permanent, the image on the paper.

Try this again. This time, experiment with different exposure lengths and different types of objects.

Solar prints by Nick, a student.

“There are some days when I think I ‘m going to die from an overdose of satisfaction.”—Dalí

They developed strange scenes, such as one where a man is trying to attack a woman who is defending herself with a tennis racket. The man sees two ropes and grabs them. He pulls on them so hard that he falls down—the ropes are attached to something heavy. As he pulls on the ropes, two priests come into view, followed by a piano with two rotting donkeys draped over it. In addition to bizarre scenes such as these, Buñuel and Dalí wanted the film to show many normal events patched together in such a way that they would seem strange. Their goal was to create film that was totally unique. Buñuel told a newspaper reporter, “We hope to make visible certain subconscious states which we believe can only be expressed by the cinema.”

Dalí was intrigued by the ability to transform one image into another in the film editing process. He also realized that this film was an opportunity for him to gain recognition from other surrealists in Paris. Dalí convinced his father to give him enough money to go to Paris to work on the film. Buñuel also promised to give him some money when he arrived. Dalí had thoroughly converted to the surreal-ist philosophy over the past couple of years, and now was his chance to go to the center of the movement in Paris. He was ready.

In April, Dalí went to Paris. After he had settled into a hotel, he made contact with Joan Miró. The older artist set about introducing Dalí to important art patrons, dealers, and other artists. At a nightclub, he met the French surrealist poet Paul Eluard. Dalí, homesick for Cadaqués, shared his love of the landscape with Eluard. At the end of the evening the poet promised to visit him there. Little did either of them know how important this visit would be to their lives.

Soon after Dalí’s arrival in Paris, Buñuel began filming their movie. Dalí prepared props, and he acted in some of the scenes. (He played the role of one of the priests being dragged across the floor.) He made the “putrefied” donkeys by pouring sticky glue into the eye sockets of dead donkeys, which by then were developing an overpowering smell. Buñuel also acted in the film, but professional actors played the main parts. The whole process took 15 days. In the end, they succeeded in creating a very strange film indeed. In one scene, a woman’s armpit transforms into a sea urchin. In another, a man’s mouth becomes a patch of hair. The most shocking scene, however, is the opening one, in which a barber slices a woman’s eyeball with a razor. The eye of a slaughtered ox was used to make the film, but Buñuel’s editing made the scene look shockingly real. Never before had anything like this been done in a film. (Perhaps this was the first gross-out film ever made!) Many people are shocked by images that occur in their dreams. In their film, Dalí and Buñuel created images that shocked people in the same way.

PAUL ELUARD

(1895–1952)

As a teenager, Paul Eluard (born Eugene Grindel) began writing poetry while at a Swiss hospital for patients who suffered from tuberculosis, a disease of the lungs. There he met a young Russian patient named Helena Diakonoff Devulina. Her nickname was Gala (GAH-la), and they soon fell in love. After finishing their hospital treatments, Gala returned to Russia and Paul to Paris. In 1916 she joined him in Paris and they were married the next year. Eluard served as a medic during the last part of World War I. In 1918, six months before the end of the war, Gala gave birth to their daughter, Cécile.

Upon his return to Paris, Eluard became involved with the new art movement of Dada. In 1923 both Gala and Paul joined André Breton, Max Ernst, and others in starting the surrealist movement. Eluard was fascinated with transcribing dreams as a way to get in touch with his subconscious thoughts. He used these to inspire his writing of poetry. He also imitated insanity in his writing. He used free association and automatic writing to release poetic images from his subconscious mind. Eluard became one of the main leaders and poets of the surrealist group. One of his best-known books, Capital of Pain, is a collection of his poems written between 1921 and 1926. Pablo Picasso and other artists created illustrations for many of his books.

After much deliberation, Dalí and Buñuel decided to title their film Un Chien Andalou (The Andalusian Dog). This was a term they had used at the Resi for students who came from the south of Spain, where the province of Andalusia is located. It might also have been a reference to Fredrico García Lorca, who both Dalí and Buñuel now looked down upon because of his interest in the past. The two young filmmakers made one thing very clear: they wished to be part of the future of art and film.

By May 1929 Dalí began to suffer from the intense and busy lifestyle of Paris. He was used to living in Figueres and Cadaqués, which, compared to Paris, were like little villages. He was one of the youngest members of the surrealist group, which included many sophisticated Parisians. He needed a rest from the big city and was ready to go home. He didn’t even want to stay for the first showing of Un Chien Andalou, which would premiere in June.

While in Paris he had sold only one painting, The First Days of Spring, but before he returned to Spain he was offered a one-man show at Galerie Goemans in Paris the following November. The gallery had exhibited works by René Magritte (mah-GREET), Pablo Picasso, and Max Ernst. Soon Dalí’s art would be displayed in the capital of surrealism.

On the night of the premiere of the film, Buñuel was so worried that he might be attacked by viewers that he filled his pockets with rocks to defend himself. Although many in the audience were revolted by the eyeball-cutting scene (some even threw up), the film was a success. In the audience were many artists, including Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Joan Miró, and Man Ray, as well as important art patrons. Several of the artists proclaimed the film a landmark in the history of cinema. Buñuel and Dalí suddenly became two of the best-known surrealists in the world. Most important, one of the key patrons of surrealist art, the wealthy Vicomte de Noailles (de no-EYE), rented the film for a private showing at his villa in July. It’s too bad that Dalí was not there to share in the glory of the evening, or in his new-found prominence.

The First Days of Spring marked Dalí’s true entry into the world of surrealism. Throughout the painting are symbols that had emerged from his subconscious. Art historians can only guess at what they all mean. On the far right and in the middle of the piece is a man who looks surprisingly like Sigmund Freud. Does this mean that the picture should be interpreted like that of a dream, because of Freud’s interest in dreams? In the center is a photograph of Dalí, and at the top of the painting is a man and a child. Are these Dalí and his father? Also making its appearance is a grasshopper. Dalí had been deathly afraid of grasshoppers since childhood. It sits on a strangely shaped head that is based on the shapes of one of the rocks at Cape Creus. This image is thought to be a self-portrait, and it appears in many of the paintings that Dalí completed over the next few years. Above and below the head are a series of parrots, a rabbit, a deer, and a fish. These animals came to Dalí as mental images during dreams. He was certain they were from his childhood; perhaps they were from pictures of animals that had been in his room when he was a young child.

The First Days of Spring (1929), by Salvador Dalí

Activity

Video of Dreams

Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel were the most famous of surreal-ist filmmakers, but others, such as Man Ray, used film as a method for creating art from the subconscious mind. Dalí and Buñuel collected ideas from their dreams, memories of childhood fears, and subconscious thoughts to create the story of their film. In one scene, ants appear to crawl out of a hand, and in another, a man dressed as a maid falls off his bicycle into the gutter. The process of coming up with ideas for their films was similar to the automatic writing technique used by the surrealists. The result was a film by Dalí and Buñuel that was unlike any other. Here’s how you can make your own unforgettable film. Like Dalí, you can work with a friend or two to create ideas for your screenplay.

Materials

Pencil

Paper

Camcorder and cassette

A variety of toys and household objects

Get together with a friend and try to remember your dreams. As thoughts come into your head, share them. Try to figure out how these ideas and images could be filmed.

Write a screenplay based on the images you and your friend come up with. Consider ways to make the scenes seem as dreamlike or unreal as possible. For example, you can use the stop-action mode on the camcorder to animate objects, like a shoe walking by itself across the floor.

Film your movie. Experiment with shooting the same scene from different angles. If you wish, you can also dub in a mix of music and sounds. In dreams the dreamer often finds him or herself changing locations with no reasonable explanation. A person might dream that she is in her kitchen, then all of a sudden find herself in the middle of a baseball field. Using video you can create all sorts of dreamlike transformations and stories.

As Dalí painted in Cadaqués in preparation for his one-man show in Paris the following November, an array of odd and sometimes disturbing images began to appear in his work. Many of the paintings had shocking sexual images that are interpreted as indicating Dalí’s fear and shame regarding sex and sexual relations. In the paintings are body parts, breasts, buttocks, and penis-like shapes, which are separate from bodies. Some of these shapes even seem to grow out of other objects. Some of these images were arranged next to images from the Catholic religion, such as a wine chalice used in blessings. Dalí certainly wasn’t holding back on living up to the surrealist goal of attacking social norms.

Activity

Dream Journal

In André Breton’s first Surrealist Manifesto, an essay about surrealism published in 1924, he stated that modern people were discontent because they were separated from the imaginative realm of dream and fantasy. He added that young children and insane people had more freedom of thought, since they weren’t bothered with the importance of rational thinking. It didn’t matter to them if their thoughts made sense, any more than we might expect a dream to make sense. To Breton, dreams had their own type of reality, and maybe they were even more real than “real life.”

Breton and other surrealists paid close attention to their dreams. Dalí tapped into his dreams by holding a pencil or brush in his hand and then allowing himself to fall asleep in front of his canvas. Just as he began to dream, his fingers would relax and let the pencil fall. The sound of it hitting the floor woke him, and he would then draw or paint the fantastic images that had come to him during his dream state.

You can try Dalí’s technique. Tuning yourself in to your dreams will put you in touch with your subconscious creative powers.

Materials

Notebook

Pencil

Flashlight

Place the notebook, pencil, and flashlight next to your bed.

If you wake up during the night, jot down notes about any wild images or actions that you remember dreaming, or draw the images you see.

When you open your eyes in the morning, try to remember some of your dreams. Write about some of the dream scenes you recall, and quickly sketch any memorable images.

Use these memories to help you create some surreal art. You can even use a few of the images to make a cover drawing for your dream journal.

Dalí’s Difference Appears

Every day Dalí woke up early and painted the images that were in his thoughts. During the day he sat staring at his canvas. As more images appeared in his mind, he somehow just “knew” exactly where to place them in his picture. In the evening he stared at his art before going to sleep, hoping that the artwork would become part of his dreams. His only break from work was when he rowed out to a sheltered spot along the shore, sunbathed, and then took a quick dip in the cold water. Returning to his studio, he would paint and paint until the last rays of light faded. Dalí did not care how his paintings would be received by his friends and family. Many of the images, especially those related to sexuality or bodily functions, were shocking. These paintings were like none that had been done before. To be sure, they would be noticed when he displayed them in Paris the next fall.

Dalí was taking himself to the edge of sanity by plunging so deeply and regularly into his inner mind. In many ways, he was more in touch with his dreams than his waking life. It became harder for him to relate to people, and he suffered from lack of sleep and isolation from friends. His mental state was very unstable. On meeting friends in the street, he might have fits of uncontrollable laughter. People might have thought that he was using some kind of drug, but unlike many artists, Dalí had little interest in drugs or serious drinking. In August 1929 the art dealer Camille Goemans arrived in Cadaqués for a vacation with his girlfriend and the Belgian painter, René Magritte and his wife Georgette. Later Paul Eluard came with his wife Gala and their daughter Cécile. Dalí’s friends couldn’t help but notice that the artist was behaving strangely.

Dalí’s sister Anna María did not like her brother’s paintings. She called them “nightmares on canvas.” She thought that he was trying to explain the inexplicable. Dalí’s friends from Paris worried her even more. She thought they lacked any decency or morals. Compared to the conservative life the family led in Cadaqués and Figueres, this was true. Gala and Paul Eluard had a type of open marriage that was definitely not moral by normal standards. Both had fallen in love with other people. Paul had a girlfriend in Paris, and Gala was just finishing up a romance with the German surrealist artist Max Ernst. On top of this, Gala did not want to be a mother, and she ignored her daughter Cécile.

RENÉ MAGRITTE

(1898–1967)

Surrealists liked to juxtapose (place together) completely unrelated objects in new and surprising ways. René Magritte, a painter from Brussels, Belgium, took on this challenge and created works that made him one of the better-known and more popular surrealist painters. He said that ordinary objects in a new setting “uttered a scream,” and he believed that people could discover the poetry in normal everyday things if they just opened up their minds. His style, which is sometimes called magic realism, required a very exacting painting style. The objects and backdrops in the paintings are painted in a realistic style, but they are presented in ways that do not make sense in the real world.

Magritte created many strange scenes that had a powerful effect on art viewers. In one of his early surrealist paintings, Threatening Weather, a torso, tuba, and chair float in midair above the seashore. In another piece, The False Mirror, he created a close-up of a human eye, with clouds in the place of the iris. Are the clouds a reflection of the outside sky, or are they inside the person’s head? In Magritte’s painting Time Transfixed, a locomotive emerges from a fireplace. On the mantelpiece are empty candlesticks and a clock. Above them is a mirror, which reflects nothing in the room except for the candlesticks and clock. All of these works are painted in a realistic style. The viewer is often left wondering what Magritte’s paintings really mean, and is challenged to rethink reality.

Magritte liked to play with both reality and fantasy. In one picture, he transformed the fantasy figure of a mermaid by reversing the parts of her body. His version had a fish head and human legs! He also loved to place objects in impossible situations. Rocks aren’t supposed to float, but they do in Magritte’s world.

Magritte’s ideas came to him in flashes of insight during his daily activities. Once, as he watched his wife nibbling on a chocolate bird, he was inspired to paint a woman munching a live bird. Magritte once said, “Everything that is visible hides something else that is invisible.” By this he meant that everything you see has something else behind it that you cannot see. For example, if you are looking at a house, you can’t see the yard on the other side. His painting The Human Condition expresses this thought. It shows a painting on an easel in which we see a scene of the real landscape that is directly behind the easel. It seems as if the painting could be transparent, like a window.

Magritte is also well known for creating objects in his paintings that seem to come alive. In Philosophy in the Boudoir, high heel shoes sprout real toes, and a dress on a hanger has real breasts.

Time Transfixed (1938), by René Magritte

“The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad!”—Dalí

Dalí got along well with Paul and began a surreal portrait of the poet, but Gala soon became his infatuation. When Buñuel arrived a few weeks later to work with Dalí on a new film, he noticed how Dalí thought of nothing else but Gala. Buñuel was frustrated by Dalí’s inability to focus on the film, and it appeared that Gala had Dalí under her control. For her part, Gala had found in Dalí another artist to fall in love with, even if he was 10 years her junior. She thought of him as a half-mad genius who needed her help and guidance to keep him from going totally insane. She and the others were particularly disturbed by the shocking nature of Dalí’s painting The Lugubrious Game. In the painting, a swirl of images seems to emerge from a sleeping head. The images include breasts and other body parts floating among faces, hats, and strange egg-like objects. In the foreground stands a man who has had an accident and pooped in his trousers. Nothing like this had been painted before. Dalí was crossing the line of what was acceptable in art. Gala told Dalí that he must not go too far into his subconscious. She thought it was dangerous for his success as an artist to so openly document his psychological fears and troubles. But Dalí knew he wasn’t insane. Later he became very fond of saying, “The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad!”

Although Dalí feared her strong influence, he became obsessed with Gala. When she left, he promised to see her in Paris later that fall. Dalí had fought against his dominating father all his life, but somehow he was attracted to the same type of strong personality in Gala.

When Gala returned to Paris, she convinced Breton that Dalí was a genius who would bring new ideas and energy to the surrealist movement. Meanwhile, Dalí worked hard and soon completed his paintings for his first one-person show in Paris. Breton, Gala, and the other surrealists welcomed him into their group.

SURREALIST ART

René Magritte, Salvador Dalí, and other surrealist painters tried to recreate scenes that evoked the strangeness of the dream state. This process involved tapping into symbols that were often recurrent in their dreams. Another method of creating a dreamlike feeling was to show strange transformations, in which everyday objects change in a way so that they become otherworldly. For example, a bicycle made of bones is the type of surreal image that someone might have in a dream. In dreams, things can also go into metamorphosis—that is, they change into something else. A pumpkin might sprout a human face, for example, or a leg might become part of a tree.

Surrealists also used juxtaposition and dislocation to make their art more dreamlike. Juxtaposition is a placement of two objects side by side that normally aren’t found together. For example, a pencil and a planet would be a strange combination. Sometimes dreams are full of objects in places where they normally aren’t found, such as a bed in a forest or a castle in a bowl of cereal. This strange appearance of objects is referred to as dislocation.

Through the use of juxtaposition, dislocation, metamorphosis, and transformation, surrealists created art that was odd and sometimes uncomfortable to look at. Though viewers might have consciously disliked the art, they were often drawn to it by their subconscious minds. It spoke to the part of them that lay buried deep inside their brains.

At the First Limpid Word (1923), by Max Ernst

Surrealist art doesn’t have to make sense, and surrealists made an effort to create writing and art pieces that were nonsensical. This included making films without clear plots, ballets with unusual costumes and movements, and events, called happenings, where just about anything could occur.

Midnight Marriage (1926), by René Magritte

To a generation of young people that had experienced a rapid modernization of the world and the horrors of World War I, normal life no longer seemed quite so logical. Suddenly it seemed quite possible that the world of the subconscious and dreams was as much a part of reality as the solid, everyday objects and events that were so much a part of daily life.

Dalí was so nervous about his pending art show that two days before it opened he ran away with Gala to southern Spain. He didn’t write to his family or even check on the success of his show. After a month in the south of Spain he began to feel guilty about not being in touch with his family. Gala returned to Paris, and Dalí went home. His father and sister were upset with his behavior. What was he doing running around with a Frenchwoman, especially one who was married and 10 years older than he? How could he be so inconsiderate as not to let them know where he had gone?

All is his life, Dalí had been treated like someone who could not take care of himself. He had been pampered, and at the same time ordered about, by his father. But this was about to change. Dalí now had a new caretaker.

Already angered by Salvador’s disappearance, Señor Dalí was even more disturbed by a news report he read describing how his son had written on one his paintings “I spit on the portrait of my mother.” This was the last straw. Was Dalí staging another revolt against his father’s control over him? Whatever the reason for his offensive remark, Salvador refused to apologize, and his father threw him out of the house. Buñuel arrived just as this was happening, and the two of them took off for Buñuel’s family home in Cadaqués. Buñuel brought good news. Dalí’s Paris show had been a success. Every painting had sold at high prices, and the Vicomte de Noailles had purchased his most radical work, The Lugubrious Game. The Vicomte was also providing the funding for Dalí’s and Buñuel’s new film, L’Age d’Or (The Golden Age).

They immediately set to work on the screenplay, but unlike the last time, they couldn’t seem to agree with each other’s ideas. Dalí thought Buñuel was too intent on making an antichurch statement instead of a surreal antireligious comedy. Dalí was full of strange ideas, such as a cart rumbling through a living room, a forester who shoots his son on impulse, and a man with a large rock on his head. Many of Dalí’s ideas were used in the film, but it had not been easy working with each other.

Before Buñuel left, Dalí received a letter from his father stating that he was banished forever from the family. Afterward, Salvador shaved his head and buried the hair on the beach. When he left for Paris in December, instead of looking back at Cadaqués from the last viewpoint, as he had always done, he looked straight ahead. He was off to Paris, and to Gala, for good.

Dalí and Gala, 1930.

Life with Gala

Back in Paris, Gala and Dalí began to develop a partnership, which would eventually bring Dalí great fame and earn Gala tremendous riches. This would take time, however, and Gala’s steadfast support. Dalí had always been supported by others and envisioned people as porters who would help to carry him to his destination, spurred on by his genius. Gala was now his chief porter.

Dalí’s impulse, after being in Paris for a while, was to escape to some quieter place, but Gala knew that an artist could not survive without art patrons who would buy the artist’s work. She had left her daughter Cécile with her mother-inlaw, and her main passion was to help Dalí succeed. Other artists had family incomes or inheritances to live on, but Dalí had been cut off from his family finances. It was time for him to earn his living from his art. Though still shy, Dalí was slowly becoming more comfortable carrying on conversations with those who might purchase his art. Gala, meanwhile, worked hard to cultivate relationships with wealthy art patrons. The Vicomte and Vicomtess de Noailles were anxious to meet Dalí. They invited Dalí and Gala to dinner at their luxurious home, where Dalí saw his painting, The Lugubrious Game, hanging in the company of paintings by many of the great artists whom he admired. Excited by this honor, he felt more relaxed dining with the wealthy aristocrats and other members of high society who were present at the dinner. That evening he learned that these wealthy people were even more open to his ideas than many other artists and surrealist thinkers. He also realized that they were very interested in prestige and status, and that he could use this to his advantage. They would want his art all the more if it gave them fame. Like certain teenagers who need the latest style of clothes or the most current popular music, these wealthy art patrons were always on the lookout for the next popular artist. If they were convinced the work of a new artist would impress their friends, they wouldn’t hesitate to be the first to collect the artist’s work.

These relationships would pay off dearly during the next few years as Dalí and Gala struggled to survive on what they could earn from his art. The first break came from the Noailleses, who commissioned Dalí to do a new work of his choice. Dalí created The Old Age of William Tell, a painting that represents his painful breakup with his family and his new union with Gala. These were both momentous events for him, and he needed to work through his feelings about them via his artistic creations.

Dalí missed Cadaqués and the landscape of Cape Creus. With the money from his commission he bought a crumbling fisherman’s shack at Port Ligat, near Cape Creus. It was only a 20-minute walk from the town of Cadaqués, but it was far enough away for them to avoid seeing Dalí’s father. When they arrived in Cadaqués in March, they were shunned by the villagers, who had been asked by Dalí’s father not to provide them lodging. At Port Ligat, however, they were welcomed by Dalí’s old acquaintance, Lidia Nogueres, and accepted by the fishermen. They arranged for the shack to be made more livable, and then went to Barcelona, where Dalí gave a speech. In his talk about surrealism, he explained that the comment about his mother was not an insult against her. It was based on moral conflicts such as the ones that commonly occur in people’s dreams, in which they destroy the person they love. He had learned about these types of dreams from the works of Sigmund Freud. When Gala and Dalí returned to Cadaqués, the civil guards harassed them. Señor Dalí, who had a position of power in the town, had instructed the guards to make sure his son did not stay there. Shortly afterward, Dalí and Gala returned to Paris.

With help from Gala, Dalí was more determined to make his mark as an artist. His new paintings, work with Buñuel, and connections with art patrons gave him hope for success. He was ready to be away from the influence of his father and back with Buñuel and their surrealist friends. Paris was the key to his success, but Cadaqués was still home to his heart. Dalí was drawn to Cape Creus and Cadaqués. They inspired his art, and the wild landscape fed his soul. He had been evicted from his home only four months before, but already he wanted to move back for part of the year, even if he had to live in a fisherman’s shack.

4 DALÍ AND THE SURREALISTS

Detail of Archeological Reminiscence of Millet’s Angelus (1933–35), by Salvador Dalí

Buñuel received a letter from Señor Dalí asking him to warn his son not to come back to Cadaqués. Salvador must have received the message when he returned to Paris, just in time for the filming of their new movie, L’Age d’Or.

Since their first film was such a big hit, Dalí and Buñuel were ready to try even more daring concepts for L’Age d’Or. Dalí had sent Buñuel many ideas for their new film. He was particularly excited about the idea of making the film a sensory experience. He wanted the viewers to be able to touch certain substances that matched the images they saw on the screen. While watching a love scene, for example, they might touch something that felt like skin. When a toilet flushed, they might be sprayed with water. Dalí’s ideas were ahead of the times and difficult to turn into reality. Unfortunately, the film never included this “touchy feely” component, but many of Dalí’s other ideas were included. In one scene, a man covered in dust shakes himself, causing dust to spray onto people passing by on the sidewalk. In another, a man with a flat stone on his head walks through a park and passes a statue with a flat stone on its head. Many scenes made no sense. One camera shot shows a toilet, and the next frame is of bubbling lava. All of these scenes are typical dream images and are similar to those that were appearing in Dalí’s paintings. Later in the film there is a close-up of a man walking toward the camera. It is obvious that one of the buttons on his fly is undone. This is one of the many details that would later cause trouble for the filmmakers. Most shocking of all, however, was the film’s general attack on society and the Catholic Church, which was mostly based on Luis Buñuel’s antichurch attitude.

Dalí had little involvement in the filming of this movie. In April Buñuel and his film crew arrived at Cape Creus to film a scene in which archbishops arrive at the rocky shore—and turn into skeletons. The movie then shows some Spanish bandits, acted by Max Ernst, Ronald Penrose, and some Spanish surrealists. Dalí did not come for the filming, most likely because he feared his father’s warning and further harassment by the civil guards. Dalí was also concerned about Gala’s health. She had pleurisy, an irritation of the lungs, and she needed his help. The two of them went to Malaga, where the weather would be better for Gala’s health. Despite his lone-wolf mentality, Dalí was now in a serious relationship with a woman and part of a bigger group of artists.

Return to Paris

Dalí and Gala returned to Paris in June 1930. Dalí began to spend evenings with the other surrealists. Often they would occupy themselves doing a group drawing, which they called “the exquisite corpse.” One by one they took turns drawing a part of a body on a piece of paper. None of them could see what the others drew because the paper was folded before being passed to the next person. The complete character or beast that was finally revealed when the paper was unfolded was a total surprise. Evening activities such as this supported a collaborative feeling among the artists and writers where they could really share their creative energies. Other games were played, such as “the truth game” and “the when and if” game. Gala participated in these activities, too. She and Dalí created exquisite corpses in partnership with André Breton, Paul Eluard, Valentine Hugo, and other surrealists.

In the summer of 1930, Dalí and Gala returned to Port Ligat to live in their humble shack. Señor Dalí had, at this point, concluded that he couldn’t really keep his son away from Port Ligat. Dalí was so happy to be back in the beloved landscape of his youth that he painted some extraordinary work. The Average Bureaucrat shows a large head that is empty except for some seashells. It clearly appears to be an insult to his father and his life as a petty official in a small town. The surrealists made fun of people like Dalí’s father and other bureaucrats who were narrow-minded thinkers. In the middle left-hand edge of the painting are two figures: an adult and a child are walking on the great plain. Is this a reference to Dalí’s childhood relationship with his father? Perhaps the painting was a rejection of his father as well as a hopeful desire for a reunion with him.

Activity

The “Exquisite Corpse” Drawing

One of the ideals of the surrealists was to share their creative ideas with each other. To do this, they created games or activities such as “the exquisite corpse” in which they each contributed a part to the whole creation. The result of this activity is a weird drawing of a human or animal figure. The rules of the game ensure that the finished drawing will always be a surprise. This activity requires four people to complete.

Materials

Unlined paper

Pencils

Fold a sheet of paper into four equal parts.

The first person to draw starts at the top section and draws anything to represent a head. This can be an actual head, or something else that will be on the top of the figure. (This could be anything—a watermelon, a shoe, or a flower, for example.) A little bit of the drawing (not more than an inch) should overlap into the section below so that the separate sections will line up. Before the first person passes the drawing to the next person, he must fold the paper so his drawing is hidden. Only the part of the drawing that extends into the next section should be visible.

The next artist gets to draw anything to represent the torso of the body. This must overlap a small part of the next section of paper. Before passing it on, the artist must fold the paper so that both drawings are hidden. Again, only the part of the drawing that extends into the next section should be visible.

The third artist can draw anything he or she wishes to represent legs. Before passing it on, the paper must be folded again, so that only the part of the drawing that extends into the next section is visible.

The last artist can create anything she wishes to represent feet. Remember, no peeking allowed!

After the last person finishes, the paper can be unfolded and everyone can examine “the exquisite corpse.”

Student examples of “the exquisite corpse.”

Gala and Dalí returned to Paris in October and moved into a tiny studio. Gala continued developing Dalí’s relationships with the rich and influential. The two were extremely poor after spending most of their money on the shack, and Dalí wouldn’t have a one-person show until the following June. Despite their poverty, they became friends of the famous clothes designers Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli, who were well acquainted with some of the wealthy art collectors who were interested in Dalí’s work. They met princes, a maharajah, and wealthy South Americans. One of their most important new relationships was with the French Prince Faucigny-Lucinge, who had seen one of Dalí’s paintings in a gallery and immediately purchased it. Although Dalí was living the life of the starving artist, he was creating new masterpieces and enlarging his fan club.

Collectors such as the Prince Faucigny-Lucinge were only too happy to introduce Dalí and Gala to other potential collectors at social gatherings. The Noailleses, who had financed L’Age d’Or, showed the film to the important artists and art lovers in Paris at a private screening. Buñuel and Dalí intended the film to be revolutionary—different from any other film ever made. It was. As in Un Chien Andalou, there are numerous scenes that are meant to shock the audience. Although many artists praised it, some of the aristocratic guests were indeed shocked. In one scene, a cow is sleeping on a bed in a fancy house. In another scene, a small giraffe and a bishop are tossed out of a window. One wild scene follows another. One of the strangest is when a man kills himself and his body ends up on the ceiling.

The film was clearly meant to upset people, so it was no surprise that it did. Conservative French people read about the film in the news. They became angry about its attack on the Church, and they were very upset that the Noailleses had financed the film. The Vicomtess de Noailles, who was of Jewish descent, was singled out by the far right as promoting communist revolution. The Italian government was upset about the film as well, because one of the characters seemed to parody the very short king of Italy, and because the whole film seemed to be an insult to Rome, the Catholic Church, and the fascist government of Mussolini.

Buñuel, meanwhile, had taken off for Hollywood. Film producers there had heard about the film and were interested in his work. Dalí wrote the program notes for the film’s public showing, which was scheduled for early December. For this premiere, the surrealists had set up a gallery of their art in the lobby of the theater. On the night of December 3, 1930, two fascist groups, one of them anti-Jewish, attacked the theater. (The French fascists were bigots who disliked Jews, gypsies, and other people who were not French Catholics.) They threw stink bombs into the crowd, shouted “Death to Jews,” and destroyed many of the art pieces, including one of Dalí’s.

FASCISM AND FRANCO

After World War I, some European countries such as Italy began to follow a new political philosophy called fascism. Fascists thought that a nation could prosper economically and culturally through a stronger sense of national identity. Many European countries, including Germany, were composed of people from diverse backgrounds. There were blond, blue-eyed Germans with a Saxon northern heritage, and there were brown-eyed, curly-haired German Jews who had come from the Middle East, but had been living in northern Europe for centuries. The myth that fascism promoted was that there was a single race or cultural group that was superior, and that people from any other race or culture were not as good, were not “true citizens” of the country, were the cause of economic troubles, and should be cast out. The Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (MOO-so-LEEN-ee) coined the term fascism, which was based on the Italian word for union. To the fascists, however, it was only the union of the dominant cultural group that mattered. Unlike the democracy movement, fascism placed the authority of the government above individual rights and freedoms of citizens. It put the culture and economic health of the ruling majority above those of minorities. Democratic institutions such as legislatures and free elections were not considered as important as a strong government that was capable of bringing about rapid economic progress and developing a stronger sense of cultural pride.

The 1917 communist revolution in Russia had frightened the ruling classes and wealthy corporations. In Germany and other nations, people were tired of the poverty of post-war Europe. The fascists promised prosperity and protection against communist revolution. They blamed minorities such as Jews and gypsies for the country’s problems, such as a lack of jobs.

Under the leadership of Adolph Hitler, German fascists gained power in Germany in the early 1930s. The fascist governments of both Germany and Italy aided the Spanish nationalists during the Spanish Civil War. Without the help of democratic countries such as France or Great Britain, the Spanish Republicans were unable to hold up against the combined forces of the fascists. After they lost the war, Spain came under the rule of the fascist dictator General Francisco Franco.

The news of this attack spread across Europe and to the United States. All of a sudden, Dalí and Buñuel were known for making a film that had caused a riot. Film critics praised the film. The communists also loved it, and the film had strong support from the fascist government in Italy, but the right-wing press urged that the film be banned. The French government finally banned the film, and all copies were destroyed except two that managed to escape the police. It would be more than 40 years before the film was once again legal to show in France. Dalí had indeed gained notoriety, but many of his wealthy patrons, afraid of the bad publicity, were frightened off from buying his art. The Vicomte himself, who was a Catholic, was almost thrown out of the Catholic church.

In spite of his poverty, Dalí would not give up his career as an artist. Besides painting, he started creating inventions such as fake fingernails with mirrors, form-fitting chairs, padded dresses, and shoes with springs. Many of these inventions were way ahead of the times, and Gala had difficulty selling them. Somehow, however, Dalí and Gala survived in Paris, and by January they were ready to return to Port Ligat. Although it was a refuge from the noisiness and commotion of Paris, life was harder there. The shack was bitterly cold, and the people of Cadaqués were still unfriendly to them. The couple settled in, and Dalí got to work writing and painting.

They returned to Paris in the late spring of 1931 with a new batch of Dalí’s paintings for his upcoming show. Fortunately, his patrons were ready to buy his art again and the show was a complete success. Dalí sold his paintings and received rave reviews. He also started making some contacts in New York. Julien Levy, a gallery owner in New York, bought one small painting that was destined to become a modern classic: The Persistence of Memory, with its unforgettable depiction of melting clocks, is one of the twentieth century’s best known paintings. The work was the result of Dalí’s interest in the concepts of soft and hard. One night, while Gala had been out at the movies with some friends, he glanced at some gooey cheese and thought of things that were very soft. As he stared at one of his half-finished paintings, he suddenly envisioned two soft watches. He immediately painted them into the landscape and was very pleased with the result.

COMMUNISM

During the 1800s, great changes came to Europe as industry spread from one country to another. Although workers had jobs, many of them worked under dangerous conditions, had little job security, and lived in unsanitary conditions. In the countryside, many of the farmers didn’t own their own farms. They were tenants of large landowners who charged them high fees for the use of the fields. The owners of the lands and factories were often very rich and cared little for the welfare of their workers.

In the mid-1800s two philosophers, Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels, published a document called The Communist Manifesto. The manifesto claimed that the societies of the past and present allowed the rich and powerful to live off the hard work and hardships of the poor. They said that owners of land or businesses made money because of their possessions, and that poor people were at their mercy. This unfair situation could be changed, argued Marx and Engels, if the working people collectively owned land, factories, and businesses. They could achieve this by overthrowing the ruling classes.

Marx and Engels wrote about societies that existed in other parts of the world, such as the South Pacific Islands, where everything was shared among members of a community. This type of ownership is called communal. These societies had been called primitive by some people, but were they really? Marx and Engels labeled private ownership and capitalism inferior systems. They proposed that once the common people took over, the economy would prosper and inequalities would disappear.

In 1917, during World War I, the first communist revolution occurred in Russia. (Communist revolutions also occurred in such countries as China, Cuba, and Vietnam.) The task of turning Russia into a modern country where people could be well-fed, clothed, and otherwise provided for was extremely difficult, but people throughout the world looked to Russia with hope that life could improve for workers elsewhere. Communism gained support in many countries, especially after the Great Depression of the 1930s, which left many people without jobs or homes. Many artists and intellectuals, including some of the surrealists, saw communism as the answer to social injustice. They were interested in making the world a better place for everyone and thought that a total upheaval of society was needed.

The lives of poor workers and farmers in Russia did slowly improve. Public schools were established, and large projects were undertaken to provide electricity and jobs for people, but this progress had a cost. Marx had proposed that a communist country would have to be ruled by a dictatorship at first, but that later it would be controlled by the people. This did not happen in Russia (which, in the 1930s, was part of the Soviet Union). Soviet dictators such as Joseph Stalin ruled through terror. Millions of people were killed or imprisoned. After 70 years of rule, only communist party members had power; the common people still had no voice. In 1991 communist rule in the Soviet Union collapsed.

Dalí and Gala were often invited to dinners with wealthy Parisians and other visiting socialites, and Dalí became more sociable. He also cultivated his role as the eccentric artist. This act helped him become comfortable with the rich and educated members of high society. As always, Dalí was creating his own slang. Before long, many of the high-society women were spouting “Dalíspeak,” saying such bizarre things as “it’s glooey” or “my dear, I have a phenomenal desire to cretinize you” (in other words, “turn you into an idiot”). Eventually some of these art lovers joined together in a group of twelve called the Zodiac group. Prince Faucigny-Lucinge had thought of the idea of a support group for Dalí and persuaded others to join him. Just as the zodiac is a group of 12 constellations, the prince proposed that 12 people form a group to help support Dalí to free him to do his work—one patron for each month. Each member was allowed to choose one of Dalí’s paintings or two of his etchings each year. In return, they each paid a month’s income to Dalí and Gala. This was a perfect arrangement. It kept Dalí and Gala from starving, and, since Dalí was filled with ideas and worked extremely hard, he was able to create additional art to sell to other collectors.

The Persistence of Memory (1931), by Salvador Dalí

VALENTINE HUGO

(1887–1968)

Although most of the well-known sur-realists were men, some women were also involved in the movement. During the 1920s and 1930s, women began to demand a greater role in society. The women who became involved with surrealism were pioneers in art and in new adventures for women. They were able to express their views just as well as male artists and were free to take an active role in the surrealist movement.

Some women, like Gala, played the role of a promoter and muse (a person who inspires an artist). Others, including Valentine Hugo, created their own art. Hugo was a painter and stage set designer who also created surrealist objects. One of her most famous pieces is a mysterious assemblage in which a red-gloved hand grasps a white one, which is holding dice. The hands are held down on a roulette table by a web-like net of thread.

Hugo was a close friend of Gala’s. They spent many evenings together with Dalí, Breton, and other artists playing surrealist games, such as “the exquisite corpse.”

Hugo also made pastel pictures of strange worlds that were used to illustrate several books. One such book was a collection of poems by Paul Eluard, which was published in the 1930s. Many of Hugo’s illustrated works are now in art collections.

Surrealistic Objects

Dalí wrote several articles about his theories of art, and about surrealism in particular. In 1932 he wrote about surrealistic objects that he and other surrealists had been making. For several years André Breton, Man Ray, and Marcel Duchamp had been experimenting with modifying normal, everyday things to give them a surreal nature. Dalí had recently joined in the fun, and he brought many new ideas to the group. One of his stranger constructions was a woman’s shoe with a glass of warm milk placed inside it. Above it hung a lump of sugar, which could be plunged into the milk. Also included in the art piece were pictures of shoes and a spoon to stir the sugar. Like his paintings, this type of object construction was the result of Dalí tapping into his subconscious thought and letting it guide his creative efforts. Another Dalí object, Retrospective Bust of a Woman, is a sculpture of the head and shoulders of a woman topped with a loaf of bread. On top of the loaf are two inkwells and figures from the painting The Angelus by Millet. Dalí painted ants on the face of the woman. Another object that Dalí created was a copy of the famous statue Venus de Milo. Dalí’s version featured drawers, just like a dresser, built into the figure’s body. Meret Oppenheim, one of the women in the surrealist group, covered a teacup, saucer, and spoon in fur. Man Ray created an object and then photographed it after he lit in on fire. André Breton made something called a “poem object.” In this artistic piece he attached a variety of objects to a box, and placed poetic text above it. Numbers found in the text corresponded to the objects displayed beneath.

Dalí was now as much a part of the surrealist group as he had been part of his old crowd at the Resi in Barcelona. In the summer of 1933 Dalí exhibited his art in a group show with Arp, Breton, Duchamp, Picasso, Miró, Ernst, Man Ray, Hugo, and many other surrealists. During the previous couple of years many of these artists, including Breton and Hugo, had visited Dalí and Gala in Port Ligat, and that autumn both Duchamp and Man Ray came to their home. Man Ray photographed Dalí dressed as a ghost, and he recorded many of the objects scattered about the artist’s olive grove.

Activity

Poem Objects

Surrealists create art using all kinds of objects, from stones and old utensils to pictures. André Breton liked to put together a set of objects in combination with words to make something he called a poem object.

Materials

Glue

Any small materials or objects that catch your interest, such as an eggshell, a photograph, a feather, bits of broken toys, or parts from a machine

Piece of cardboard

Pen

Glue the objects to the cardboard in any arrangement that you wish.

Write down any words onto the cardboard or objects that come to mind as you put together your creation. Your “poem” doesn’t have to make any sense, and the objects need not have any relation to each other except that you chose them. You may be surprised by what you choose and how the poem just pops into your head if you just listen to your thoughts.

Try making other poem objects whenever junk or trash objects inspire your creative spirit.

In November Julien Levy, the owner of the New York gallery that purchased Persistence of Memory, opened a one-man show of Dalí’s work that won praise from many American art lovers. Included in the show was a painting titled The Enigma of William Tell (a different work from the similarly titled sketch shown on this page). The figure in the painting has a bizarre elongated buttock and a stretched-out hat brim. Both rest on crutches. These images were as bizarre in the 1930s as they seem today. One critic for The New Yorker magazine called Dalí’s paintings “frozen nightmares” and wrote, “These pictures by Dalí are inexplicable as a dream. It would be intolerable to look at them if one could not also smile, and if one did not suspect that the madman who painted them is grinning at us, too—a little impudently, like a precocious schoolboy who has mastered a new obscenity.” New Yorkers were confused and troubled by Dalí’s art, but they loved it anyway. All in all, the show was a great success for the artist.

The Enigma of William Tell with the Apparition of a Celestial Gala (1933), by Salvador Dalí. Pencil sketch study for the painting.

Activity

Surreal Objects

In dreams, normal objects sometimes appear with a twist. A spoon might have a tail, or a chair could possess arms with real hands. One of the goals of surrealists was to create art that expressed the unique world of dreams. They began to create objects that could easily have appeared in dreams. Man Ray assembled an iron with tacks on the underside. Another artist made a soup bowl with wings, and Duchamp created a cage filled with fake sugar lumps, a thermometer, and bone.

Materials

Variety of junk objects, such as an old pen, toy, broken tape cassette, or anything else that you find around the home that is no longer needed and inspires you

Paint

Paintbrush

Glue

Look over the junk objects you’ve collected, and be aware of any feelings or thoughts that you might have. Perhaps an old shoe makes you think of a bed—you might want to place a doll inside it to make that idea into a real object. Maybe you feel cold thinking about the shoe-bed—paint the shoe icy blue so that it will reflect your cold feeling. Play around with the objects that you have collected. Experiment with placing different things together to see what they look like. Don’t attach the objects together until you have had plenty of chances to see which arrangement best expresses your feelings. When you’re certain you’ve created an art piece that feels right to you, glue the objects together.

Light Bulb with Nipple, by Nick

“Democratic institutions are unfit for such thunderous revelations as I am in the habit of making.”—Dalí

The critic had indeed captured the essence of Dalí. The artist was very clever, but mischievous, like a bad schoolboy. It was not always easy to tell when he was grinning behind his art. The overly serious leader of the surrealists, André Breton, was not amused by some of Dalí’s latest work. Despite their insistence on the power of the dream and the importance of rejecting the normal, Breton and many other surrealists were quite firm in their political ideals. They favored Lenin, the leader of the Russian communists, and they rejected the fascist dictators Mussolini and Hitler. Breton was not at all happy when he saw Dalí’s new painting, The Enigma of William Tell. In the picture is a man, with Lenin’s face, leaning on a crutch. When some of the surrealists saw it displayed in a show, they tried to poke holes in it with a cane. In another piece, Dalí had painted Hitler as a nurse, knitting and sitting in a puddle. These images were coming into Dalí’s dreams, and he wanted to paint what he dreamed. He saw Hitler as a leader who would “unleash a world war solely for the pleasure of losing and burying himself in the rubble of an empire.” He was fascinated by this image and thought that other surrealists should pay attention to the symbolic character of Hitler, but many of the other surrealists wished to do nothing more than condemn Hitler and praise Lenin.

A group led by Breton wanted to exclude Dalí from the surrealist movement for what they believed was his “glorification of Hitlerian fascism.” Not all of the surrealists agreed with this, and Breton and some surrrealists met one day at the end of January 1934 to conduct something like a trial. Dalí had a sore throat and fever. He showed up at Breton’s place wearing many layers of clothes and had a thermometer tucked in his mouth. After Breton recited all of Dalí’s bad behavior, Salvador checked his temperature. Finding it high, he started taking off all his layers of clothes and even his shoes. While replying to Breton, he kept taking off his clothes and then putting some back on. One sweater after another was coming off, and almost everyone except Breton thought it was funny. Dalí told the group that his art of Lenin and Hitler came from dreams. He told Breton that the accusations against him were based on political and moral views, not paranoiac critical concepts. (This was Dalí’s term for tuning in to and interpreting unconscious thoughts and feelings).

MERET OPPENHEIM

(1913–1985)

Meret Oppenheim, a Swiss-German artist, had posed as a model for Man Ray and other surrealists, but she is best known for her own surrealist objects. The most famous is Fur Covered Cup, Saucer, and Spoon, which caused quite a stir when it was exhibited in London in 1936. Oppenheim also made objects with jewels and other materials. At the height of her fame she experienced a creative crisis and was unable to produce new work. She returned to Switzerland, where she remained during World War II. After the war she regained her will to create, and quietly began a new phase of artistic life. In 1959 she was invited to exhibit with the surrealists. Her piece, Cannibal Feast, was one of the most memorable art assemblages at the exhibit. Male dummies, dressed for dinner, sit around a table. Upon the table is a golden-faced woman who is covered with food.

Throughout her life, Oppenheim recorded her dreams. She used them as a source of guidance and self-awareness. She also made an effort to get in touch with both the male and female aspects of herself. She felt that within everyone there were both male and female energies, and she tried to balance them in her life and art. One of the few women in the male-dominated surrealist movement, Oppenheim believed that the energy of the feminine was suppressed in society in general, and in the art movements in particular. These beliefs found a place in mainstream thinking at the end of the 1960s, when an international feminist movement began. Oppenheim was “rediscovered” by the younger generation and gained new fame. After her death in 1985 her friends created a film, Imago Meret Oppenheim, about Oppenheim’s life, using many of Meret’s own words from her poetry, letters, and other writing.

Fur Covered Cup, Saucer, and Spoon (1936), by Meret Oppenheim

Then he said, “When you are a surrealist you have to be consistent about it. All taboos are forbidden, or else a list has to be made of those to be observed, and let Breton formally state that the kingdom of surrealist poetry is nothing but a little domain used for the house arrest of those convicted felons placed under surveillance by the vice squad or the communist party.” In other words, Dalí defended himself by saying that if the surrealists truly believed that art should be based on dreams and subconscious thoughts, then any dreams or any thoughts that appeared in art should be fine. Self-expression should not be censored. Who was Breton to decide what was acceptable and what was not?

AMERICAN WOMEN SURREALISTS

The American painter and poet Kay Sage (1898–1963) studied art in Rome, then moved to Paris in 1937. She began painting in the surrealist style after seeing the work of Dalí and Tanguy. Her paintings depict imaginary towns, and Tanquy greatly admired them. Sage and Tanguy became close friends and married in 1940. They moved to the United States during the war and remained there. In the 1940s, Sage began painting landscapes with sharp, spiny forms that were often draped with cloth. Tanguy died of a stroke in 1955, and Sage committed suicide eight years later.

Dorothea Tanning, (b. 1910) another American painter, created surrealist paintings based on her memories of childhood fears. In one painting, a giant sunflower creeps down the hall toward young girls. In another painting, several girls climb upon each other, creating a human pyramid.

Tanning studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and then moved to New York City, where she worked in advertising. She was greatly influenced by the surrealist exhibit of 1936 in New York City and began to paint in a surreal style. Max Ernst, who was scouting for new artists for gallery owner Peggy Guggenheim, discovered Tanning’s works. He loved her art and soon fell in love with her, as well. Tanning and Ernst were married in Beverly Hills in a double wedding with Man Ray and Juliet Browner.

In Tanning’s self-portrait, Birthday, the background and other objects, such as a strange furry creature, are very dreamlike. Painted in 1942, it is an important work of the surrealist era. In 2000, at age 90, Dorothea had her first one-person exhibition in an American museum at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Birthday is now in the museum’s collection.

To get Breton on his side, Dalí knelt on the floor, as if to say that he was indeed a friend of the common people (even though the only common people he knew were his fishermen friends at Port Ligat). Dalí was once again playing the role of the bad boy. He would try to take any game as far as it would go, but it seems he learned a lesson from this episode, and he pulled away from dream-induced art that had anything to do with politics. This time, Dalí had just barely avoided being thrown out of the surrealist group.

Dalían Symbols

Dalí had begun to assemble a group of symbols that appeared in many of his works. Along with the crutch there also appear drawers, cutouts, and elongated body parts. People who can’t stand on their own two feet use crutches. In Dalí’s art, crutches seem to represent people who need to lean on other people for strength and ideas. In his painting The Weaning of Furniture-Nutrition, Dalí’s childhood nurse sits on the beach in front of his old bedside table. The bedside chest has come from the nurse’s back. Another chest, with a bottle on the top, leaves a hole in the larger chest, which looks like the outline of a turreted building. Cutouts probably represent a void, such as in the loss of a loved one, and elongated forms represent a state of mind in which desires are distorted or changed by memories. Drawers may represent entrances into the hidden parts of the mind. Using the landscape of his childhood home, Dalí created works using a variety of these symbols.

The Weaning of Furniture-Nutrition (1934), by Salvador Dalí

Activity

Art in a Box

Max Ernst combined painting and collage with three-dimensional objects to make surrealist compositions with fantastic scenes, such as his Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale. Inspired by Ernst, an American named Joseph Cornell also began to create three-dimensional collages inside boxes. He lined the bottom of his boxes with everything from newspapers to silk, and placed all manner of objects inside the boxes, arranging the items in fascinating compositions. Some of them suggest scenes on imaginary streets, or remind the viewer of a casket or building. Try your hand at creating your own “art in a box.”

Materials

Small cardboard box, such as an empty shoe or cigar box

Cloth, paper, or other material (optional)

Paint (optional)

Variety of objects and materials Pencil

Paper

If you wish, cover the inside of the box with some kind of cloth, paper, or other material, or even paint it.

Experiment with placing objects in the box. Don’t glue anything to it until the composition feels “right” to you. There is no right or wrong way to arrange the objects. It doesn’t have to make sense, but if it gives you a strong emotional feeling, you have probably hit the mark.

Use some glue to keep everything in place.

Jot down any words or phrases that come to mind as you look at your creation. Perhaps you can use them to create a title for your art that expresses your feelings.

Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale (1924), by Max Ernst

During this time, Dalí also began exploring the haunting image of Millet’s The Angelus. Dalí had been obsessed with this painting since he was a schoolboy. There was something about the painting of two peasants, a man and a woman, praying at the end of the day that disturbed Dalí. To him, the figure of the woman seemed more like a praying mantis than a praying peasant, and it appeared to Dalí that she might leap out and devour the man. The basket between them also seemed odd. Like other images that came into his mind during dream states, the images in this painting just wouldn’t go away, and he painted abstract versions of it. In Dalí’s 1933 painting Archeological Reminiscence of Millet’s “Angelus,” the figures have become immense ancient ruins in a barren land. In his painting Meditation on the Harp, Dalí combines The Angelus with one of his distorted figures supported by a crutch. Millet’s The Angelus would continue to influence Dalí’s art for years, and his obsession with it would eventually lead to some interesting discoveries.

Archeological Reminiscence of Millet’s Angelus (1933–35), by Salvador Dalí

Dalí had not been expelled from the surrealists in Paris, but in October 1934, when he visited his uncle Rafael in Barcelona, he asked the man to relay a message to his father: Dalí was finished with the surrealists. Perhaps Dalí had decided he needed his own father more than the father figure that he had found in André Breton. It had been five years since he had been banished from his home. His father did not respond to Dalí’s message. His uncle promised to continue to plead Salvador’s case.

Meanwhile, revolution was breaking out throughout Spain. The socialists had declared a general strike to protest the inclusion of right-wing party members in the Spanish parliament. Trade unions, Catalonian separatists, and others saw this as a chance to finally start the revolution to obtain freedom and independence for Catalonia that they had been waiting for. There was fighting in the streets. Dalí was in Barcelona for the opening of an exhibition of his newest paintings, including The Weaning of Furniture-Nutrition, and he and Gala left Barcelona for France as soon as the fighting broke out. On their journey they had some close calls with gun-toting rebels who were out to attack all who looked like they belonged to the ruling class. They made it safely to the French border, but their taxi driver was not so lucky. He was killed on his way home. Before long, the Spanish army crushed the trade unionists, separatists, and other rebels. Many were killed, and thousands were thrown in jail.

FRIDA KAHLO

(1907–1954)

The Mexican artist Frida Kahlo was discovered by André Breton when he visited Mexico in 1938 to meet with Leon Trotsky, a communist leader. Breton declared that Kahlo was a natural surrealist (in other words, that she was producing surrealist art without meaning to). Kahlo gladly accepted Breton’s help in having her art work exhibited in New York. The exhibits helped Kahlo become a financially successful artist, but she never identified herself as a member of the surrealist group. Her paintings have the same dreamlike quality of many surrealist paintings, but Kahlo preferred to be considered simply a Mexican artist. She wanted respect from art critics in Europe and the United States for the special qualities of her nation’s art. Kahlo was married to the famous Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. For most of her life, she was in poor health. She died when she was in her forties.

Deceased Dimas (1937), by Frida Kahlo

Dalí was greatly disturbed by the fighting. That previous spring, he had made some sketches for a painting in which people were tearing each other apart. A couple of years later he would eventually complete a work based on these ideas. Premonition of Civil War (also known as Soft Construction with Boiled Beans) is a nightmarish painting of dismembered bodies and guts, set on the Empordá plain near Figueres.

Europe was in a state of turmoil. The Nazis were gaining more power in Germany, and civil war was about to break out in Spain. Since Dalí’s relations with Breton and the surrealists were not good, it was indeed a perfect time to develop new friends. Dalí and Gala had met Caresse Crosby, a wealthy American art patron, several years earlier through one of their writer friends. Caresse, a recent widow, had a home near Paris where she hosted many parties. Present at these fashionable events were musicians, surrealist artists, writers, and other art collectors. In the 1920s she and her husband had published the works of new writers such as Ezra Pound, James Joyce, and D. H. Lawrence on their small private press.

Dalí had been invited by the art dealer Julien Levy to attend a showing of his new work in New York. In the fall of 1934, Caresse convinced Dalí and Gala to come to New York on the same ocean liner that she was taking home. They agreed to go, although Dalí was terrified of crossing the ocean on a ship, and they had no money to pay for the trip. According to Dalí, Picasso came to the rescue and loaned them the money that they needed.

MARCEL DUCHAMP

(1887–1968)

Marcel Duchamp, one of the founders of Dada, invented the idea of “ready-mades.” These were normal, everyday objects that were displayed as art. For example, an iron or toaster placed on a pedestal was considered art. Duchamp was also fascinated by machines, and he drew and painted pictures of humorous imaginary inventions. One machine that he actually produced was an optical illusion device called the rotary demi-sphere.

Duchamp stopped painting in 1921 because he believed there was no point to it. He continued to be active in the art world, however, particularly in the surrealist movement. In partnership with Man Ray, he produced several films. In one of them he and Man Ray are playing chess as water cascades over them. (Duchamp was a fanatic chess player and played on the French championship team.)

Duchamp thought that art should be everywhere, not just in museums. He made a portable “museum” that could be carried in a suitcase. In 1935 he started producing optical illusion disks called rotoreliefs, which were played on a phonograph turntable. As they spun, three-dimensional images, such as a boiled egg in a cup or champagne glass, appeared on the disks.

Duchamp was an important influence on other surrealists. He collaborated on pieces with Dalí and others, and he helped design sets for surrealist exhibits. In the 10th International Surrealist Exhibit in Paris, Duchamp came up with the idea of a ceiling that moved like the inside of a stomach.

Dalí Discovers America

The frightened Dalí was indeed a strange sight aboard the ocean liner as it crossed the sea in November 1934. He crouched in their small compartment, which was next to the engine, with a stack of his paintings. Each painting was tied to his fingers or clothing with string. He was on his way to a country where he could barely speak the language. Worst of all, he was aboard a ship that could sink in the middle of the ocean.

However frightened he had been during the journey, from the moment he arrived in New York Dalí started making news. When an important socialite (an influential and wealthy person) like Caresse Crosby returned home from a trip abroad, reporters were always on hand to write something for the society columns. When the reporters asked Caresse Crosby about her trip, she said that they should interview her artist friend, Salvador Dalí. They found him with his paintings tied to himself, and they were amused. Then they looked closely at his paintings, and they were amazed. With Crosby interpreting, Dalí gave a brief lecture on surrealism. The reporters asked Dalí which painting was his favorite. He replied that it was The Portrait of My Wife. In this painting Gala has lamb chops on her shoulders. The reporters were thrilled with Dalí, the eccentric artist, and the next day the painting of Gala made its appearance in all the morning editions of the New York papers.

Dalí had brought not only paintings for his New York show, but also some “objects” to display. Among them was a dinner jacket on which hundreds of small glasses containing a green liqueur and dead flies had been attached.

At the opening of the show Dalí announced in his broken English, “Surrealism is not ei jok, surrealism is ei strange poizun, surrealism is ei zi most vaiolent and daingeros toxin for di imaigineichon zad has so far bin invented in dsi domein ouve art. . . . Aulredi meni pipoul in Nui York jave bin infected bai zi laifquiving and marvelos sors of surrealism.”

At his show, Dalí sold twelve paintings, all at prices higher than he had ever received in Europe. During his stay in New York he also gave five lectures. In one lecture he said (in translation), “I am the first to be surprised and often terrified by the extravagant images that I see appear in fatality on my canvas. The fact that I myself at the moment of painting my pictures know nothing of their meaning is not to say that the images in question are without sense.” He pointed out to his audience that the images were messages from the subconscious mind about such realities as love, death, time, and space.

Activity

Host a Dream Ball

Art isn’t found just in museums or theaters. The surrealists loved to stage exhibitions that were more than art shows. They were events where performances, lectures, displays, and parties were all mixed up into one grand “happening.” These happenings often expressed a sense of humor to mock reality. On his first trip to New York, Dalí staged a happening called a dream ball. The purpose of the ball was to give New Yorkers a chance to express their dreams. Why not have a dream ball of your own?

Materials

Decorations made from a variety of objects Old or unusual clothes

(look in a thrift store)

Refreshments

Music

Ask permission to have a party, and to use your bedroom, basement, garage, or some other room that your family won’t mind you decorating.

Invite your friends to your surreal party and ask them to dress in costumes that express their dreams.

Get some of them to help you assemble dreamlike or sur-realistic mixes of objects for decorations. Create environments that might require guests to crawl around or under things. Hang objects from the ceiling.

Bake cookies or prepare other snacks in the shape of everyday objects like tools or combs, and make a recording of dreamlike music to play during the event.

Caresse Crosby introduced Dalí and Gala to many socialites, and the two were soon on their way to establishing patrons in New York. The night before their return to Europe, Dalí and Gala gave a surreal ball. They wore strange clothes and created environments decorated with all kinds of weird objects. Guests at Dalí’s party were invited to appear as their most frequently occurring dream. But it was not free. They had to pay for admission, drinks, and food! More money for Dalí and Gala.

At the door, people were greeted by a doorman wearing a wreath of pink roses, who gave them a sausage in exchange for their invitation. Inside were a variety of bizarre objects, including a dead cow with a gramophone inside it playing French tunes. Dalí was dressed as a corpse, and Gala wore a black headdress with a doll in the center. On its head was a wound on which Dalí had painted his ants.

A lobster clutched the doll’s skull. The doll on Gala’s headdress was interpreted by some reporters as a reference to famous aviator Charles Lindbergh’s baby, who had recently been kidnapped and killed.

The ball caused an uproar throughout the United States and even made news in Paris and Moscow. Dalí and surrealism had been introduced to the world, and once again Dalí came across as the eccentric bad boy of art. Breton and his group were outraged. Americans had discovered surrealism, and to them, Dalí was its leader! Breton and the surrealists who had so recently contemplated expelling Dalí were incensed that the world press had put Salvador Dalí , the clown, at the forefront of this movement without mentioning a word about Breton or the others.

The ball would not be Dalí’s last venture into surrealistic drama. In 1936 he assisted in a surreal-istic exhibit in London. A girl wandered about Trafalgar Square with her head completely covered in roses to help advertise the event. At another surrealist event, all the guests had to use flashlights to find their way through a maze of mannequins and other displays. The floor was covered with leaves, and coal sacks were hung from the ceiling.

Despite Dalí’s success in New York, he and Gala continued to struggle economically. Dalí wished he could just concentrate on his art and not have to always be thinking of how to make his living. All this was about to change. Soon after Dalí’s return from his triumphant tour in New York, he went to see his father in Figueres to mend the rift between them. His uncle Rafael had softened his father considerably. At first, Señor Dalí shouted at Salvador, but soon they were weeping in each other’s arms. A month later, in April 1935, Señor Dalí decided to give his son a small monthly income.

Later in 1935, Dalí and Gala also found a new patron who would be very important in supporting Dalí’s work for the next few years. Edward James was a wealthy Englishman who disliked being called an “art collector.” He saw himself as a true patron of the arts, and had chosen Dalí as an artist who needed his support. Having James as a steady customer, in addition to receiving a monthly sum from his father, made life much easier for Dalí.

In the autumn of 1935, James came to Port Ligat to visit Dalí and Gala. Before leaving on a trip to Italy together, the three went to Barcelona, where James met many of Dalí’s friends, including Fredrico García Lorca. It had been years since Dalí had seen his old school chum, and they had a wonderful time together. García Lorca praised Dalí as a genius, and he and Gala were fascinated by each other. It was a special reunion, but it would be the last time that Salvador Dalí and Fredrico García Lorca would see each other.

Dalí and Lips Couch. Photograph by Meliton Casals

MAX ERNST

(1891–1976)

Max Ernst was an artist who, like Paul Eluard, continued to be friends with Dalí for many years. Ernst was born in Germany and studied psychiatry and philosophy at the university in Bonn. He served in the German army during World War I and afterward discovered the Dada movement while working in Switzerland. He was intrigued by the dadaists’ revolt against the establishment and was inspired to become an artist. Although he had no art background, he began creating collages.

When Ernst moved to Paris he became one of the first members of the new surrealist movement. He is best known for his paintings. Some depict serious-looking humans and fantastic plants and animals set in Renaissance landscapes. During the summer of 1925, while Ernst was staying at a seaside resort, he came up with the idea of placing a piece a paper on top of the rough wooden floorboards and then rubbing the paper with a soft pencil. This technique is now called frottage. As he stared at the resulting pictures, he felt as if he were having hallucinations (strange, unreal visions). He tried the same technique on other materials, such as string, leaves, ragged pieces of cloth, and any other surface he came across. The drawings that appeared often suggested something totally unrelated to the item that he had rubbed. One drawing might look like the head of a strange creature, while another might appear to be a forest. He also tried a similar technique with paint and canvas. After thickly smearing a canvas with paint, he would then press it into a surface that he thought would create some interesting patterns or impressions. Ernst would then work on creating a scene or composition using the images that were in the rubbing or impression. A group of leaves might become a row of trees, and a strange jagged line might become a face. To Ernst, his new discovery was an opportunity to use chance to create images that could stimulate the creation of new art. The artist only had to allow the subconscious mind to see shapes or scenes that suggested a composition.

Ubu Imperator (1923–24), by Max Ernst

Dalí was now financially secure and ready to pour his energies into his art. One of his more interesting projects was designing interior decorations for James’s London house. During the next few years Dalí would design some amazing furnishings. One of the most famous was a couch in the shape of lips. James had several of these made, as well as lamps shaped like champagne glasses. Another famous object that Dalí designed for James was the lobster telephone. The lobster, made of plaster of Paris, was designed to clip to any standard telephone receiver. James loved them so much that all his phones were adorned with the orange crustaceans. These creations were the forerunners of the pop art movement that would come into full bloom in the 1960s. Pop art celebrated the popular art of everyday items and designs—advertisements, product labels, comic strips, and home furnishings were all explored as inspiration for new art forms. (The lips couch is featured in the 1997 movie Austin Powers.)

Now that Dalí had gained fame in New York he was no longer a shy outsider. He had become an elegant showman who was very comfortable performing for the press and courting his rich collectors. Gala had become quite fashionable, too. They now spent very little time socializing with the other sur-realists, although they continued to have some social contact with Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, and Paul Eluard. Both Ernst and Duchamp inspired Dalí to try new techniques and to explore new ways of looking at art.

Dalí and Gala continued to enjoy the patronage of Edward James. In the spring of 1936, James sent Dalí half the money needed to buy the shack next to door to Dalí’s in Port Ligat. The other half came from a friend of James’s named Lord Berners. Dalí and Gala were now able to expand their small house, and life became a bit more comfortable in Port Ligat. Dalí created a large number of paintings, and Gala was happy that they were selling. Dalí also continued to write articles for the surrealist journal. He started getting ready for the next large surrealist exhibition in London.

Activity

Impressive Art: A Frottage

Like Miró and other surrealists, Ernst used chance creations to inspire this art. Dalí used a similar technique to create an art piece called Decalomania, in which the torso of a human figure had been created through a chance pressing of paper on paint.

Patterns and textures are everywhere around us. The speaker screen on a boom box, the soles of a shoe, our fingerprints—almost anything can provide unique patterns to a piece of art. You can use some of Max Ernst’s techniques to create some surprising art.

Before you get started, you might want to take a short tour of your local surroundings. Search for patterns on everything that you see. Feel the patterns and their textures with your hands. Collect leaves, seaweed, twigs, and any other natural or man-made objects you find lying around.

This activity will help you try two of the techniques that Max Ernst used.

Materials

Paper

Various collected materials to rub paper over

Writing tool (pencil, crayon, or other tool)

Paintbrush

Paint (acrylic or poster)

Newspaper

Paper Rubbing

Place paper over a surface that you think will create some interesting patterns. Rub a pencil, crayon, or other writing tool all over the paper.

Examine the rubbings and discover what images are there.

Use other materials such as paint to develop the images you discover.

Mono Prints

Brush paint onto one side of each of several objects. Arrange the objects in whatever pattern you wish on top of newspaper.

Place paper over the objects.

Gently press and rub the paper over the object. Remove the paper and turn it over to reveal your print.

As you examine your print, you might feel inspired to draw or paint more images or patterns on the paper, or perhaps you’ll be happy to just leave it the way it is. Try making several pictures using this technique and a variety of objects. Be sure to wash the paint off any objects you don’t throw away when you are finished using them.

Student-made frottage

5 DALÍ THE CLOWN PRINCE

Detail of Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man (1943), by Salvador Dalí

In June 1936 the surrealists put on a major exhibition in London. Once again, Dalí ended up making a spectacle for the public. He gave a lecture entitled “Paranoia, the Pre-Raphaelites, Harpo Marx, and Phantoms.” Not only were the topics odd, but Dalí chose to appear at the event dressed in a diving suit. Two plastic hands were attached to the chest, and the heavy glass helmet was adorned with a radiator cap. Around Dalí’s waist was a jeweled dagger. He held two wolfhounds on leashes in one hand and a billiard cue in the other. The diving suit was meant to symbolize his efforts to dive into the subconscious mind. Unfortunately, Dalí soon began to suffocate in the airless helmet. He was rescued just in time.

Dalí was still fascinated by the way that the subconscious mind could see images within consciously perceived images. For example, a person might look at a cloud, but also see a giant ship in the sky. Two of Dalí’s paintings from this period, Morphological Echo and Three Young Surrealist Women Holding in Their Arms the Skins of an Orchestra, explore these kinds of multiple images.

In Morphological Echo, we see three sets of objects arranged in rows. In the first row are food objects, a glass, bread crust, and grapes. In the second row are people, a standing woman, a seated nursemaid, and a reclining man who looks like Lenin. In the third row are structures, a tower, a mountain, and a wall. There are also three columns of objects. Each column contains objects that have similar shapes and appear to be the same size. Our minds can match the shapes and, because of perspective, allow us to imagine that a glass, woman, and tower are all the same size. Dalí was fascinated with the way the human mind is willing to see the “unreal” or surreal in the real world.

The Reality of War

Luckily, Dalí and Gala were still in London on July 18, 1936, when the Spanish Civil War began. Although Dalí had always tried to refrain from having strong political views, he told his British friend Edward James that he was on the side of the communists, socialists, and anarchists who were fighting the fascist forces of Francisco Franco. Dalí didn’t consider returning to Spain to support them, however, and later, once it appeared that Franco would be the victor, Dalí shifted his support. Opportunistic as always, Dalí refused to take an anti-Franco stance as did Picasso, Buñuel, and Miró. Those artists would soon be exiled from Spain, while Dalí remained free to return to his home and family. In later years, many condemned Dalí for his acceptance of the fascist government of Spain. But his change in support from one group to another was clearly in character. He was still acting like a self-centered child, motivated by whatever actions would best serve his needs. He needed to be around the landscape of Port Ligat for inspiration. It seemed impossible for him to live without this connection.

Morphological Echo (1936), by Salvador Dalí

SPANISH CIVIL WAR

(1931–1939)

In 1931, revolutionary changes occurred in the Spanish government. King Alfonso fled the country after the Spanish people showed overwhelming support for a republican, or representational, government. This new government promised more freedoms. Women were granted the right to vote; peasants were given land. Catalonia and the Basque provinces were finally allowed the right to self-govern. Despite the immensity of these changes, there were many in the new government who thought that change was not happening fast enough. At the same time, Spanish conservatives were alarmed.

In the next election, in 1933, the conservative, or rightist, parties won the majority of votes, and people lost many of their new freedoms. In 1934, workers led by the socialist, or leftist, parties revolted in Catalonia and other parts of Spain. Although the revolt was stopped, the republicans, or leftists, narrowly won again in the elections of 1936. Socialists and communists in the new republican government teamed up to push for even more changes. Peasants grabbed more lands from large estates, and workers demanded more rights. During the following summer, the military revolted and tried to seize the government. They were defeated in the cities, but kept strongholds in the countryside. Thus began a long civil war.

The fascist governments of Germany and Italy sent soldiers to aid the rebels, while the republicans received weapons from the communist Soviet Union. International brigades made up of idealistic volunteers from Europe and the Americas also joined up with the republicans. Britain and France, two of Europe’s of most powerful democratic countries, however, refused to get involved.

While the rebels were unified under the leadership of General Francisco Franco, the republicans were divided and not as effectively organized. After failing to take Madrid, the rebels attacked the industrial areas of northern Spain. The world watched in horror as German planes bombed the city of Guernica, killing hundreds of civilians. With the help of the Germans, the rebels took over one part of Spain after another and eventually overwhelmed the republicans, who were defeated in April 1939.

The war left the country in shambles. Factories, homes, and businesses were destroyed. Land reforms and laws favoring workers were overturned. Spain would not have a democratic government for decades to come.

Dalí had other reasons for abandoning the cause of the leftists, however. As a member of the middle class, Dalí would have been targeted by leftist workers, who were the majority in Catalonia. They attacked and killed businessmen in towns such as Figueres and Cadaqués. About 30 of Dalí’s friends were killed, including three fishermen from Port Ligat. His sister was tortured and imprisoned, but his father and stepmother were unharmed. Soldiers in Figueres occupied the Dalí family home, and Salvador and Gala’s home in Port Ligat was virtually destroyed.

In Granada, where the fascists were in power, leftists were executed. One night in August, Fredrico García Lorca was arrested and later shot to death. García Lorca, committed to stopping fascism, had died for his beliefs. Dalí was unwilling to return to Spain and its terrifying violence.

While the war raged, Dalí stayed away from Spain, spending time in Italy, France, and the United States. In November 1936 he and Gala left Europe to attend a show of surrealist artists at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. After the opening of the show in December, Dalí received the ultimate in recognition when his photograph appeared on the cover of Time magazine. Time reviewed the exhibit and stated, “Surrealism would never have attracted its present attention in the United States were it not for a handsome 32-year-old Catalan with a soft voice and clipped cinema actor’s moustache, Salvador Dalí.” Dalí became an immediate celebrity, and was stopped on the streets in New York to sign autographs for admirers. André Breton, who also attended the exhibit, was not happy that the American public saw Dalí as the leader of the surrealists.

At the same time, Dalí had a successful show at the Julien Levy Gallery. The painting that attracted the most interest was Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (later retitled Premonition of Civil War), which he had painted just after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.

America was a land of new adventures for Dalí. Over the years, he had met a variety of American artists, musicians, and painters. Dalí was a big fan of Harpo Marx, one of the four Marx Brothers. The Marx Brothers had brought a whole new, wild type of comedy to American audiences. They were popular throughout America and Europe for their zany antics, many of them quite surreal. Harpo was a comic mime who also played the harp. To show his admiration for Harpo, Dalí made him a harp complete with barbed-wire strings, and forks and spoons for tuning knobs. In his thank-you note, Harpo sent Dalí a photo of himself with bandaged fingers.

HARPO MARX

(1888–1964)

Dalí’s dream ball and other public antics had earned him a reputation as the royal clown of the art world. During the summer of 1936 in Paris, Dalí had met one of America’s most clownish actors, Harpo Marx. The Marx Brothers’ films were a wild combination of old vaudeville comedy and surrealistic humor. The brothers used a variety of slapstick, puns, and surreal humor to get laughs. Harpo, who never talks in his films, was the most surreal of the four brothers. His behavior often seemed completely crazy. In one skit, he plays the dresser for an opera star. The singer catches him wearing a woman’s dress. When he is asked by the opera star to take it off he obeys, but underneath it is another dress, and underneath that yet another, and another. The whole time he is undressing he smiles like an idiot, knowing that he is driving the star nuts. In another film sequence, a man on the street asks Harpo for some money to buy a cup of coffee. Harpo smiles at him insanely and then pulls a steaming cup of coffee out of his pocket.

In January 1937 Dalí went to Hollywood, where he met with Harpo, as well as Walt Disney and other filmmakers. He discussed making a surreal film with Harpo, and he did some sketches for him. Dalí later set to work on the screenplay for a film called Giraffes on Horseback Salad, a love story about a man named Jimmy who falls in love with a beautiful surrealist woman, whose face is never seen by the audience. The plot is weak and full of Dalían symbols and Marx Brothers-type pranks. The film was never produced. Disney was also interested in working with Dalí, but this would have to wait.

Dalí Addresses the World of Fashion

In 1937 Dalí was able to indulge in his other great fascination, fashion. He had been friends with designers Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli for years. Now that he was famous, he could rework his early 1930s fashion ideas, which he had been unable to sell at the time. The shoe hat had evolved from Dalí’s playful habit of balancing one of Gala’s shoes on his head. A dress, designed for a movie actress, was quilted in the outline of the bones of a skeleton, while another was painted with rips and tears that looked real. For Schiaparelli, he created a suit made to appear like a chest of drawers, similar to the figures with drawers that he had created over the years. Another dress featured a print of a freshly cooked lobster, and was bought by celebrities such as Wallis Simpson, the wife of the Duke of Windsor. Breton and some of the other surrealists looked down on Dalí’s fashion designs as being trivial. Miró referred to Dalí as a “painter of neckties.” But Dalí saw fashion as yet another art form where he could express his artistic vision.

Activity

Unreal Comedy

The surrealists attacked the rules of art and shocked art viewers, but their humor won supporters. Americans especially enjoyed the absurdity of surreal humor. Although the Marx Brothers were not officially surrealists, their humor was indeed absurdly surreal.

In the Marx Brothers’ movie A Night at the Opera, two characters, Fiorelo (Chico Marx) and Driftwood (Groucho Marx), carry on this conversation:

Driftwood: Can you hear?

Fiorelo: I haven’t heard anything yet.

Fiorelo: Did you say anything?

Driftwood: Well, I haven’t said anything worth hearing.

Fiorelo: Well, that’s why I didn’t hear anything.

Driftwood: Well, that’s why I didn’t say anything.

Can you see why this humor is considered surreal? The Marx Brothers’ humor often challenged reality, and people loved it.

Are you a jokester? If jokes inspire you, why not make some of your own? Jot down some jokes or riddles that use a sense of the absurd or unreal to get a laugh.

Materials

Pencil

Paper

Camcorder

Write a script for a short scene. Use the suggestions below to help you consider all the parts of a comedy skit.

Think of two or three characters. What do they look like? What are their names? Where are they? What are they doing?

What will make the skit surreal? Think of some jokes or actions that are dreamlike. For example, instead of using a spoon to eat cereal, a character might use a toy shovel.

Write some dialogue that is nonsensical like that of the Marx Brothers. For example, one character might ask, “Do you like that cereal?” and the other might reply, “Yes, it’s the best pizza I ever had.”

Imagine a dreamlike setting. A character is watching television in a tree or sleeping in a wheelbarrow.

Practice and revise your skit until you are satisfied with it. Then you can videotape it, or perform it for friends and family.

The Surrealists Redress the Dalí Issue

Though many of the surrealists, especially their leader, André Breton, no longer welcomed Dalí into their inner core, they were in a dilemma. When Dalí had first joined the group, he had brought new life to the sometimes overly serious artists. Now, whether the group liked it or not, the public perceived Dalí as the leader of surrealism. When Breton and others planned a large exhibition in Paris, to open in January 1938, they decided they needed Dalí’s presence and energy to make the event succeed. They invited him to participate as a special advisor and artist to the exhibit. Characteristically, he stole the show.

Heads of Gala (1937–38), by Salvador Dalí

As visitors entered, they were handed flashlights to help them see in the pitch-black gallery. In the lobby they encountered Dalí’s Rainy Taxi. Seated in the driver’s side of this real Parisian taxi was a mannequin with a shark’s head. In the back seat sat a mannequin in a blonde wig and an evening dress, surrounded by heads of lettuce and other greens. Over it and the greens crawled large snails, which were rained upon by water sprinklers located inside the car.

Next came the Surrealist Street, which was lined with strange mannequins that had been dressed by Joan Miró, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Man Ray, and others. Also included in the show were several hundred paintings, drawings, sculptures, and surrealistic objects. Certain objects lit up and then disappeared in the darkness of the gallery. Some pieces were displayed on revolving doors. The evening ended with a dance performed by ballerina Helene Vanel. Dalí had designed her witch costume, as well as her strange dance, in which she exited through a pool of water. Although the press dismissed the event with sneers and insults, the public flocked to the show.

Activity

Dalíesque Fashion Collage

Fashion gave Dalí the opportunity to display his ideas on people instead of creating something that might just hang in a museum. Some of his designs, including a shoe hat and a dresser suit, were actually produced by the fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli. Perhaps Dalí was more in tune with surrealistic art forms than some other surrealists. Clothes are like an outer skin. Maybe wearing surreal clothes was a way to express what was inside the person wearing them. On the other hand, they may have been just one more Dalían prank.

Materials

Magazines

Clothing catalogs

Scissors

Glue stick

Paper

Flip through the magazines and catalogs and tear out any pages that interest you. Try not to think about your choices—just take whatever pages you feel like.

Sort through the pages and cut out pictures of people and anything else you wish.

Arrange the images on the paper in surreal compositions. For example, you might drape a picture of a fish over a figure of a woman to create a fish dress. Experiment with a variety of fashion combinations, but do not glue anything to the paper until you have played around with the images and discovered the composition that works best. To add a more surreal mood to your collage, place other objects in the background. For example, you might add a giant orange, or an eyeball.

Once you feel satisfied with your composition, go ahead and glue everything onto the paper.

“The thermometer of success is merely the jealousy of malcontents.”—Dalí

In the summer of 1938 Hitler’s forces moved into Austria, and the surrealists’ hero, Dr. Sigmund Freud, fled with his family to London. For years, Dalí had wanted to meet Freud. Dalí had told friends that Freud’s writings had not only helped him resolve many personal problems, but had also greatly influenced his art. In July Dalí visited Freud and made several sketches of the 82-year-old man. One portrays him with a head like a snail. Freud later wrote to one of Dalí’s friends that Salvador looked like a fanatic. This comment pleased Dalí to no end. More important, Freud also said that Dalí had caused him to change his mind about the surrealists. He had thought they were all fools, but Dalí had shown him otherwise.

War was on everyone’s mind, including Dalí’s. He began a series of gloomy paintings, each featuring a disconnected telephone receiver. Dalí said this symbolized the breakdown of dialogue between the great powers and the coming war. But all was not dark and gloomy in Dalí’s professional life. His popularity in the United States was on the rise. He had a major show, scheduled for the spring of 1939, to prepare for. Soon after his arrival in New York, Bonwit Teller, an upscale department store, commissioned him to make a surrealistic window display to promote their spring line of fabrics. Dalí created a wild scene that included one mannequin with bright red hair dressed in a skimpy negligee of green feathers, and a mannequin that reclined, as if asleep, on a bed supported by buffalo legs. There was also a fur-lined bathtub filled with water and flowers. Crowds flocked to see the window. Afraid that the seminude mannequin was too sexually provocative, the store managers replaced both mannequins with ones dressed in stylish suits. When Dalí returned to admire his work he was horrified by the change, and asked the store to reinsert his models. When the management refused, Dalí decided to rearrange it himself. During the process, the bathtub overturned and flew out the window with Dalí following behind. Luckily he was unharmed, but he was arrested for damaging the store window. Friends came to his rescue, and the judge excused Dalí’s action as the right of an artist to protect the integrity of his work. Although Dalí had to pay for the broken window, the press coverage in the United States and Europe was priceless. This incident ended up being a great way to promote his new show, which was very well attended.

Before the show ended, Dalí was offered the exciting job of designing a surrealist exhibit for the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. He called this creation Dream of Venus. It was a palace of fake coral with two inner pools. Visitors paid at a ticket booth shaped like a fish and entered an aquatic world filled with scantily dressed, live “mermaids” wearing crustacean shells, fins, and long gloves. Dalí was frustrated because he wanted them to also have fish heads, like reverse mermaids, but the sponsors of the exhibition refused. Once again, Dalí was not allowed to have his own way in a very public art show. To protest, he wrote the “Declaration of Independence of the Imagination and the Rights of Man to His Own Madness” and had copies of it dropped by airplane over New York City. In it, Dalí attacked the art establishment’s unwillingness to accept new ideas. He wrote that unless an artist created something that had been done before, the establishment automatically “rejected, mauled, chewed, re-chewed, spewed forth, destroyed, yes, and even worse”—made it boring. Dalí said that the art establishment always excused its rejection of something new with “the public isn’t ready.” Dalí disagreed, saying that the public was ready to enjoy new creations.

Beyond the Surrealists to Dalí Time

Dalí was now totally wrapped up in both his fame and fortune. Although he sent money to his family in Spain, he refused to help his old friend Luis Buñuel, who was in Hollywood and out of money. Perhaps he held a grudge against Buñuel over their partnership in filmmaking. On their first film, Un Chien Andalou, Dalí’s name and cowriter credit was originally missing. Dalí had to insist that the omission be rectified.

The republicans had been defeated in Spain. Now Dalí, like his father, embraced the dictator General Franco. As a result of his family’s unpleasant experiences Señor Dalí had become a fan of the general. The communists’ treatment of Salvador’s family had been horrible. His sister was half mad after her imprisonment. The war had been a complex one. People like his father generally supported independence for Catalonia and were against the fascists who wanted a united Spain. The communists were also against the fascists, but they didn’t like wealthy people such as Dalí’s family. Although Franco was a fascist, perhaps Dalí thought of him as no worse than the communists who had killed many of his friends. Besides, if Dalí supported Franco, he could safely return home to the landscape that inspired his art. Salvador expressed how impressed he was by the new government, but he refused to join the Spanish fascist party.

Because Buñuel remained an ardent supporter of the republicans, this helped to drive the two old friends apart. Breton was so disgusted by Dalí that he wrote an article attacking both his method and his art. Breton said that Dalí had drifted from the true automatism of surrealism. For the past few years, Dalí had been only loosely connected with Breton and his surrealist group. With a formal rejection from Breton in print, Dalí turned his back on Breton and his group for good. But Dalí did not reject his worldwide role as the promoter of surrealism.

Salvador returned to Paris in June 1939 to supervise the production of a surrealist ballet titled Bacchanal. On September 1, Hitler attacked Poland and Britain, and France declared war on Germany. Dalí and Gala immediately prepared for the coming devastation. They closed their apartment in Paris and stored their possessions. Terrified of the Nazis, they fled to southwest Bordeaux, where they would be close to Spain and could easily escape.

While they hid out among other refugees from Paris, the ballet, which was now being staged in New York, was about to have its opening night. The organizers wanted Dalí to come to New York to help prepare his sets and costumes, but he was too worried about crossing the Atlantic during wartime. Everything for the ballet was completed using his notes and photos. The result was another shocking Dalíesque event. There were figures dressed in costumes that were adorned with lobster shells, and the ballerina who portrayed Venus was dressed in a body stocking that made her appear nude.

The Germans marched into Paris in June 1940. Soon they would take over the rest of France. Dalí fled to Spain to say goodbye to his family, and Gala went to Portugal to arrange for a voyage to America. In August they both arrived in New York. They would remain in America for the next eight years, along with other surrealists including Breton, Tanguy, and Ernst.

Dalí had returned to the United States full of energy for new projects. He and Gala settled in at Caresse Crosby’s estate in Virginia, and Dalí wasted no time in beginning to paint and to continue writing his autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí. Almost immediately a reporter from Life Magazine arrived to chronicle Dalí’s efforts to transform his stay at the manor into a surrealistic happening. One photo from the magazine shows Dalí, Gala, and Crosby in the library, in the company of a bull that is lounging on the carpet. The caption said that Dalí had invited the beast in for an after-dinner coffee. Dalí continued to make good news copy and to solidify his image as the crazy artist. The American public ate it up.

FRANCISCO FRANCO

(1892–1975)

After the Spanish Civil War, Francisco Franco showed no mercy for his former enemies. Hundreds of thousands of republicans were thrown in prison, and perhaps as many as 37,000 were executed. Although he supported the Falange (the Spanish fascists), Franco refused to join with Italy and Germany during World War II. When Franco realized that the fascists would lose World War II, he ended many of his harsh policies, such as executions, and distanced himself from the Falange. In 1947 Franco declared Spain a monarchy, but in reality the king had no power. He could only gain power if Franco died or chose to give up his dictatorship. During the Cold War, as the United States and Western European countries worried about the rise of communism, Franco was welcomed as an ally against the communists. After Franco died in 1975 the king, Juan Carlos, became the ruler of the country. He favored democratic changes, and in 1978 the Spanish people finally got a constitutional government with a parliament. They retained the king as a leader, but one with limited powers.

Strange as his art was, Dalí still used classical techniques. Although many of the objects in his paintings were distorted, there was a sense of realism in his works. His precise details and techniques were similar to those that people were used to seeing in realistic paintings. Maybe his art was actually more understandable to the general public than the abstract works of Picasso or other modern artists.

Published in 1942, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí was far from being a real autobiography. Dalí had reinvented his past. He had created his own myths about people and adventures, and he had left out many important details. For example, he didn’t mention that his father threw him out of the house because of what Dalí had written about his mother. In addition, he claimed he wasn’t interested in politics, although he really had been interested in communism in his younger years. But Dalí’s real goal in writing the book was not to tell a true history of his life. Dalí wanted his book to shock people, and shock it did. George Orwell, the author of 1984 and Animal Farm, wrote in a book review that Dalí was an example of what was wrong with the modern world. To some friends and family, the book was even more disturbing. His old friend Buñuel thought that Dalí’s portrayal of him as a communist would hurt his work in film, and indeed it did. Dalí kept up his role as the outrageous bad boy of the art world, and was becoming more of a celebrity than ever. He was so wrapped up in his own success and genius that it appears he forgot his old friends and stopped caring about how his actions would affect others.

Breton had spitefully made up an anagram (a word or phrase made by rearranging the letters in a word or phrase) about the artist. He rearranged the letters in “Salvador Dalí” to make the phrase “Avida Dollars,” to imply that Dalí was only interested in money. Most of the surrealists in exile in the United States had followed Breton and rejected Dalí as well. A few, however, such as Marcel Duchamp, who cared little for politics, remained friends with the artist.

Dalí was now the most financially successful and best known of all the surrealists. Despite his apparent selfishness, Dalí did support fundraisers for less fortunate European refugees. He arranged a surrealist happening in California as a benefit for impoverished European artists. It was well attended by famous movie stars and was a big news item, but unfortunately the event was so extravagant that the expenses outweighed the income. Later, Dalí designed a calendar to benefit the French people. Despite these efforts, he was as intent as ever on increasing his own income. He began working on surrealist portraits of rich and famous Americans such as Jack Warner, the head of the Warner Bros. studio. Dalí also collaborated with the Duke of Verdura on jewelry designs, and he illustrated several books. He created costumes for three new ballets, fashion ads for Vogue magazine, and the bottle for a new perfume by Elsa Schiaparelli called Shocking. Most important, the Museum of Modern Art launched a retrospective exhibit of his art, which was very popular.

Some of Dalí’s ballet collaborations were more successful than others. In Sentimental Colloquy, Dalí had men in long beards crisscrossing the stage on bicycles and on a large light-encrusted mechanical tortoise. Paul Bowles, the composer, thought Dalí’s ideas were terrible, and so did the audience. However, some of Dalí’s earlier dance projects, such as Bacchanal, had been more favorably received. Dalí was having fun using his artistic ideas in many different ways.

Throughout this period he continued to paint. His new work included his famous self-portrait Soft Self-Portrait with Grilled Bacon. In spite of his productivity and creative energy, however, his paintings were not selling well. There just wasn’t much money for art in wartime. Fortunately, a few collectors decided to start buying up his work. One of them was a young inventor and businessman, Reynolds Morse. One of the first paintings that Morse and his wife Eleanor purchased was Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man. Created in 1943 during one of the worst periods of the war, the painting idealistically shows a renewed human race emerging from the worldwide conflict.

In the painting, a man emerges from an egg-like Earth, representing a new world order that will come after the war. On a more personal level, this could also have represented Dalí himself, transforming himself as a new man in exile from Europe. The man emerges from North America, Dalí’s new home and the likely center of a postwar culture. Dalí’s use of symbols is evident. For example, the egg, which appears in earlier paintings, symbolizes the contrast between hard and soft matter.

Dalí continued to explore his fascination with the double image. For years, he had described his method of creating surrealist art as the “paranoiac critical method.” Paranoia is a mental state in which people feel they are being persecuted by others, or imagine they are more important or incredible than anyone else. In other words, they are feeling something that might not be real. Dalí practiced tuning in to his “unreal” feelings about the world around him. He tried to see things that were not really there, but that, in a strange way, were suggested by the real things that existed before his very eyes. This allowed him to react to how he felt about what he saw, and to put into pictures the images from his deeper thoughts.

The Morses purchased several of Dalí’s double image paintings. Breton had dismissed this type of art as mere entertainment that was at the “level of crossword puzzles.” Perhaps it was, but the world’s increasing fascination with multiple images and illusions eventually resulted in the prominence of 1960s OP art (art based on optical illusions).

In the spring of 1944, Dalí published his novel Hidden Faces. The book centers on the lives and relationships of a group of European aristocrats and American millionaires. The time period is the mid-1930s, and the story begins in Paris and moves to Palm Springs, California, with the coming of the war. The novel’s characters are remarkably similar to the wealthy Parisian crowd that Dalí and Gala had worked to cultivate as art patrons. The story also includes a lawyer who resembles Dalí’s father, as well as a clumsy and eccentric Catalan artist (guess who?). The writing is rich in surrealistic images. In one scene, the Count of Grandsailles observes with fascination the strange reflection of his dinner guests in the crystal and silverware. This is something that Dalí must have done often during boring dinner parties. The Count, also like Dalí, is indifferent to the heated political discussions around him. This is unnerving to his guests, as it must have been to Dalí’s companions when he showed no serious interest in political affairs. At a time when political talk could ruin a reputation, Dalí continued to be careless with what he said—he didn’t seem to really care.

Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man (1943), by Salvador Dalí

Activity

Double Image Art

In everyday life we may see a mountain that looks like a face or a leaf that looks like an eye. Dalí practiced seeing these double images, and for many years he created double images in his art. Open yourself up to the wanderings of your inner thoughts and let yourself see hidden images in the everyday landscape that surrounds you.

In Old Age, Adolescence, Infancy (The Three Ages) Dalí created three scenes that are viewed through a crumbling brick wall. On the left you may see a rocky cliff with trees on top. Look carefully and you will see that is also the head of an old man. In the middle is a nanny (a live-in babysitter), and a young boy looking out over a bay. All these parts also form the face of a young man. What do you see on the right?

Materials

Paper

Paint

Markers

You can make a picture of any double images that you might see. As Dalí did in Old Age, Adolescence, Infancy (The Three Ages), you can use smaller figures or images that, together, form a larger image. You can use the outline of a range of mountains to form a body or the branches of a tree to frame a face. Stare at the objects around you—you may be surprised by the images that they suggest. For example, a boom box might resemble a fly’s head, or a water glass might also appear as a tower. Use paper and paint (and/or markers) to record your double images.

Reviewers did not consider Dalí’s novel a great piece of literature, but some book critics praised his skill as a writer. In the book’s introduction, Dalí gives his reason for writing a novel: “Because I have time to do everything I want to do and I wanted to do it!” How surprised his early teachers must have been to see the obstinate Dalí now taking on the world with the energy and talent to dabble in so many of the arts.

Old Age, Adolescence, Infancy (The Three Ages) (1940), by Salvador Dalí

Dalí in Front of the Camera

Ever since he’d arrived in the United States, Dalí wanted to break into Hollywood films. His chance finally came in 1944, when Alfred Hitchcock asked him to prepare a dream sequence for his new film, Spellbound. Hitchcock was known for his psychological thrillers, and Dalí admired his work. In Spellbound, the main character, played by Gregory Peck, has lost his memory, but is convinced that he has murdered someone. A psychiatrist, played by Ingrid Bergman, is sure that he’s innocent. She helps him recover his memory through dream analysis. Dalí’s job was to illustrate the dreams that provide clues to the patient’s past. Hitchcock ended up modifying his designs, but the dream scenes still evoke the same hypnotic power of Dalí’s best art. Dalí, true to form, was not happy and believed that his best ideas had been cut. The film is still a classic today. Dalí later designed the dream sequence for the original (1950) version of the movie Father of the Bride, which also became a big hit.

Another great opportunity in Hollywood came along two years later. Walt Disney, the creator of Mickey Mouse, asked Dalí to work with him on a short animated film called Destino. Disney gave Dalí complete freedom. The animator who was selected to work with him saw at once that he was unlike his public image of a wacky artist. Dalí told him, “The difference between me and a crazy person is a crazy person dwells in a kind of fantasy, he’s in another room from reality.” Dalí said he could enter and leave that room of fantasy, but a crazy person was locked in.

In the storyboards for the film, Dalí played around with all kinds of double images, including a ballerina whose head becomes a baseball. Unfortunately, Disney changed his mind about the ability of experimental films to earn money and canceled the project. Nevertheless, he and Dalí continued their friendship for many years.

Dalí was now expressing his creativity in all sorts of mediums, many outside of museums and galleries. His work had appeared in film, in books, at the World’s Fair, and in magazines. Whether his reviews were good or bad, he was noticed and talked about. As a youth, Dalí had envisioned gaining recognition by working in Rome, not America. But his current home in the new world was proving to be just the right place to achieve fame and fortune.

Activity

Dreamscape

Dalí, Magritte, and other surrealists were skilled at composing objects and paintings that expressed the dream state. By remembering images and feelings from your dreams, you also can create surreal, dreamlike pictures like Dalí’s dream sequence in Spellbound. If you have a dream journal, use your notes for ideas. Any images, from the scary to the silly, will do.

It can be fun to share dreams with friends and family. Here’s a chance to visually share the strange circumstances and visions you remember from yours.

Materials

Pencil

Paper

Markers

Paint

Paintbrushes

Make some sketches of images that have appeared in your dreams. For example, if you dreamed about bees with faces like bulldogs go ahead and re-create the image on paper. Sketch a variety of visual memories of dreams and then think about what types of backgrounds or landscapes you want to set the images in.

Think about how you want to arrange your images for your finished piece of art. It might help if you cut out each sketch and place the sketches on a blank piece of paper. You can then rearrange them until you have the most dreamlike composition. Think about using some of the following surrealist techniques:

Juxtaposition: Place objects that aren’t usually found together side by side. For example, you might put a drawing of a tuba next to one of a gorilla.

Dislocation: Place things in a setting where they usually aren’t found. An example is a car inside a classroom.

Metamorphosis: Draw objects that seem to turn into something else. A fish that becomes a boat is an example.

Transformations: Draw things that change in strange ways. For example, you might draw a picture of a mountain that is melting.

After you create a basic composition with your sketches, use the paint or markers to color your surrealist dreamscape.

6 CELEBRITY ARTIST

Detail of Shades of Night

Dalí was now a worldwide celebrity. He was the public’s idea of an eccentric surreal artist. When he went to clubs in New York or even walked down the street, people would ask for his autograph. Few artists enjoyed this kind of fame. Dalí loved it, and he continued to cultivate his public persona. Other artists, such as Picasso, were famous worldwide, but didn’t put as much effort into publicity. Dalí was a publicity hound. This was not considered by many art critics to be suitable behavior for a serious artist. As they turned up their noses at Dalí’s public displays, he looked down even more on the art establishment. In doing so, he attacked his previous hero and helper, Picasso. The attack became very public in 1948, when Dalí exhibited his Portrait of Picasso in New York. The painting shows a grotesque head, with brains exiting the mouth in the form of a spoon. The tongue hangs and the nose twists around and curves into an empty skull-like eye socket. It was an insult to his former friend, but Picasso refused to respond to Dalí’s attack. Later Dalí stated, “Dalí stands for fusion, Picasso for confusion. We’re both geniuses.” Dalí acknowledged Picasso’s influence and help. To Picasso, however, Dalí had ceased to exist.

In 1948 Dalí and Gala returned to Europe after eight years as refugees in the United States. They visited Gala’s ex-husband, Paul Eluard, in Paris, and saw her daughter Cécile and Gala’s new granddaughter. Then they continued on to Spain to visit Dalí’s family. His father was now a very old man. Señor Dalí, who had been an atheist all his life, was now a Catholic. The horrors of the war had been enough to make him seek comfort in religion. Dalí’s sister, Anna María, was changed, too. The war and her years of caring for their father had turned her into a bitter woman. She resented Gala and blamed her for the loss of her brother. Señor Dalí believed that Salvador and Gala were living in mortal sin because they had not been married at a church. It was not an easy visit, and they soon left for their home in Port Ligat. Although there had been damage to their home during the war, it was still standing, and Dalí set about making improvements to it. Within a short time he had local reporters photographing their homecoming. In one picture, Dalí and Gala are stepping through the tear in a large canvas that is held up by friends dressed as ghosts.

Later that summer, Dalí called in the press again, this time to promote his new book, 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship. This time they photographed him sitting with his father at a café in Cadaqués. He and Gala were now celebrities in Cadaqués and Figueres. Gone were the days when they were turned away from stores and hotels. Dalí was not only home in his special landscape, but he was a star on his home turf.

The peace of this homecoming was shattered the next year when Anna María, with her father’s approval, published a book about her famous brother. She portrayed him as a regular kid living a comfortable life in an upper middle class family. Absent from the book are any descriptions of the strange behaviors and early signs of genius that Dalí had so carefully described in his The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí. According to Anna María’s book, Dalí’s life was quite normal until the surrealists arrived and destroyed her family paradise. Dalí later told Reynolds Morse, his main American art patron, “My sister has destroyed my image.” He thought his sister had written the book because she was jealous of him. Dalí wanted people to think he had been a monstrous boy, not a nice little child. He wrote to people and asked them not to read the book. Dalí was so furious about it, and of his father’s approval of it, that he never spoke with his father again. When Señor Dalí died in 1950, however, Salvador kissed his father’s corpse. He later fought with his sister over their father’s will, especially about his right to own his early paintings that hung in the family home. The result of her book and the fight over his artwork ruined whatever relationship they had left. He would not see her again for many, many years.

Dalí’s Changing Art

By 1950, Dalí was no longer a young radical surrealist. He was a successful middle-aged artist, and his art was moving away from surrealism, though he would never abandon many of his surrealistic symbols or his fascination with the double image that had captivated him in his youth. His love of the great masters, especially those of the Renaissance, was rising to the surface in a new desire to pursue classic religious themes and age-old techniques of painting.

His old patron, Edward James, and many of the surrealists were furious. James thought that Dalí’s religious art lacked sincerity, although it was technically masterful. He believed that Dalí’s new religious paintings were as far from great art as Disney’s cartoon characters. In Dalí’s first fully developed religious painting, The Madonna of Port Ligat, Gala was used as the model of the Virgin Mary. In the painting are Dalían symbols, such as a window cut through the torso of the Madonna and child. Also present are two other Dalían objects, a suspended egg and a floating sea urchin. Using Gala as a model of Mary was like putting her on a pedestal. Not only had Dalí’s art changed, but his relationship with Gala was different. She was now less of a companion and more of a business manager and boss. She pushed him to work harder and harder so they would make more money. Many people thought that Gala had become so self-centered that she cared little for the feelings of others.

In 1951 Dalí created a religious painting that was inspired by a trance, in which he had seen a vision of Christ on the cross. In Christ of Saint John of the Cross, Christ is seen against a black background, floating above a cloudy sky. When the painting was first exhibited, many viewers claimed that it deeply stirred their emotions. Others, especially some art critics, denounced it. Later, the public art gallery of Glasgow, Scotland, purchased the painting. It has become one of the most popular works there. In the 1950s, however, Dalí was going against the grain of the modern art movement. Abstract expressionists were on the rise, and they had little interest in religious themes or classical techniques and composition.

At the same time that Dalí was turning toward religious themes, he was also becoming fascinated with nuclear physics. The world had changed, and Dalí was looking to science and religion for a better understanding of life. The dropping of the atom bomb at the end of World War II and the new threat of nuclear oblivion had affected the thinking of many artists. Dalí began reading all that he could about nuclear physics and soon began developing a new artistic style, which he called nuclear mysticism. This was his response to abstract expressionism, but unlike his earlier adventure in surrealism, he was now charting his own path. The painting The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory is clearly the result of his new explorations. It shows the disturbance of the nuclear age to the serenity of Port Ligat and the rest of planet Earth. The rectangular blocks in the composition stand for the source of atomic power. A sketch of a watch exploding, done around the same time, explores a similar theme. This new style is a blending of Dalí’s classical realist techniques, his earlier sur-realist symbols, and a new explosive energy. One of the best examples of his changing style is Still Life: Fast Moving. This painting makes the world appear as if objects are moving by themselves or by invisible forces. Dalí had begun to explore this concept of separate objects suspended in relation to each other in space six years earlier when he and his photographer friend Philippe Halsman produced a photo titled Dalí Atomicus. In the photo, Dalí and a chair float in the air in front of his easel. Water cascades in midair across the foreground followed by three flying cats. The photo took 5 hours and 26 takes to create, and it ended up being published in Life Magazine. This amazing photograph was created before computers or computer programs could present these images as a cut-and-pasted illusion. In 1954 Dalí and Halsman collaborated on a wild and crazy little book titled Dalí’s Mustache. Over the years Dalí’s mustache had become a major part of his uniform as the eccentric artist. It had changed from a neatly trimmed mustache to a heavily waxed and flexible work of art. The book is a series of interview questions, with photos showing the mustache in a variety of odd shapes. Here’s an example, taken from the book: “Why do you wear a mustache? In order to pass unobserved.”

Soft Watch Exploding (1954), by Salvador Dalí

In the book, Dalí pokes fun at himself, and his mustache appears in all kinds of places, including a Dalíesque version of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. The photographic techniques in the book are unique and very absurd. In projects such as these, Dalí continued to use his publicity savvy to turn Dalí the artist into a recognizable commercial product. He was perhaps one of the very first artists to become a celebrity for his performance art. While this continued to annoy the surrealists and the art establishment, it endeared him to the public at large.

Dalí continued to keep in touch with Duchamp, as well as with Ernst. A photo taken in 1956 shows Ernst looking on as Dalí aims an old gun at a lithograph stone. A lithograph is a print made by putting ink-repellent material on a flat stone or metal printing plate. Ink is then spread on the plate, which is run through a printing press, creating a printed sheet. Dalí used a new and bizarre technique to make lithographs for an illustrated version of the famous Spanish novel, Don Quixote. First he filled an egg with ink and broke it over the stones. Then he scratched the stones with two rhino horns dipped in ink. Then, using the gun, he fired nails at the stones. He used an antique gun called a blunderbuss. He called this strange process bulletism. It’s amazing that Dalí wasn’t hurt by any nails that might have bounced off the stone plates.

Max Ernst had been experimenting with a technique called oscillation, which consisted of a pierced can of paint, attached to a string and hung over a blank canvas. After he was finished dripping paint, Ernst would trace over the paint marks or create new lines in response to what he saw in the random markings. He showed this to an American artist named Jackson Pollock, who later developed a similar drip technique. Pollock became one of the main figures of abstract expressionism.

Dalí had been putting down abstract art since the thirties and continued to attack new artists such as Pollock. Yet there were some abstract artists, including Willem de Kooning and Georges Mathieu, whom Dalí openly admired. Mathieu was a performance artist who attacked his canvas as he painted. In fact, it was Mathieu who gave Dalí the gun for his bulletism technique. Dalí was also quick to try new ideas, and despite his opposition to abstract art, abstract techniques began to appear in his work.

Activity

Hair Art

Some surrealists found art everywhere, even in their hair. A photo by Man Ray shows Marcel Duchamp with his hair and face covered in soap lather so it appears that he has horns and a beard. At one time, Duchamp also had his head partially shaved in a way that created artistic patterns. Dalí loved to play with his mustache by waxing it and shaping it into different forms. You can use anything to make art. Why not your hair?

Materials

Towel

Shampoo, hair mousse, hair gel, or shaving cream

Camera or camcorder

Drape the towel over your shoulders to avoid a mess. Use sudsy shampoo, hair gel, mousse, or shaving cream to form your hair into unusual patterns and shapes. Try making it into points or swirls. See how many different strange hair sculptures you can create.

Ask a friend to take photographs or video footage of your hairy art. Display your pictures or show your video at a special “hair show” for family and friends. You can even offer to turn their hair into art!

ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM

By the end of the nineteenth century, impressionism had begun its attack on representational art, in which the artist tried to exactly depict the world in realistic terms. The surrealists pursued art created under the influence of the subconscious mind and spontaneous activities. Many of their paintings, such as those by Jean Arp, Yves Tanquy, and Joan Miró, lacked any recognizable forms. Their idea was not to depict a clear image, but to represent thoughts and feelings.

By the middle of the twentieth century, other artists began to paint in a way in which they could spontaneously express themselves. Jackson Pollock, influenced by the experimental splattering techniques of Max Ernst, became interested in the impact of the artist’s physical movement while painting, and he experimented with the texture of the paint on the canvas. He became well known for his pieces in which paint had been poured and dripped to create active, spontaneous art. Pollock placed his canvas on the floor and twirled around it like a dancer as he applied paint. Willem de Kooning and Franz Joseph Kline were also active-action painters. Active-action painters did not quietly add paint to their pictures a bit at a time. Instead they painted quickly and boldly, inspired more by their feelings of the moment than by some well-thought-out plan. They used broad brushes and rough strokes to create vibrant, abstract compositions. Geometric shapes and colored planes fascinated other artists, such as Hans Hoffman and Mark Rothko. This new art movement was called abstract expressionism, and its center of activity was New York City. At the same time, in the late 1940s through the early 1960s, musicians were exploring a freer type of jazz, and writers were experimenting with new, less restrained forms of writing.

The public did not warm up to the new, brash painting style of abstract expressionism for many years. To many, the art looked like the work of a child, and people commented that anyone could splatter paint or paint with his fingers. Maybe that was the idea.

Techniques such as using splatters to suggest images fit within the goal of surrealists, who were supposed to be guided by their subconscious thoughts.

In 1958, Dalí and Gala were married in a Catholic church. He was 54 years old. Was this just a show by Dalí to prove he was truly a Catholic mystic? Many of Dalí’s critics doubted that he was really a practicing Catholic. His life had been so much of a show and so much of a self-created myth that it was hard to believe Dalí when he said he was being sincere. Indeed, it would continue to be a struggle for Dalí to blend the two parts of his personality. His public act as a dandy, clown, and irreverent, eccentric artist gave the impression that he was never serious. Yet he had always been serious about his art, his craft, and his place in the art world.

A Celebrated Outcast

Many artists now found it difficult to accept Dalí. In earlier years the surrealists had continued to include Dalí in their art shows because he was the best known of all of them, but by the 1950s they finally rejected him. His acceptance of Franco, his quest for money, and his return to classical themes were too much for them to accept. Breton had once thought that Dalí and his wild energy were important to the surrealist movement, but Breton didn’t need Dalí now. Young surrealists, such as Alberto Gironella and Dorothea Tanning, were joining the ranks of elder surrealists such as Duchamp, Oppenheim, and Breton, bringing new energy to the group.

“I don’t do drugs. I am drugs.”—Dalí

Breton’s rejection of Dalí may have prevented Dalí’s work from being included in shows organized by Breton, but his work continued to be shown in surrealist art exhibitions sponsored by galleries and art museums throughout the world. Dalí was in the news now more than ever. Most newsworthy was a discovery that he made in 1963. In 1940 he had written a long essay about Millet’s painting, The Angelus. He felt that something dark and sinister lurked beneath the simple painting of a man and woman praying in a field at sunset. Between the man and woman is basket of potatoes on the ground. Dalí somehow was convinced that hidden under this basket was a picture of a baby’s coffin. By the 1960s he was famous enough to get support for his investigation. An X ray of The Angelus indeed revealed a child’s coffin under the basket!

The last international show of the surrealist group (which did not include Dalí’s work) was in Paris in 1965. André Breton died in 1966, and with him died surrealism as an organized movement. Dalí and others continued to use surrealist techniques, but other art forms such as pop art, OP art, and abstract art had become dominant. One of the younger pop artists, Andy Warhol, looked to Dalí for inspiration as a performance artist and as a celebrity. Pop art was a continuation of the surrealist attraction to everyday objects as art. It celebrated the objects and art of popular culture as true art. This movement saw everything from cereal boxes to advertisements to household furnishing as art. Dalí’s lips sofa was a pop icon. Warhol and other artists picked up where Dalí had begun. They made giant hot dogs, paintings of soup cans, and colorful prints of movie stars such as Marilyn Monroe.

Dalí was excited by the energy of the 1960s youth. He became a hero of the hippie movement, and young people flocked to Port Ligat and camped on the beach. He welcomed many of them into his home and presided over a new era of happenings. Many of these guests posed as models for paintings.

POP ART

In the 1920s Marcel Duchamp and other dadaists experimented with making sculptures from everyday objects. Their idea was that art could be found everywhere, even in common objects that people see every day. Dalí and other surrealists were also very interested in not only celebrating these objects, but in creating art that became part of the popular culture. Dalí’s lips couch, perfume bottles, and other pieces that he created as an artist/designer were intended to bring art out of the museum and into the home. In the 1950s a group of younger artists began using images from popular culture to produce what was soon called popular art. This was later shortened to pop art. Some of these artists had worked in commercial art studios, and all of them shared the goal of creating a closer link between life and art. Many of them were consciously rebelling against the unrecognizable subject matter of abstract expressionism.

By the 1960s pop art was in full swing and its images of giant toasters and comic strip-like paintings served as a background for the cultural changes that occurred during that decade. As in many other art movements of the twentieth century, the majority of pop artists lived and worked in New York City. Robert Rauschenberg created collages with household objects. Jasper Johns painted American flags and bull’s-eye targets in a realistic style. Andy Warhol made prints of everything from movie stars to Coca-Cola bottles and soup cans. Some of the most memorable pop art sculptures were Claes Oldenburg’s giant plastic hamburgers, hotdogs, and other fast foods. Roy Lichtenstein created giant comic book-style illustrations.

While Dalí and other surrealists had used mannequins, the American artist George Segal went one step further and produced life-size plaster casts of real people doing real things, like watching television. Other artists made paintings that resembled billboards, and mock-serious publicity photos of popular heroes.

Dalí was the hero of Andy Warhol, who brought a new style of happenings to the art world. Like Dalí, he cultivated his art patrons among the rich and famous who wished to be seen as hip and cool. Dalí had helped open the way for visual artists such as Warhol to become actors in the world of everyday media.

It seemed that Dalí would always be drawn to surrealism, but he was open to other philosophies and styles as well. Some of his later paintings, such as The Hallucinogenic Toreador, are a mix of many styles. The Venus de Milo figures found in the painting are classic pop art figures. (Dalí copied them from a box of colored pencils.) But they also provided another chance for him to play with double images. Look at the picture long enough, and the face of a bullfighter will appear. The right breast of the Venus with the green dress becomes his nose, the dark slash below her breasts is his mouth, and the left side of her face is one eye. There is even a tear coming from it. The green stripe on her dress is his tie, and the light brown flyspecked semicircle above her is his beret. Other double images in the work are of a bull and a dalmatian. The painting is large and full of Dalían symbols such as torsos with cutouts, young Dalí in his sailor suit, and roses. It is also jam-packed with a variety of painting techniques, including those of abstract expressionism, impressionism, and pop art.

The Hallucinogenic Toreador (1969–70), by Salvador Dalí

WHAT HAPPENED TO SURREALISM?

Toward the last years of the organized surrealist movement, artists began to take two different paths. Some surrealists just put their subconscious ideas and thoughts into their art without bothering to analyze them. This technique, called automism, was similar to the automatic writing practiced by Breton and others. Many of the artists who supported automism felt that abstraction was the only way to picture subconscious thoughts. In a way, this branch of surrealists became abstract expressionists.

Another group of surrealists, which included Dalí, believed that automism could be used to bring subconscious thoughts and images to the surface, but that it was then the job of the artist to analyze and interpret them, just as Freud had done. Dalí did this through his paranoiac critical method, in which he attempted to view the world in unique and multiple versions of reality by prolonged gazing and connecting with his dream state. Using his incredible skills as a painter, he produced what he called “hand-painted dream photographs.”

Some artists, such as Picasso, challenged the importance of rigorous artistic techniques and training, and promoted the innocent automism of children’s art. Dalí, on the other hand, strove to imagine with the innocence of a child, but paint with the skill of a master.

Critics and the mainstream art establishment moved from Dalí’s camp straight into decades of abstract art. With the coming of pop art in the 1960s and, later, photorealism, realism gained new acceptance in the world of art critics. To this day, however, many modern surrealists continue to explore the subconscious using methods similar to those used by Dalí.

Dalí Dreams

From the 1960s through the 1970s Dalí used his celebrity and eccentric personality to sell his services to television advertisers. He peddled everything from sportswear to chocolates in commercials that emphasized his strange behavior. Dalí had become a pop art figure. His art no longer earned much praise from critics, but Dalí was making a fortune. He hired a manager, Peter Moore, to handle the business of selling products based on his art, from ties and sculptures to jigsaw puzzles and perfumes. Moore also put Dalí’s signature on reproductions of his art, which were sold in limited editions. Many of them were sold as original art, and, although this earned Moore and Dalí even greater fortune, it was pure fraud. A commercial printing, such as a poster, of an artist’s original work is merely a reproduction and does not have the same value as an original piece of art. A personalized signature is usually found only on an original work. Putting personalized signatures on reproductions misleads buyers into thinking they are buying a valuable original work instead of a cheap reproduction. The art world became aware of this deception, and Dalí’s reputation was further damaged.

Dalí, however, lived in a world where the opinions of critics and other artists were of little concern. He was still a celebrity, and he continued to ride the wave of his worldwide recognition. Shows of Dalí’s work were more popular than ever, and retrospective exhibits at museums attracted larger than usual crowds. By 1971 Reynolds and Eleanor Morse had acquired so much of Dalí’s work that they built a museum attached to their offices in Cleveland.

Three years later, one of Dalí’s big dreams came true. In the early 1960s he had begun developing the idea of creating a theater-museum in the burned-out Teatro Principal in his home-town, Figueres. This was where he had first publicly exhibited his art. It had caught fire during the Spanish Civil War while soldiers were camping inside it. The project took over 10 years to complete, and was finally opened in 1974.

Dalí in the Mae West Room.
Photograph by Meliton Casals

“What is a television apparatus to man, who has only to shut his eyes to see the most inaccessible regions of the seen and the never seen?”—Dalí

The museum is like a work of Dalían art, full of Dalí’s symbols and objects that were part of his life. On the face of the building, for example, is a helmeted diver, representing Dalí’s deep dives into the subconscious. Also featured are figures with parts of their bellies missing, leaning on crutches and wearing loaves of bread on their heads. Inside is an open-air garden that sports a reproduction of Dalí’s Rainy Taxi and Gala’s bright yellow fishing boat. The old stage of the Teatro is covered by a geodesic dome, with a large Dalí painting as a backdrop. In an adjoining room are some of Dalí’s famous paintings. Also included are works by other artists. These had once been in Dalí’s personal collection. One item that he especially created for the museum is the Mae West room. It is based on an early painting that had inspired his lips sofa.

Dalí created a whole museum dedicated to his idea of surrealism. Perhaps this was his last surrealist joke. Today it attracts more visitors than the Prado Museum (the Spanish National Gallery in Madrid) and brings a lot of tourist dollars to his hometown.

Dalí’s Last Years

In his last years, Dalí continued to create new types of art. In 1972 he exhibited three holograms, created with the help of the Nobel award-winning scientist Dennis Gabor. He experimented with a series of stereographic paintings that appeared three-dimensional when viewed side by side. He played around with optical illusions in paintings such as Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea which at Twenty Meters Becomes a Portrait of Abraham Lincoln (Homage to Rothko). This was done with help from a computer scientist, in the early days of computer imaging. In this amazing painting, Dalí merges his fascination with double images with the style of OP art. In the painting, Gala’s figure does change into the face of Abe Lincoln when viewed from a distance. It is one of Dalí’s most popular works. He also painted a version of a bust of the Native American White Eagle by the Dutch artist Charles Schreyvogel. In Dalí’s painting, White Eagle’s cheeks and eyes have become two Dutch merchants, and his nose is a Coke bottle.

“Every morning when I wake up, I experience an exquisite joy—the joy of being Salvador Dalí—and I ask myself in rapture, ‘what wonderful things is this Salvador Dalí going to accomplish today?’”—Dalí

Dalí never stopped experimenting with new and fun methods. One day he sat outside on a bench with paper and a pen, quietly waiting for rain. After an hour, the rain began, and as drops fell on his paper Dalí placed his pen in each drop, making the ink spread outward. Bit by bit he drew, and before long he had created a tree from the random splotches. He said to a friend who had been watching him draw, “This is a happening.” Dalí was still committed to art that came from the world around him. He was there to respond to that world and to bring his inner self, no matter how strange, into the open.

Dalí, now in his seventies, was beginning to suffer from Parkinson’s disease, which caused him to shake uncontrollably at times. He often felt depressed. Gala treated him like a slave. She wanted him to keep producing more and more paintings so she could sell them. Sometimes she would even lock him in his studio until he had made sufficient progress. Gala was 86 years old. Though she was getting frail and forgetful, she was growing increasingly nasty.

In 1980 Dalí was honored with a retrospective art show in Paris at the Centre Georges Pompidou, but museum employees went on strike to protest Dalí’s exhibit. They objected to comments that Dalí had made years earlier in support of Franco’s executions of Basque terrorists. Protesters booed Gala and Dalí when they arrived for a preview of the exhibit. The protesters prevented them from entering the museum, and Dalí never was able to see the show.

Although he had not been getting along with Gala for years, it was a great shock to Dalí when she died in June 1982 at the age of 89. Dalí had spent most of his life with her and soon forgot their last difficult years together. He missed her terribly, and it was a struggle for him to paint. He spent much of his time wandering around his home, or just sitting and thinking about the past. In 1983, the same year that Picasso died, Dalí painted his last piece. He said he was ready to die, but it would be six more years before he succumbed to heart failure. In January 1989, at age 84, Dalí, the surrealist, clown, deep thinker, and writer, passed away, leaving behind an incredible legacy of art and ideas.

Shades of Night Descending (1931), by Salvador Dalí

GLOSSARY

Abstract expressionism an art movement that focused on spontaneous, abstract creations without concern for representation of realistic scenes or subjects.

Automatic writing a process of releasing subconscious thoughts and ideas by writing nonstop for a period of time without pausing to choose the right words or grammar.

Automism the process of creating art without conscious thought.

Bulletism a special technique used by Salvador Dalí, in which a gun is used to make marks on a lithograph plate.

Collage a composition made by pasting flat materials, such as pictures or cloth, on a surface.

Cubism an art style created by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, in which traditional representation was replaced by experimental uses of geometric forms, shadows, and perspective.

Dada an art movement, started after World War I, that claimed that everything and nothing was art.

Decalomania a picture made from painting objects and pressing them on paper to make prints.

Etching a process of engraving in which lines are scratched on a plate and covered by a coating. The unscratched areas are then exposed to acid.

Exquisite corpse a group drawing in which four people each draw a body part without seeing what the other artists have drawn.

Frottage a piece of art made by creating rubbings or prints from a collection of objects.

Impressionism an art movement that featured quickly dabbed brushstrokes, instead of carefully detailed rendering, to depict scenes.

lithography a process of printing in which ink-repellent material is applied to a metal or stone printing plate in the areas that are to remain blank.

Magic realism an art or writing style in which magical elements are placed in realistic settings or scenes.

Neoclassical realism an art style of the first part of the twentieth century that used classical art themes and ideas to create realistic modern compositions.

Nuclear mysticism an art style developed by Dalí to express his belief in the relation of modern science and mystical thoughts.

OP art an art style that focuses on the creation of optical illusions

Oscillation an art technique in which a pierced can of paint drips paint while swinging over canvas on the floor.

Paranoic critical method a creative process Dalí used to interpret his dreams and subconscious thoughts.

Photorealism an art style that portrays subjects in paint or other art media so realistically that they appear to be photographs.

Poem object one or more found objects placed in an artistic arrangement along with words.

Pop art an art movement of the 1960s in which art was created based on popular culture and design.

Rayography a technique, invented by Man Ray, of creating pictures by placing objects on light-sensitive paper.

Renaissance a period of artistic revival in Europe from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century.

Rotoreliefs an art form developed by Marcel Duchamp, in which three-dimensional pictures were created by spinning discs with pictures on them.

Scratchboard an art technique in which pictures are created by scratching lines on a painted surface.

Surrealism an art movement based on creating art inspired by dreams and subconscious thoughts.
Detail of Soft Watch Exploding (1954), by Salvador Dalí

RESOURCES

Bibliography

Ades, Dawn. Dalí. London: Thames and Hudson, 1995.

Alexandrian, Sarane. Surrealist Art. London: Thames and Hudson, 1970.

Aranda, Francisco. Luis Buñuel: A Critical Biography. London: Secker and Warburg, 1969.

Brandon, Ruth. Surreal Lives. New York: Grove Press, 1999.

Buñuel, Luis. My Last Sigh. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1983.

Chadwick, Whitney. Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement. London: Thames and Hudson, 1985.

Dalí, Salvador. Hidden Faces. New York: The Dial Press, 1944.

Dalí, Salvador. The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí. New York: Dover, 1993.

Gibson, Ian. The Shameful Life of Salvador Dalí. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997.

Gimferrer, Pere. Magritte. New York: Rizzoli, 1986.

Desharnes, Robert. Salvador Dalí: The Work, the Man. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1984.

Eluard, Paul. Capital of Pain. Translated by Richard Weisman. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1973.

Etherington-Smith, Meredith. The Persistence of Memory. New York: Da Capo Press, 1995.

Eyles, Allan. The Marx Brothers: Their World of Comedy. South Brunswick, New York: A. S. Barnes and Co, 1969.

Lubar, Robert S. Dalí: The Salvador Dalí Museum Collection. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 2000.

Morse, Reynolds. Dalí: The Salvador Dalí Museum Collection. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1991.

Morse, Reynolds. The Draftsmanship of Salvador Dalí. Cleveland: Salvador Dalí Museum, 1970.

Ollinger-Zinque, Gisele, and Leen, Fredrick. Magritte. Ghent, Belgium: Luidon Press, 1998.

Rubin, William S. Dada and Surrealist Art. New York, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1968.

Stich, Sandra. Anxious Visions: Surrealist Art. New York: Abbeville Press, 1990.

Thomkins, Calvin, and the Editors of Time Life Books. The World of Marcel Duchamp. New York: Time Inc., 1966.

Van de Velde, Ronny. Man Ray. Ghent, Belgium: Luidon Press, 1995.

Art Museums

The Art Institute of Chicago

111 South Michigan Avenue

Chicago, IL 60603-6110

(312) 443-3600

www.artic.edu/aic

In the museum’s collections are works by Salvador Dalí, Joseph Cornell, René Magritte, and Pablo Picasso.

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

De Young Art Center

(DYAC) 2501 Irving Street

San Francisco, CA 94122

Interim de Young Museum

245-A South Spruce Avenue

South San Francisco, CA 94080

Legion of Honor

100 34th Avenue

San Francisco, CA 94121

Telephone number for all museums:

(415) 863-3330.

Web site for all museums: www.famsf.org

More than 20 prints and other pieces by Dalí are in the collection of the Legion of Honor and the De Young Art Center. Also in the collection are works by René Magritte, Max Ernst, Man Ray, and other surrealists.

Fundació Gala—Salvador Dalí

The Fundació Gala—Salvador Dalí operates three museums in Spain: the Dalí Theater-Museum in Figueres, the Gala Dalí Castle Museum-House in Pûbol, and the Salvador Dalí Museum House in Port Ligat. The Foundation has an enormous collection of art by Dalí, including engravings, paintings, special installations (such as the Mae West Room), jewelry, holograms, and other work. Also included are works of other artists collected by Dalí, and Dalí and Gala’s two homes in Spain.

(34) 972 677 518

www.salvador-Dalí.org

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts

2400 Third Avenue, South

Minneapolis, MN 55404

(612) 870-3131

www.artsmia.org

On view are two pieces, the surrealist object Aphrodisiac Telephone (1938) and Portrait of Juan de Pareja, the Assistant to Valezquez (1960).

Museum of Modern Art

11 West 53rd Street

New York, NY

Temporary location: 33rd Street at Queens Boulevard, Long Island City, Queens (through 2004)

(212) 708-9400

www.moma.org

The museum has several Dalí pieces, including his most famous work, The Persistence of Memory. Also in its collection are works by Max Ernst, René Magritte, Joan Miró, Meret Oppenheim, and other prominent surrealists.

Philadelphia Museum of Art

Benjamin Franklin Parkway and 26th Street

Philadelphia, PA 19130

(215) 763-8100

www.philamuseum.org

This is one of the few museums that offers work by Marcel Duchamp. It also has Dalí’s Soft Construction with Boiled Beans and works by Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró.

The Salvador Dalí Museum

1000 Third Street South

St. Petersburg, FL 33701-4901

(727) 823-3767

www.salvadorDalímuseum.org

In addition to 95 oil paintings, the museum collection includes over 100 watercolors and drawings and 1,300 graphics, photographs, sculptures, and objets d’art.

San Diego Museum of Art

1450 El Prado

Balboa Park

San Diego, CA 92101

(619) 232-7931

www.sdmart.org

The museum has Dalí’s painting Spectre du Soir (1930) as well as pieces by Yves Tanguy and Joan Miró. Its on-line catalog contains hundreds of art pieces that can be viewed.

Web Sites

Dalí Web Sites

www.Dalí-gallery.com

This site includes information on Dalí and surrealism. Also included are Dalí quotes and a photo gallery of the artist.

www. salvador-Dalí.org or

www.Dalí-estate.org

This home site of the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí has a special “Dalí work of the month” feature, biographical information, and information about the three museums in Spain. Included is an on-line gallery of many famous Dalí works.

www.salvadorDalímuseum.org

The Web site of the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, includes information about its collection, current exhibits, and information for kids and teachers.

www.virtualDalí.com

Included in this site are excellent photographs of Dalí and many important paintings, including Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea (view this from a distance and you will see a portrait of Abe Lincoln appear), Self-Portrait with Grilled Bacon, and Soft Construction with Boiled Beans.

Web Sites with Works by Other Surrealists

www.artchive.com

The archive has information about a number of surrealists, including Dalí and Max Ernst. Go to the archives and search for dada and surrealism.

www.magritte.com

This on-line museum has biographical information about Magritte and links to museums that offer his work.

www.manray-photo.com

This Man Ray site has a complete time line biography and a searchable database of Man Ray’s art. There are also great photos of other surrealists.

IMAGE CREDITS

Page ii title page

The First Days of Spring (1929)

Page xii

The Weaning of Furniture-Nutrition (1934), by Salvador Dalí. Oil on panel, 7 x 9 inches. Collection of Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida. © 2002 Salvador Dalí Museum, Inc.

Page 2

Surrealist Poster (1934), by Salvador Dalí. Oil on cardboard with key, 27 x 28 inches. Collection of Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida. © 2002 Salvador Dalí Museum, Inc.

Page 3

Photo of Dalí in the Theater-Museum, by Meliton Casals. Collection of Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida. © 2002 Salvador Dalí Museum, Inc.

Page 4

Dalí, age four. Photo. Collection of Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida. © 2002 Salvador Dalí Museum, Inc.

Page 8

The Angelus (1859), by Jean-François Millet. © 2002 Réunion de Musées Nationaux/Art Resource, New York.

Page 11

The Dalí Family. Photo. Collection of Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida. © 2002 Salvador Dalí Museum, Inc.

Page 13

View of Cadaqués with Shadow of Mount Pani (1917), by Salvador Dalí. Oil on Canvas, 15½ x 19 inches. Collection of Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida. © 2002 Salvador Dalí Museum, Inc.

Page 15

Impressionism, Sunrise (1873), by Claude Monet. Oil on canvas, 48 x 63 cm. Musée Marmottan, Paris. Bequest of Madame Donop de Monchy. Image courtesy of Wood River Gallery.

Page 20

Self-portrait (Figueres) (1921), by Salvador Dalí. Oil on burlap, 14½ x 16½ inches. Collection of Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida. © 2002 Salvador Dalí Museum, Inc.

Page 21

The Tottering Woman (1923), by Max Ernst. Oil on canvas, 513/8 x 313/8 inches. Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf. Image courtesy of Wood River Gallery.

Page 23 with Detail on Page 16

Still Life: Sandia (1924), by Salvador Dalí. Oil on canvas 19½ x 19½ inches. Collection of Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida © 2002 Salvador Dalí Museum, Inc.

Page 34

The Basket of Bread (1926), by Salvador Dalí. Oil on panel 12½ x 12½ inches. Collection of Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida © 2002 Salvador Dalí Museum, Inc.

Page 37

Dutch Interior (1928), by Joan Miró. © 2002 Successió Miró/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris

Pages 38 with Detail on Page 43

Apparatus and Hand (1927), by Salvador Dalí. Oil on panel, 24½ x 183/4 inches. Collection of Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida. © 2002 Salvador Dalí Museum, Inc.

Page 40

Mama and Papa Is Wounded (1927), by Yves Tanguy. © 2002 Estate of Yves Tanguy/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Page 49

The First Days of Spring (1929), by Salvador Dalí. Oil on panel, 193/4 x 245/8 inches. Collection of Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida.

© 2002 Salvador Dalí Museum, Inc.

Page 53

Time Transfixed (1938), by René Magritte, (Belgian, 1898–1967). Oil on canvas, 147 x 98.7 cm. The Art Institute of Chicago, Joseph Winterbotham Collection, 1970.426. Photograph courtesy of The Art Institute of Chicago. © 2003 C. Herscovici, Brussels/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Page 55

Midnight Marriage (1926), by René Magritte. Oil on canvas, 139 x 105 cm. Collection of Charly Herscovici, Brussels. Image courtesy of Wood River Gallery. At the First Limpid Word (1923), by Max Ernst. Oil on plaster transferred to canvas, 913/8 x 653/4 inches. Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf. Image courtesy of Wood River Gallery.

Page 57

Dalí and Gala, 1930. Photo. Collection of Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida © 2002 Salvador Dalí Museum, Inc.

Page 68

The Persistence of Memory (1931), by Salvador Dalí. © 2002 Salvador Dalí, Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation/ Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York

Page 71

The Enigma of William Tell with the Apparition of a Celestial Gala (1933), by Salvador Dalí. Ink and pencil, 63/4 x 83/4 inches. Collection of Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida. © 2002 Salvador Dalí Museum, Inc.

Page 74

Fur Covered Cup, Saucer, and Spoon (1936), by Meret Oppenheim. © 2003 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ProLitteris, Zurich

Page 76

The Weaning of Furniture-Nutrition (1934), by Salvador Dalí. Oil on panel, 7 x 9½ inches. Collection of Salvador Dalí Museum St. Petersburg, Florida. © 2002 Salvador Dalí Museum, Inc.

Page 77

Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale (1924), by Max Ernst. © 2003 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris

Page 78 with Detail on Page 60

Archeological Reminiscence of Millet’s Angelus (1933–35), by Salvador Dalí. Oil on panel, 12½ x

15½ inches. Collection of Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida. © 2002 Salvador Dalí Museum, Inc.

Page 79

The Deceased Dimas (1937), by Frida Kahlo. Oil on masonite, 48 x 31.8 cm. Collection of Dolores Olmedo, Mexico City. Image courtesy of Wood River Gallery.

Page 84

Dalí and Lips Couch, by Meliton Casals. Photo. Collection of Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida. © 2002 Salvador Dalí Museum, Inc.

Page 85

Ubu Imperator (1923–24), by Max Ernst. Oil on canvas, 393/8 x 317/8 inches. Musée nationale d’art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. Image courtesy of Wood River Gallery.

Page 90

Morphological Echo (1936), by Salvador Dalí. Oil on panel 12 x 13 inches. Collection of Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida. © 2002 Salvador Dalí Museum, Inc.

Page 95

Heads of Gala (with elephant-swan apparition) (1937–38) 10 x 14 inches. Collection of Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida.© 2002 Salvador Dalí Museum, Inc.

Page 103 with Detail on Page 88

Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man (1943), by Salvador Dalí. Oil on canvas, 18 x 20½ inches. Collection of Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida.© 2002 Salvador Dalí Museum, Inc.

Page 105

Old Age, Adolescence, Infancy (The Three Ages) (1940), by Salvador Dalí. Oil on canvas, 195/8 x 255/8 inches. Collection of Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida. © 2002 Salvador Dalí Museum, Inc.

Page 112 with Detail on Page 124

Soft Watch Exploding (1954), by Salvador Dalí. Ink, 5½ x 7½ inches. Collection of Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida. © 2002 Salvador Dalí Museum, Inc.

Page 118

The Hallucinogenic Toreador (1969–70), by Salvador Dalí. Oil on canvas, 157 x 119 inches. Collection of Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida. © 2002 Salvador Dalí Museum, Inc.

Page 120

Dalí in the Mae West Room, by Meliton Casals. Photo. Collection of Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida. © 2002 Salvador Dalí Museum, Inc.

Page 123 with Detail on Page 109

Shades of Night Descending (1931), by Salvador Dalí. Oil on canvas, 24 x 193/4 inches. Collection of Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida.

© 2002 Salvador Dalí Museum, Inc.

INDEX

Numbers in italics are illustrations.

A

Abstract Expressionism, 114, 115

Adler, Alfred, 29

Angelus, The, 7, 8, 70, 78–79, 116

Arp, Jean, 21, 39–40

Dada and, 39

Miró Joan, and, 39–40

automatic writing, 40–41, 47, 119

automism, 119

B

Bosch, Hieronymus, 26

Braque, Georges, 24

Breton, Andrí 43, 44

automatic writing, 119

Enigma of William Tell, The, 73

Dada and, 21

Dalí Salvador, and, 28, 73, 75–76, 83, 95–96, 98–99, 100, 101, 103, 116

death, 116

Kahlo, Frida, and, 79

Manifesto of Surrealism, 28

poem object, 70

Surrealist Manifesto, 51

writing technique, 40

Breuer, Josef, 29

Buñel, Luis, 25–26, 43, 44

Un Chien Andalou, 44, 46–48

Dalí Salvador, and, 25, 98–99, 101

filmmaking, 43, 44, 46–48, 50, 98

C

Carlos, King Juan, 100

Catalonian Independence, 27

Chanel, Coco, 64, 93

Un Chien Andalou, 44, 46–48, 98

Cold War, 100

collage, 12

communism, 67

Communist Manifesto, The, 67

Cornell, Joseph, 77

Crosby, Caresse, 80, 81, 83, 100

Cubism, 24

D

Dada, 21, 37

Dalí Anna Marí, 5–6, 52, 92, 109, 110

Dalí Felipa Domenech, 5, 20, 22

Dalí Salvador

in America, 80, 81–84, 86, 90, 91, 93,100, 106

Apparatus and Hand, 42, 43

Archeological Reminiscence of Millet’s “Angelus,” 78, 78–79

Average Bureaucrat, The, 62

ballet, 99–100, 102

Basket of Bread, The, 33, 34

Bastion, The, 19

Breton, Andrí and, 28, 73, 75–76, 83, 95–96, 98–99, 100, 101, 103, 116

bulletism technique, 113–14

Buñel, Luis, and, 25, 44, 46–48,98–99, 101

childhood, 5–13, 14

Christ of Saint John of the Cross, 111

collage technique, 12, 18–19

commercialization of, 95, 109–11, 119–21

Cubism and, 24, 25, 28, 32, 33

death, 123

Dalí Atomicus, 113

Decalomania, 87

Dialogue on the Beach (Unsatisfied Desires), 42–43

Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory, The, 112

Disney, Walt, and, 96, 106

Drinker, The, 19

dream balls, 82, 83

dream painting technique, 52

education, 6–9, 11–12, 14, 17–20, 22–28, 30, 32–33, 35–36

Eluard, Paul, and 40, 46

engraving technique, 27

Enigma of William Tell, The, 60, 71, 73

Enigma of William Tell with the Apparition of a Celestial Gala, The, 71

exhibitions, 19, 22, 32, 48, 56, 72, 82, 89, 92, 96–97, 122

fashion design, 93, 95, 117

father, relationship with, 56, 59, 61, 62, 79, 84

Femme Couchée, 33

Figure at the Window, 32

film, 44, 46–48, 50, 93, 106

final years, 121–23

First Days of Spring, The, 48, 49, 50

first painting, 11

frottage technique, 87

Gabor, Dennis, and, 121

Gala and, 7, 54, 56, 57–59, 81–82, 111, 115, 122, 123

Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea which at Twenty Meters Becomes a Portrait of Abraham Lincoln (Homage to Rothko), 121–22

García Lorca, Fredrico, and 25, 30, 32, 41–42, 47, 86

Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man, 88, 102, 103

Hallucinogenic Toreador, The, 118, 118

hand-painted dream photographs, 119

Heads of Gala, 95

Hollywood, 93, 106

holograms, 121

Impressionism and, 12, 14, 18, 23–24

influences, 6, 7, 9–10, 28, 39, 40, 42, 46, 58, 59, 62, 78–79, 90, 97, 112–13, 114, 116

installations, 96, 97–98, 121

interior design, 86, 117

lithography technique, 113–14

Lugubrious Game, The, 54, 56, 58

Madonna of Port Ligat, The, 111

Marx, Harpo, and, 92–93

military service, 39, 42

Mirí Joan, and 36, 39, 46

Moore, Peter, and 119

Morphological Echo, 89, 90

Neoclassical Realism and, 28

Neocubist Academy, 28

Nuclear Mysticism and, 112–13

object art, 69–73, 82

Old Age, Adolescence, Infancy (The Three Ages), 104, 105

Old Age of William Tell, 58

optical illusion technique, 121–22

Paisaje, 11

paranoiac critical method technique, 75, 102–103, 119

Persistence of Memory, The, 66, 68, 68, 71

photography, 113, 119

Picasso, Pablo, and 33, 80, 109

political imprisonment, 27, 28

Pop Art and, 86

as pop icon, 1–3, 119–21

Port Ligat, 58, 62, 66, 92, 109–10, 116

Portrait, 32

Portrait of My Wife, The, 82

Portrait of Picasso, 109

Premonition of Civil War (Soft Construction with Boiled Beans), 80

Retrospective Bust of a Woman, 70

scratchboard technique, 18

Self-Portrait, 20, 20

Shades of Night Descending, 108, 123

Soft Construction (Premonition of Civil War), 92

Soft Self Portrait with Grilled Bacon, 102

Soft Watch Exploding, 112, 124

Spanish Civil War and, 90, 92, 99

stereographic technique, 121–22

Still Life: Fast Moving, 113

Still Life (Invitation to Sleep), 32

Still Life: Sandia, 16, 23

Surrealism and, 28, 30

Surrealist group, relationship with, 99, 101, 115–16

symbolism in art, 76, 78–80

Three Young Surrealist Women Holding in Their Arms the Skins of an Orchestra, 89

Venus and the Sailor, 32

View of Cadaqués with Shadow of Mount Pani, 13, 14

Weaning of Furniture-Nutrition, The, xii, 76, 76, 78

writing, 98, 103, 104, 100, 101, 110, 113

DalíCusí Salvador, 5, 27, 56, 62, 84, 109, 110

Dalípeak, 68

DalíTheater-Museum, 2, 3, 120, 120–21

de Kooning, 114, 115

de Noailles, Vicomte, 48, 56, 57–58, 64, 66

Devulina Diakonoff, Helena. See Gala

Disney, Walt, 93, 106

Duchamp, Marcel, 21, 81

Cubism and, 24

film, 81

Man Ray and, 81

Nude Descending a Staircase, 24

object art, 72

ready-made art, 81, 117

E

Eluard, Paul, 47

Capital of Pain, 47

Dada and, 21

Dalí Salvador, and, 40, 46

Gala and, 47, 52, 54

Hugo, Valentine, and, 69

Picasso, Pablo, and, 47

writing technique, 40

Engels, Frederich, 67

Ernst, Max, 21, 48, 85

At the First Clear Word, 55

Child’s Brain, The, 85

frottage, 85, 87

Gala and, 54

object art, 77

oscillation painting, 114

Tanning, Dorothea, and, 75

Tottering Woman, 21

Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale, 77, 77

“exquisite corpse, the,” 62, 63

F

fascism, 65, 66

Faucigny-Lucinge, Prince, 64, 68–69

First Communist Revolution, 67

Franco, Francisco, 65, 91, 100

free association, 29, 47, 106

Freud, Sigmund, 28, 29

Dalí Salvador, and, 28, 42, 97

influence on Surrealism, 29, 30

Interpretation of Dreams, 29

frottage, 85, 87

G

Gala, 52, 54, 57, 69, 111

Dalí Salvador, and, 7, 54, 56, 57–59, 62, 81–82, 109, 111, 115, 122, 123

death, 123

Eluard, Paul, and, 47, 52, 54

Ernst, Max, and, 54

García Lorca, Fredrico, 25–26

Book of Poems, 26

Dalí Salvador, and, 25, 30, 32, 41–42, 47, 86

death, 91

Ode to Salvador Dalí, 32

Gaugin, Paul, 15

Goemans, Camille, 52

Great Depression, 67

Grindel, Eugene. See Eluard, Paul

Gris, Juan, 24

Grosz, George, 21

Guggenheim, Peggy, 75

H

Halsman, Philippe, 113

Hitchcock, Alfred, 106

Hitler, Adolph, 65, 73, 97

Hoffman, Hans, 115

Hugo, Valentine, 69

I

Impressionism, 15

Industrialism, 67

inkblots, 31

J

James, Edward, 84, 85, 111

Johns, Jasper, 117

Jung, Carl, 29

K

Kahlo, Frida, 79

Kline, Franz Joseph, 115

L

L’Age d’Or (The Golden Age), 56, 61–62, 64, 66

Levy, Julien, 66, 71, 80

Lichtenstein, Roy, 117

lithography, 113

Loeb, Pierre, 36

M

Magic Realism, 53

Magritte, Rene, 48, 52, 53, 55

Man Ray, 21, 44

Browner, Juliet, and, 75

Duchamp, Marcel, and, 44, 81

film, 50, 81

Les Mysteries du Chatêau de Dé, 44

object art, 70, 72

rayography, 44

Marx Brothers, 92–93, 94

Marx, Harpo, 92–93

Marx, Karl, 67

Mathieu, Georges, 114

Millet, Jean-Francis, 7

MirÒ Joan, 37

Arp, Jean, and, 39–40

Cubism and, 37

Dada and, 37

Dalí Salvador, and, 36, 39, 46

Dutch Interior, 37, 37

Head of a Woman, 37

Person Throwing a Stone at a Bird, 37

splotch art, 35

Monet, Claude, 15

Morse, Reynolds and Eleanor, 102, 103,

120

Mussolini, Benito, 65

N

Neoclassical Realism, 28

Neville, Count Edgar, 36

Nuñez, Juan, 17, 18, 22

O

Oldenburg, Claes, 117

Op Art, 103

Oppenheim, Meret, 70, 74

Orwell, George, 101

P

photo-collage, 21

Picasso, Pablo, 11, 32, 48

Cubism and, 24

Dalí Salvador, and, 33, 80, 109

death, 123

Eluard, Paul, and 47

Impressionism and, 24

Pichot, Pepito, 10–12, 22

Pichot, Ramon, 10–12

Pollock, Jackson, 114, 115

Pop Art, 86, 116, 117

psychoanalysis, 29

R

Radnitsky, Emmanuel. See Man Ray

Rauschenberg, Robert, 117

rayography, 44, 45

ready-made art, 21, 81

Renoir, Pierre Auguste, 15

Rivera, Diego, 79

Rothko, Mark, 115

S

Sage, Kay, 75

Salvador DalíMuseum, 2

Schiaparelli, Elsa, 64, 93, 95, 96, 102

Schwitter, Kurt, 21

scratchboard, 18

Segal, George, 117

Simpson, Wallis, 95

Spanish Civil War, 65, 79–80, 90, 91, 92, 99, 100

Spellbound, 106, 107

Stalin, Joseph, 67

Surrealism

Dada and, 21

definition, 1, 21, 28, 30, 55

end, 116, 119

influence on popular culture, 1–3

Last International Show, 116

methods, 55

object art, 69–70

women artists, 69, 74, 75

T

Tanguy, Yves, 39

Mama and Papa Is Wounded, 40

Sage, Kay, and, 75

WWI influence upon painting, 39

Tanning, Dorothea, 75, 116

Tzara, Tristan, 21

V

Vanel, Helene, 97

W

Warhol, Andy, 116, 117

World War I, 17, 21, 39, 55, 65, 67

World War II, 99, 100

Z

Zodiac Group, 68–69