History of Art: Salvador Dali

Art of the 20th Century

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	Salvador Dali by Robert Descharnes & Gilles Neret If You Act the Genius, You Will Be One! 1910-1928 The Proof of Love 1929-1935 The Conguest of the Irrational 1936-1939 The Triumph of Avida Dollars 1939-1946 The Mystical Manifesto 1946-1962 Paths to Immortality 1962-1989

The Conquest of the Irrational

1936-1939

Dali at Coco Chanel's villa in Roquebrune in 1938.

The Invisible Object

On 17 January 1938, the International Surrealist Exhibition opened at the Galerie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. It was to mark the pinnacle of the movement's influence and impact. Despite his exclusion from the group, Dali was exhibited at the show, as was another shortly to be in the same position, Max Ernst. Dali's Rainy Taxi, the installation referred to by Orwell in his essay as "Mannequin Rotting in a Taxi-cab", occasioned controversy, as we have seen (Orwell was to call it "diseased and disgusting"). The Surrealists were exhibiting everywhere - from May to June at the Guildhall in Gloucester; that spring at Robert's in Amsterdam; that November at Alex Reid's and Lefevre in London; from 13 October till 4 December at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, and at the Wads-worth Atheneum in Hartford. Dali was featured in all of these shows, and also worked with Andre Breton and Paul Eluard on the Dictionnaire du Surrealisme, published by the Galerie des Beaux-Arts.

Dali was now travelling a good deal. On 19 July, accompanied by Edward James and Stefan Zweig to perform the introductions, he met Sigmund Freud in London. Zweig had written to Freud that in his view Dali was the sole genius among the painters of the age, the one whose work would endure - a fanatic, but also the most loyal of all Freud's disciples among artists. For Dali, meeting Freud was like meeting God; Julien Green noted in his diary on one occasion that Dali had spoken of Freud as a Christian would speak of the Gospels. " Contrary to my hopes," recalled Dali, "we spoke little, but we devoured each other with our eyes. Freud knew nothing about me except my painting, which he admired [...] Before his imperturbable indifference, my voice became involuntarily sharper and more insistent." The day after their meeting, Freud wrote to Zweig that he was glad to have met the young Spaniard because hitherto he had been inclined to suppose the Surrealists (who had taken him as their patron saint) complete fools. But Dali's technical mastery and fanatical gaze had persuaded him that it might indeed be worth analysing a Surrealist painting. Dali felt flattered by Freud's comment to Zweig: "I have never seen a more complete example of a Spaniard. What a fanatic!"

Impressions of Africa
1938

Apparition of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach
1938

The Endless Enigma
1938

Invisible Afghan with the Apparition on the Beach of the Face
of Garcia Lorca in the Form of a Fruit Dish with Three Figs
1938

At this time, Dali frequently painted telephones or sardines (or both) on plates, as in Beach with Telephone, The Sublime Moment, Imperial Violets and The Enigma of Hitler. The telephone was a symbol of the age, of modernity: "A telephone is talking to a man," as Auden put it. In the era of appeasement and Munich, as the Second World War approached, the telephone must have seemed an emblem of menace. Dali was forever questing for the secrets of images both visible and invisible, as we clearly see in The Image Disappears, Old Age, Adolescence, Infancy (The Three Ages), and the Voltaire pictures. Later in life, in 1971, Dali recalled that for six years he systematically investigated the nature of vision and perception, only to conclude that we have not the smallest grasp of the psychological meaning of vision. We see what we are inclined to see, what we suppose we have occasion to see; and if our preconceptions are clouded, we see something else, in which event visual responses can be manipulated. Dali used an analogy from the world of radio: impressions can be broadcast in bundles, or subjected to purely psychological interference. Dali himself had eventually come to the conclusion that the adoption of psychological disguise was a real option in visual perception, and simply a question of research and experience.

Beach with Telephone
1938

Imperial Violets
1938

The Sublime Moment
1938

The Enigma of Hitler
c. 1939

Debris of an Automobile Giving Birth to a Blind Horse Biting a Telephone
1938

Telephone in a Dish With Three Grilled Sardines at the End of September
1939

Landscape with Telephones on a Plate
1939

The Image Disappears
1938

Study for The Image Disappears
1938

Metamorphosis of a Man's Bust into
a Scene Inspired by Vermeer
1939

Apparition of the Figure of Vermeer on the Face of Abraham Lincoln.
Study for "The Image Disappears"
1938

Philosopher Illuminated by the Light of the Moon and the Setting Sun
1939

Enchanted Beach with Three Fluid Graces
1938

The Transparent Simulacrum of the Feigned Image
1938

The Warning
1938

Gradiva
1938

Portrait of Freud
1937

Portrait of Sigmund Freud
1938

Portrait of Sigmund Freud - Morphology of the Skull of Sigmund Freud.
Illustration for "The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí"
1938

Portrait of Sigmund Freud from "The Secret Life"
1939

Study for the Self-portrait in "Impressions of Africa"
1938

Imaginary Figures with a Background of Spanish Monuments
(Study for the Costumes for Coco Chanel)
1938

Composition - Two Women with a Town in the Background
1938

Fantastic Beach Scene with Skeleton and Parrot
1938

Coccyx Women
1938

Beach at Cape Creus with Seated Woman Seen from the Back Mending a Sail and Boat 1938	Mandolin, Fruit Dish With Pears, Two Figs on a Table 1938
Greyhound 1938	Mythological Beast 1938
Face of the Great Cyclopean Cretin 1938	Philosopher Reclining 1938