History of Art: Salvador Dali

Art of the 20th Century

Art Styles in 20th century Art Map



	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 _______ appendix Illustrations: Biblia Sacrata, Marquis de Sade, Faust, The Art of Love, Don Quixote, Divine Comedy, Decameron, Casanova, Les Caprices de Goya

Paths to Immortality

1962-1989

Dali in front of the statue of Ernest Meissonier by Antonin Mercie(1895), 1971

Dali creating a bird in metal at Port Lligat in 1973

Dali in Figueras at the Pichot's house in October 1973

The Dali Memorial Theatre

What greater pleasure could there be for a patriotic Spanish painter who liked chocolate than to have his pictures (together with Fragonard's) reproduced on Marquise de Sevigne chocolate boxes and, during his lifetime, to have a Dali museum in his home town? When he walked through Figueras, Dali could admire the mesh-like byzantine cupola atop the town theatre, designed by Perez Pinero. Dali designed the museum that was installed in the building himself, working upwards from the ruins that remained after shelling in the Civil War. He designed even the tiniest details himself, from the loaves on the heads of fully-equipped divers outside to the toilets and the poster for the national lottery inside.

Arno Breker
Bust of Salvador Dali
1974

It is a kind of "Cave of Dali Baba". His works are displayed in haphazard fashion, without their titles (at his request). There are paintings, stereoscopic photographs, a bendy metal crucifix that stylistically matches Pinero's architecture, the famous rainy taxi, and much more beside. But the most arresting aspect of the museum is its success in affording an insight into Dali's mind. Thus there is a room that copies the face of Mae West, there are extremely classical studies, a nude by Bougereau, a picture by Fortuny, ceiling paintings by Dali, tiny and immense trompe l'oeil paintings in which Dali (as early as 1939) seems to have been poking fun in advance at his later photorealist disciples in America - all amidst stage sets and books he illustrated. It is a veritable Dali universe.

The Teatro Museo Dali in Figueras was opened on 28 September 1974. Along with Dali's own works, it exhibits paintings and sculptures by friends such as Ernst Fuchs, the Austrian artist, who donated a voluptuous figure of a woman. There is a bust of Dali by Arno Breker, the German artist who made his career during the Third Reich. There is work by Pichot, nephew of the painter and family friend who was a neighbour in Dali's boyhood and helped get the young Dali started in Paris. Le Nouveau Journal reported that Dali had opened his own museum in his home town of Figueras, where he had exhibited his very first pictures as a fifteen-year-old. The paper pointed out that only four letters had had to be changed to make the Teatro Municipal into the Teatro Museo Dali. (Dali observed that everything he did was theatrical, and that he could not have made a better choice.) Now aged seventy, Dali was fulfilling a lifelong wish. The reason he was able to convert the theatre into a Dalinian readymade was that it had been seriously damaged by a bomb in the Spanish Civil War. Architects Ros de Ramis and Bonaterra Matra, who had already designed the Picasso museum in Barcelona, took care to strip the immense semi-circle of the theatre of all that was unnecessary. The entire space was to become a Dalinian work of art, an exercise in dynamic idiosyncrasy. Perez Pihero devised the lightweight geodesic bubble above the building. Dali, who painted a composition of his own on the ceiling of the one-time foyer, said: "When I build, I always begin at the top." The ceiling painting showed Dali and Gala showering gold on Figueras. Dali added a semi-circular myrtle maze consisting of Gs (for Gala) intertwined. A sculptor named Damian designed the octagonal entrance doors adorned with 200,000 midnight blue glass balls. To this day the museum continues to evolve; but it is already a genuinely Dalinian building.

The patio of the Teatro Museo Dali in Figueras during rebuilding work, 1973

Dali in June 1973 while the former municipal
theatre of Figueras was being rebuilt
to become the Teatro Museo Dali

Dali outside the museum, in front of his memorial
to the Catalonian philosopher Francesco Pujols,
whom he greatly admired

Photomontage of the Shell of the Theatre in Figueras

Invitation to the opening of the
Teatro Museo Dali
on 28 September 1974

Perez Pinero's cupola for the Teatro Museo Dali,
with the lit Santa Maria tower behind it

Patio-Garden of the Dali Museum-Theatre in Figueras
1974

Patio of the Teatro-Museo Dali
1977

Dali is pointing his cane at the "Venus de Fuego",
a well-known Barcelona music hall dancer,
seen here in a bikini in the same pose as the bronze statue of "Queen Esther".
The statue was a gift to Dali from the Austrian artist Ernst Fushs.
Dali placed it on the Cadillac in parody of bonnet figurines

Views of the patio and cupola

Views of the patio and cupola

Views of the patio and cupola

Head (stair-way in the museum)
1977

DALI SAW THE THEATRE OF HIS HOME TOWN, BUILT IN THE mid-19TH CENTURY,
AS A NEO-PALLADIAN PIECE OF POMP. HENCE HIS NOTION OF TOPPING
THE FACADE WITH A ROW OF SYNTHETIC ART DECO DUMMIES

The walls of the old theatre were restored, and Dali placed specially designed sculptures in the niches

Mae West Room

This is a reconstruction of his famous Mae West image, as a genuine apartment

Puzzle including parts of the original set for the ballet "Labyrinth" and reproductions of "The Hallucinogenic Toreador"

Study for the Decoration of the Ceiling in Pubol
c. 1970

Sketch for a Ceiling of the Teatro-Museo Dali
1970

Ceiling of the Hall of Gala's Chateau at Pubol
1971

The Daughter of the West Wind
1972

Palace of the Winds (ceiling painting in the Teatro Museo Dali)
1972-73

Palace of the Winds
1972-73

Armchair with Landscape Painted for
Gala's Chateau at Pubol
1974

Ceiling of the "Palace of the Wind"
1973

The Palace of the Wind
1974

On 23 May 1973, Dali exhibited his first "chronohologram" at the Hotel Meurice in Paris. (Holos! Holos! Velazquez! Gdborf, and Polyeder. Basketball Players Metamorphosing into Angels) To Dali, it was the archetype of menace in painting, of metaphysical hyperrealism. It was with such concepts in mind that he created the museum in Figueras. It is worth adding that Dennis Gabor was an English physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1971 for his invention of holography. A hologram is an image created by using a laser to simulate the appearance of three-dimensionality. Dali himself described Polyeder, one of the very first holograms he made, as a holographic view of a room in the Teatro Museo Dali in Figueras. It shows a double portrait of Gala - the Angelus Gala; basketball players metamorphosing into angels, painted on a huge polyeder; and a globe on which Figueras in Spain and Cleveland in the U.S.A. are highlighted - the two towns which had museums devoted to the work of Dali at that date (before the establishment of the Dali museum at St. Petersburg, Florida).

With the help of architect Emilio Perez Pifiero, Dali transformed what had once been the Figueras theatre into a "kinetic Sainte Chapelle". There is a sense of movement about the museum. Those who visit it are continuously aware of the dynamics inherent in the architecture. The pictures, sculptures and objets d'art mark out the progress of the artist's career with an unmistakable climactic momentum. The museum presents a concise overview of Dali's work, and every exhibit highlights a fascinating facet. The exhibits emphasize topoi- "or rather, the beginning of all things:polytopoi, no longer conceivable since they are already in the fourth dimension." In Dali's theatrical museum, we are both recipients and actors (a modern concept of the museum), and enter into the psychological dynamics of the artist - dynamics that even outdistance the staggering accelerations of Einstein's new physics.

Holos! Holos! Velazquez! Gabor!
1972-1973

On 21 May 1973 Dali presented his first chronohologram
at a press conference at the Hotel Meurice

Polyhedron. Basketball Players Being Transformed into Angels
(Assembling a Hologram - the Central Element)
1972

Untitled (Stereoscopic Painting)
1972

The Sleeping Smoker (Stereoscopic painting)
1972-73

Study for the Commemoration of the First Cylindrical Hologram for Alice Cooper
1973

Dali from the Back Painting Gala from the Back Eternalized
by Six Virtual Corneas Provisionally Reflected in Six Real Mirrors (unfinished)
1972-73