A Sea of Stories
16 A Sea of Stories
A Sea of Stories
www.editorialmediterrania.com
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.