Dali paranoiac critical

Reviewed by Lionel Klee

Salvador Dali was born at Figueras, in the Spanish province of Catalonia on May 11, 1904. He was the second son of a well-to-do, lawyer, and mother to whom he was devoted died when he reached the age of 20. Even by his own account he was a spoilt child, enjoying an unrestricted youth including indulgent governesses and eccentric art masters. He was educated in the religious atmosphere of the Marist Brothers' school at Figueras. At the School of Fine Arts in Madrid where he has been described as having a brilliant personality while delving in the field of psycho-analysis, he was twice expelled, first for a student protest against the election of a teacher and finally in 1926 for refusal to take an examination.

Dali went to Paris in 1928 and was introduced to surrealist circles by Miro. His first work was in fact collaboration in the making of a film which caused a sensation when it was first shown in 1929. In the same year he held his first exhibition in Paris and at the same time gained the affections of the wife of Paul Eluard, Gala, to whom he was officially married in 1958. He contributed to international surrealist exhibitions in 1936 and 1938 in London, New York and Paris but an alleged sympathy with the dictatorships of the time alienated him from the others. He has continued to exhibit and has continued to gain sensational recognition and m 1942 he published his autobiography - The Secret Life of Salvador Dali.

'The Oecumenical Council'

'Paranoic Critical Solitude'

The words surrealism and surreallist were first coined by Guillaume Appolinaire in 1977, but this was by no means the beginning of this form of expression; there were surrealists before surrealism, both in literature and in art. Principal among the forerunners was Hieronymus Bosch, the great fantasist of the Netherlands in the late fifteenth century. He is best known for his works The Temptation of St Anthony and The Garden of Delights. Before surrealism took shape, the cubist and futurist movements had made their powerful impact and the phenomenon known as Dada intervened. The Dadaists were so revolted by the cruelty of the war that they declared western civilisation bankrupt from beginning to end. They felt they must start from scratch, respecting only one law, the law of chance and only one reality, that of their own imaginations.

The Dada movement manifested itself after 1916 to a comprehensive definance of everything attached to the established order. The restricting anti-framework of the Dada movement led to a search for a new school of expression - the surrealist movement. There was a stage at which Dada and surrealism were, in personnel indistinguishable from one another. However, as artists overcame the automatism required by the Dada school, a new movement emerged that was classed as surrealism. Contributors to the surrealistic movement have included Picasso, Rousseau, Chagall, de Chirico, Duchamp, Klee, Ernst, Miro, Tanguy, Magritte, Delvaux and Dali.

Dali brought a fresh spurt of energy into surrealism from his first association with the movement in 1929. He revived the opposition to the established order that had been evident in surrealism's Dadaist beginnings and revived the shock tactics that had been losing impetus. He coined the term 'paranoiac-critical' to apply to the conscious derangement method behind his work. He challenged he would paint in the manner of Art Nouveaux utilising a Pre-Raphaelite style at a time when neither were held in esteem.

One of the most important features that distinguishes Dali among his contemporary surrealists is his portrayal of the common everyday vocabulary of everyday 20th century life - telephones, clockfaces, cupboards, beaches. On this basis it has been said that what distinguishes Dali's work above everything else is the hallucinatory naturalism of his Renaissance style. For the landscapes of Ernst, Tanguy and Magritte describe impossible or symbolic worlds - the events within them have occurred, but in a metaphorical sense.

Dali in his autobiography wrote 'The specialised sciences of our times are concentrating on the study of the three constants of life: the sexual instinct, the sentiment of death, and the anguish of space-time.'

'Crucifixion'

Dali published by Pan/Ballantine and edited by David Larkin illustrates in a collection of 40 colour plates showing both full works and detail, some of the works by Dali and includes an extremely well written and comprehensive introduction by J G Ballard. (It is available at Sweet and Maxwells for $5.50