Art of the 20th Century



 

Art Styles in 20th century Art Map



 

If You Act the Genius, You Will Be One!




1910 - 1928

 

Self-portrait
 1921

Dandyism
 

The dandy must live and sleep in front of the mirror." Thus Baudelaire. The pronouncement might have been the motto of Salvador Dali's entire life. Soon a mirror was not enough, and by his early manhood Dali needed the attention of adulation of all; the thought that he might go unnoticed became unbearable to him. On his first visit to New York, at Christmas time, he walked the streets ringing a bell to ensure people would register his presence. In this self-infatuation he remained true to himself till the very end, and during his final days in hospital in Barcelona delighted in following the television bulletins on the state of his health, learning from them whether he was well or was shortly to die...

Dali entered the San Fernando Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Graphic Arts in Madrid, and quickly earned the reputation of a madman among his fellow students. It was not difficult to amaze them, presumably, if he spent three full hours putting his hair up in a net and then coiffing it with the picture varnish painters use for treating canvases. (This had the unpleasant side-effect that he had to immerse his head in a tub of turpentine to remove the varnish afterwards.) Dali was out to get attention, even if it meant making his hair look like shellac; people turned to look as he went by, and that was enough to make him happy. "Instead of inspiring sarcasm, I now released an admiration and intimidated curiosity. On coming out from the School of Fine Arts I ecstatically savored the homage of that street, so intelligent and full of wit, in which spring was already seething. I stopped to buy a very flexible bamboo cane from whose leather-sheathed handle dangled a shiny strap of folded leather. After which, sitting down at the terrace of the Cafe-Bar Regina, and drinking three Conzano vermouths with olives, I contemplated in the compact crowd of my spectators passing before me the whole future that the anonymous public already held in reserve for me [...]" Dali the narcissist was in the process of re-inventing himself as a Wagnerian dandy, a Parsifal: "My 'Parsifal' required that I make myself very handsome. I took a long shower, gave myself a very close shave, glued down my hair as much as possible, putting paint-varnish on it again! I knew the serious inconveniences of this, and even that it would spoil my hair a little, but my Parsifal was worth this sacrifice, and more! I applied powdered lead around my eyes; this made me look particularly devastating in the 'Argentine tango' manner. Rudolph Valentino seemed to me at that time to be the prototype of masculine beauty."

 

Dali (bottom left) at the Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid
about 1922-23

 

Self-portrait
1921

Portrait of Grandmother Ana Sewing
c. 1921

Two Gypsy Lads
1920-1921
 

Portrait of Jaume Miravidles
as a Footballer
1921-1922
 

Gaolbird Salvador
 

Dali was busy exploring his own potential. He had discovered Cubism, Futurism and Purism. He was familiar with the work of Picasso, Juan Gris, Severini, Morandi, dc Chirico and Carra; and his personal friends included Luis Bunuel and Federico Garcia Lorca. Lorca, the leading spirit of an avant-garde group and a brilliant young man, "darkened the virginal originality of [Dali's] spirit". The Andalusian poked fun at the Catalonian's overdone classicism - but only until another fellow student, Pepin Bello, discovered Dali's Cubist paintings in his studio. Dali continued to paint portraits and landscapes, but he also spent a good deal of time in bars and night clubs with friends, tasting low and high life alike and rapidly grasping the power of snobbery.

Presently Dali became involved, as he had at school, in a political controversy. Students at the Academy protested at the election of a professor they considered unfit for the position, and Dali, who had played a key role in the creation of their mood, was suspended for a year. He returned to Figueras, where the Civil Guard promptly arrested him and put him in prison. It was a period of widespread revolutionary unrest in Spain; and Dali was transferred to the prison at Gerona before finally being set free in the absence of adequate charges. "This period of imprisonment," wrote Dali, "pleased me immeasurably. I was naturally among the political prisoners, all of whose friends, co-religionists and relatives showered us with gifts. Every evening we drank very bad native champagne [...] I was happy, for I had just rediscovered the landscape of the Ampurdan plain, and it was while looking at this landscape through the bars of the prison of Gerona that I came to realize that at last I had succeeded in aging a little. This was all I wished [...] It was fine to feel a little older, and to be within a 'real prison' for the first time. And finally, as long as it lasted, it would be possible for me to let my mind relax." What Dali did not mention in the Secret Life was that political motives connected with intrigues against his father were involved in his imprisonment. Be that as it may, after thirty-five days in prison, the youthful gaolbird was released, apparently delighted with everything. After all, could he not now claim the status of the politically persecuted?

 

Culinary Delirium
 

The most striking obsessions visible in Dali's work from the very start were closely connected with his Catalonian background. The Catalomans are popularly said to believe only in things they can eat, smell, touch, hear or see. And Dali himself repeatedly avowed, "I know what I'm eating. I don't know what I'm doing." In similar mood he liked to quote the comparison his fellow Catalonian, the philosopher Francesco Pujols, had made, between the spread of the Catholic church and the fattening of a pig for the slaughter and subsequent eating. Adapting the words of St. Augustine, Dali furthermore remarked that "Christ is like cheese, or, to be more precise, like mountains of cheese." This obsession with food recurs in his paintings, in soft watch works such as The Persistence of Memory, which originated in a dream of runny Camembert; in the many paintings of fried eggs; and in Anthropomorphic Bread. Dali's still lifes of this period, the early 1920s, seem to anticipate the obsessional works to come. But, equally, if the Secret Life can be believed, his fixation on food was one that went back to childhood, and which had

even led to his being bannedfrom the kitchen as a boy. "I would stand around for hours," he recalled, "my mouth watering, till I saw my chance to sneak into that place of enchantment; and while the maids stood by and screamed with delight I would snatch a piece of raw meat or a broiled mushroom on which I would nearly choke [...]" Dali's culinary delirium, like so much else in his life, was always inseparable from sensual and erotic thrills. As he continues, in fact, he supplies us with an important key to the understanding of his mind and art: "Behind the partly open kitchen door I would hear the scurrying of those bestial women with red hands; I would catch glimpses of their heavy rumps and their hair straggling like manes; and out of the heat and confusion that rose from the conglomeration of sweaty women, scattered grapes, boiling oil, fur plucked from rabbits' armpits, scissors spattered with mayonnaise, kidneys, and the warble of canaries - out of that whole conglomeration the imponderable and inaugural fragrance of the forthcoming meal was wafted to me, mingled with a kind of acrid horse smell. The beaten white of egg, caught by a ray of sunlight cutting through a whirl of smoke and flies, glistened exactly like froth forming at the mouths of panting horses rolling in the dust and being bloodily whipped to bring them to their feet. As I said, I was a spoiled child."

 

Still Life
1922

Still Life (Pulpo y scorpa)
1922

Still Life - Fish
1922

Jug
1922-1923

Cubist Composition - Still Life with Guitar
1922
 

Cabaret Scene
1922