A sea of Stories Dalí

A Sea of Stories

16 A Sea of Stories

A Sea of Stories

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Dalí

Text

Jordi Nopca Illustrations

Albert Arrayás

Dalí

W

e see a man with slickly

“Would it be the sort of exploit that might

gaze and a devilish moustache.

newspaper?” “Yes.”

groomed hair, a penetrating

Covering the entire face of this stranger are

printed letters spelling the word ARTIST. The image is in black and white—it is from the 1950s—and when the camera zooms

out we hear a burst of applause and see the man is on a television set, in the middle of

an American game show. The mystery guest can only respond “Yes” or “No” to the four blindfolded contestants who ask questions to try and guess who it is.

“Are you associated with any of the arts?”

“Yes.”

“Are you a performer?” “Yes.”

“Would you be considered a leading man?”

“Yes.”

(A low smattering of chuckles from the audience.)

possibly reach the front page of a “Do you have anything to do with sports or any form of athletic endeavour?” “Yes!” (Now most of the audience laughs.)

“Do you use anything in your hands for your job?” “Yes.”

“Would you be considered a writer?” “Yes!” (The audience laughs even more.)

“Does he write humorously?” “Yes and no.”

(The audience can’t stop laughing.)

Three minutes later a female contestant ventures to speak her suspicion aloud.

“Are you Salvador Dalí?” “Yes.”

The laughter is replaced by enthusiastic applause. Dalí is an artist, he is a star, he is a

writer, he is a character. Everything he does turns to gold or to money; he is the King Midas of genius.

Salvador Dalí was born in Figueres in 1904,

Dalí’s talent began to blossom at the

the son of another Salvador, a strict and

Figueres School for Drawing. His teachers

would later encourage him to follow the

Núñez, who impressed upon him the need

pragmatic notary public, and Felipa, who

treacherous path of artistic creation. The Dalí family often visited their neighbours, who

included the artist Ramon Pitxot and Juan to dominate drawing.

“Painting has never been exclusively

lived on the floor below them and had a living

done with ideas,” he used to say. “Painting

the life that Salvador wanted when he was

On Núñez’s recommendation, Dalí went

room filled with objects. The room represented

was and is done with the hands.”

older: baroque, luxurious and full of anecdotes.

to Madrid shortly after turning 18. During

and with yet another Salvador, the ghost of

San Fernando, he annoyed the professors a

There he played with his sister Anna Maria the brother who had died nine months before his birth.

the entrance exam at the Royal Academy of

little by giving them a much smaller

By blending the diurnal and nocturnal

drawing than was required. Despite this, he

worlds, artists began to fabricate a new

years, staying in a room at the Students’

experimented a little with Cubism before

passed and he lived in the capital for some

Residence. He became friends with the poet

Federico García Lorca, the filmmaker Luis Buñuel and a man who would be an eternal

pictorial style. Based on Realism, it landing on the curious and mysterious planet called Surrealism.

Imagine a beating heart with stones,

inspiration until he died at the grand old

faces, a statue’s hand and a bird’s head

Academy Dalí behaved like a timid,

a girl with “knees of smoke”: Surrealism.

age of 103, José “Pepín” Bello. At the Royal inexpressive silent movie star, but when he left he became a much more likeable and enthusiastic young man.

pouring out of it: that is Surrealism. Picture Envision a melted clock hanging from a tree branch: Sur-realism. Overcoming realism.

When he was young, Dalí used to shout,

The atmosphere in Paris, which Dalí

“We have to paint our dreams!”

visited for the first time when he was 22,

the Alt Empordà in northern Catalonia,

hallucinatory poems where fish were being

His reveries shared a common landscape:

bordering France. The beach and bay at Cadaqués. Portlligat. The clean skies after a few hours of the Tramuntana wind.

helped with his style transformation. His

chased by a round grape gave rise to disturbing painted images. Dalí began to

diversify: together with Luis Buñuel he wrote the script for Andalusian Dog, a film

where the world became more and more strange after the initial image of a razor blade approaching a woman’s eye. It is a

monstrous, wicked image. Secret thoughts

and hidden desires inundate Buñuel and Dalí’s collaboration, homage to one of the

most revealing and controversial currents

of thought at the time: the psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud.

Then, one summer’s day in 1929, Gala

Dalí’s father did not take kindly to the

appeared. She fascinated Dalí from the

fact his son was having a relationship with

in Cadaqués with her husband, the poet

provocative works was a black-and-white

moment she moved into the Hotel Miramar Paul Éluard, and their daughter Cécile. The

artist fell in love with the woman ten years his senior and she changed his life. She soon began to appear in his paintings: his love

was depicted in figures with closed eyes, red entrails and rocky constellations, where

melted clocks kept company with lions and insects.

a married woman. One of the artist’s most

sketch which portrayed Jesus’ profile

overwritten with the words “Sometimes, out of sheer pleasure, I spit on my mother’s portrait.” The notary public, a widower for nearly a decade, saw the work as an unforgiveable provocation.