Proceedings of Bridges 2014: Mathematics, Music, Art, Architecture, Culture Salvador Dalí and the Fourth Dimension Thomas F. Banchoff Mathematics Department Brown University Providence, IR 02912
[email protected] Abstract Salvador Dalí often used mathematical objects and ideas in his paintings and he enjoyed sharing ideas with mathematicians and scientists. This article describes a series of yearly meetings with Dalí starting in 1975, including discussions of “Corpus Hypercubus” and of his works in progress, especially his paintings featuring images from the Theory of Catastrophes of his friend René Thom. Introduction It was the Fourth Dimension that brought me into contact with Salvador Dalí in 1975 and the challenges of trying to visualize objects in the fourth dimension kept us in contact for a decade (Figure 1). During that decade, we met at least once a year, mostly in New York City in the early spring. He usually booked two suites in the St. Regis Hotel, one where he and his wife Gala resided and one that he used as a working studio. Each time he arrived in New York, he called us in Providence, Rhode Island and asked us to bring down whatever new things we were working on, and he wanted us to see what he was doing. Those meetings provided me with a unique opportunity to learn where this remarkable artist found the inspirations for some of his most mathematical paintings, and how he actually constructed them. Figure 1: Thomas Banchoff with Salvador Dalí at the St. Regis Hotel in New York City, 1975. 1 Banchoff As my colleague Charles Strauss said when we were first invited, “The worst we can get out of it is a good story” and indeed we ended up with a number of good stories.