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Art of the 20th Century
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Art Styles
in 20th century Art Map
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The Mystical Manifesto
1946-1962
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Dali and Gala in
New York in 1947
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Dali with his
father in Cadaques in 1948
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Dali
and Gala in Port Lligat, August 1957
Dali
at the Bignou Gallery in New York in 1948
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For Dali, the atom bomb was the start of a new era. He
succumbed to mysticism - nuclear mysticism, as it were. The Hiroshima
explosion coincided with his own classicist explosion. In its
characteristically mischievous way, Art News commented: "The
possibility cannot be ruled out that Dali will be giving more attention to
the conscious realm from now on than to the unconscious. If this does
indeed be the case, nothing need prevent him from becoming the greatest
academic painter of the twentieth century."
After the Second World War, Dali did not immediately
return to Europe. The change from the psychoanalysis Dali to the nuclear
physics Dali was making heavy demands on him. In his Mystical
Manifesto, Dali described the change that was occurring in him at that
time in the following terms: "The explosion of the atom bomb on 6 August
1945 sent a seismic shock through me. Since then, the atom has been
central to my thinking. Many of the scenes I have painted in this period
express the immense fear that took hold of me when I heard of the
explosion of the bomb. I used my paranoiac-critical method to analyse the
world. I want to perceive and understand the hidden powers and laws of
things, in order to have them in my power.
A brilliant inspiration shows me that I
have an unusual weapon at my disposal to help me penetrate to the core of
reality: mysticism -that is to say, the profound intuitive knowledge of
what is, direct communication with the all, absolute vision by the grace
of Truth, by the grace of God. More powerful than cyclotrons and
cybernetic calculators, I can penetrate to the mysteries of the real in a
moment... Mine the ecstasy! I cry.
The ecstasy of God and Man. Mine
the perfection, the beauty, that I might gaze into its eyes! Death to
academicism, to the bureaucratic rules of art, to decorative plagiarism,
to the witless incoherence of African art! Mine, St. Teresa of Avila!...
In this state of intense prophecy it became clear to me that means of
pictorial expression achieved their greatest perfection and effectiveness
in the Renaissance, and that the decadence of modern painting was a
consequence of scepticism and lack of faith, the result of mechanistic
materialism. By reviving Spanish mysticism I, Dali, shall use my work to
demonstrate the unity of the universe, by showing the spirituality of all
substance."
This avowal of mysticism was consistent enough as a
product of Dali's experience to date. And he was to be as good as his
word; from that time on, until the end of his life, he applied mystical
principles to his work. The paintings he would create in the years ahead
often met with a mixed response; but among them are numerous masterpieces.
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"The Cosmic Dali". From a series of photographs by
Philippe Halsman, designed by Dali, 1948
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"The Cosmic Dali". From a series of photographs by
Philippe Halsman, designed by Dali, 1948
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Portrait of Picasso
1947
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Portrait of Mrs. Mary Sigall
1948
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The second subversive force that filled the
"ex-Surrealist" (who in fact remained more of a Surrealist than ever) was
- by his own account - the ability to draw. Dali discussed this in 50
Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship, which was a regular treatise on the
art of painting and which he characteristically praised by saying:
"Reading it, I really learnt to paint almost as well as Zurbaran." In the
treatise he noted that people now knew how to make an atom bomb, but "no
one knows what the mysterious juice was made of, the painting medium into
which the brothers van Eyck or Vermeer van Delft dipped their
brushes." He went on to provide his own recipes. First he dealt with
questions of equipment: five different brushes to suit five different
kinds of movement. Then he turned to optics, the binocular vision he was
later to use (there was method in his supposed madness), and examined the
astounding opportunities open to stereoscopic painting. Thanks to
"much-despised sensory perception", he was able fully to adapt this way of
seeing to his "system" of steered dreaming. One of his aphorisms declared:
"When you are painting, always think of something else."
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Feather Equilibrium (Interatomic Balance of a Swan's Feather)
1947
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The advice was both mischievous and (how Dali loved the
hierarchical note!) authoritative. He then turned to the central, unique,
dreamlike impulse of art, "to take oneself ad absurdum by hypnotically
questioning one's own sense of perception". He wrote of the "three eyes",
which were fundamentally nothing but a re-statement of the theory of the
third eye which is so common among visionaries everywhere. In his 50
Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship Dali advised young artists not merely
to see, but "to see metaphysically". He also provided a host of technical
hints which he had learnt through years of practice and by patient study
of writing on art, among them Cennino Cennini's IlLibro dell'arte
(which had itself been inspired by the writings of a monk, Theophilus
Presbyter). Cennini's work had been the treatise on the art of
painting since the 14th century. Next came Luca Pacioli and the masters of
the Italian Renaissance, whose secrets Dali had rediscovered.
Having established the direction and preconditions of
his current evolution, Dali felt free to return to Europe at last. On 21
July 1948, he and Gala arrived at Le Havre. They immediately travelled on
to Port Lligat. There Dali promptly set to work on two commissions he had
accepted, designing the sets and costumes
for Peter Brook's production
of Richard Strauss's Salome and Luchino Visconti's of Shakespeare's
As You Like It.
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The Impossible Model (drawing for "50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship")
1947
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Drawing for "50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship"
1947
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Drawing for "50 Secrets of
Magic Craftsmanship"
1947
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Drawing for "50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship"
1947
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Untitled - Illustration for "50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship"
1948
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Design for "Destino"
1947
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Design for "Destino"
1947
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Drawing for Disney's "Destino"
1947
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Above all, Dali was itching to retun to painting, and to
establish the new Dali approach as swiftly as possible. It was very
important for him now to adopt his new religious themes; this was
something that many of his critics who had no special interest in
spiritual matters were unable to understand. He was obsessed with the
absolute, and the classical iconography of Christianity afforded a means
of exploring different artistic territory: the territory of the sacred.
Great painters had always wanted to paint a crucifixion. Now the Madonna,
Christ, the Last Supper and other central images were to grant him access
to that heaven he was already seeking at the close of
The Secret Life of Salvador Dali.
While still in New York, Dali had painted The
Temptation of Saint Anthony. At that time he had
extensive contacts in the film and theatre world. After working on
Hitchcock's Spellbound, he decided to enter Albert Levin's
competition for material for a film version of Guy de Maupassant's Bel
Ami. Max Ernst 'won the competition, and his picture was the only
colour shot in the entire black-and-white film; but even if Dali's
Temptation of Saint Anthony did not win, the picture is still of great
significance in Dali's 'work. It marks the point in his creative life when
intermediates between heaven and earth become important
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The Temptation of Saint Anthony
1946
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The Elephants
1948
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Drawing for the programme for the ballet "As You Like It" after
Shakespeare's comedy
1948
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- in this case, the elephants with their spindly legs.
They anticipate the theme of levitation, which was subsequently to be
fully developed in his "mystical-corpuscular" paintings. The temptation
that confronts the saint takes various forms: a rearing horse, symbolic of
power, but also (here) of the Fountain of Desire on its back, topped with
a naked woman, another bearing a Roman obelisk inspired by Bernini, the
others with a building reminiscent of the Palladium and a phallic tower.
In the distant clouds we glimpse parts of El Escorial, representing
spiritual and temporal order.
Dali decided that henceforth he would devote himself to
his threefold synthesis of classicism, the spiritual, and concern with the
nuclear age. "My ideas "were ingenious and abundant. I decided to turn my
attention to the pictorial solution of quantum theory, and invented
quantum realism in order to master gravity... I painted Leda Atomica, a celebration of Gala, the goddess of my metaphysics,
and succeeded in creating 'floating space'; and then Dali at the Age
of Six, When He Thought He Was a Girl Lifting with Extreme Precaution the
Skin of the Sea to Oberserve a Dog Sleeping in the Shade of the Water - a picture in which the personae and objects seem like
foreign bodies in space. I visually dematenahzed matter; then I
spiritualized it in order to be able to create energy. The object is a
living being, thanks to the energy that it contains and radiates, thanks
to the density of the matter it consists of. Every one of my subjects is
also a mineral with its place in the pulsebeat of the world, and a living
piece of uranium. In my paintings I have succeeded in giving space
substance. My
Cupola Consisting of Twisted Carts is the most magnificent demonstration of my mystical way
of seeing. I maintain with full conviction that heaven is located in the
breast of the faithful. My mysticism is not only religious, but also
nuclear and hallucinogenic. I discovered the selfsame truth in gold, in
painting soft watches, and in my visions of the railway station at
Perpignan. I believe in magic and in my fate."
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Leda Atomica
1949
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Studies for the air centers and soft morphologies of "Leda Atomica"
1947
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Study for Leda Atomica
1947
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Leda Atomica (first unfinished version)
1948
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Dali at the Age
of Six, When He Thought He Was a
Girl Lifting with Extreme Precaution the
Skin of the Sea
to Oberserve a Dog Sleeping in the Shade of the Water
1950
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