Salvador — Liquid Desire The Sunday Age 2009

Real lives RayMOND Gill

Archeological reminiscence of Millet’s Angelus (c. 1934) oil on wood panel 31.8 x 39.4 cm Salvador Dali The Salvador Dali Museum, St Petersburg, Fl. Worldwide rights: © Salvador Dali, Fundacio Gala- Salvador Dali, VISCOPY 2009.

Inside the Spanish heartland

It’s fitting that the world’s most comprehensive Masterpieces Liquid Desire exhibition. rust-coloured walls are studded with The idea for a Dali museum in plaster loaves of country bread. collection of Salvador Dali artworks is held his home town was announced by Once inside, visitors discover Dali’s where he spent most of his life. Dali himself in 1961. He had his art collection of his paintings, sculptures, collection to offer, but not the money to “puzzle pictures”, dazzlingly creepy restore his choice for its location — the jewellery designs, holograms, film, he prosperous Catalan business, much as it did when Dali old theatre in Figueres, which had been costumes and interactive objects. There town of Figueres sits on a was born there in 1904. In the past 35 damaged in the Spanish Civil War in are also rooms devoted to a few works by verdant plain known as the years it has also prospered from having 1939. Money from a war reparations artists Dali collected, including Spanish “Emporda”, 20 kilometres the Teatre-Museu Dali (Dali Theatre- fund (significantly, not the arts ministry) Renaissance painter El Greco and south of the Pyrenees and Museum) in the centre of the town. allowed Dali to oversee the restoration French surrealist Marcel Duchamp. T the French border, and is home to Each year about 1 million visitors tour and design of the museum, which was These and Dali’s works are shown in about 43,000 people. The rugged and the former municipal theatre where, in to be theatrical and truly “Dalinian”. a maze-like complex, which also includes rocky , location of the Dali 1919, the 15-year-old prodigy held his “I want my museum to be like a more conventional gallery spaces showing family summer house in the village first exhibition of paintings. single block, a labyrinth, a great surrealist Dali’s works from childhood through to of Cadaques, is on the coast about 40 Few artists have entire museums object. It will be a totally theatrical his last pieces from the late 1970s. kilometres north-east, as is the tiny inlet devoted to their work. Dali’s enduring museum. The people who come to see At the centre of the museum is a of , where the artist Salvador popularity is evident in the many it will leave with the sensation of having open courtyard dominated by a 1941 Dali kept a house from 1930 until his unofficial museums across the world had a theatrical dream,” he promised. black Cadillac known as the “Rainy death in 1989. About 40 kilometres (see story page 13), but there are two When Dali opened the museum, Taxi” because water showers down on to south of Figueres is the small town of “official” institutions devoted to his in 1974, the dream had become reality. mannequins inside the car when visitors Pubol, where Dali bought and restored work, the Dali Museum in St Petersburg, From a distance visitors see a glass dome deposit one-euro coins. a castle for his wife, Gala. Barcelona, Florida (see story page 12), and the Dali created to look like an insect’s eye. The The courtyard leads to the old the capital of , is about 110 Theatre-Museum in Figueres. building’s pediments are topped by giant theatre’s original stage, where Dali’s kilometres south. Both are loaning about 100 white eggs, and gold statues with gilded body was interred in 1989, and on to Figueres owes much of its good works each for the National Gallery baguettes atop their heads stand guard a “puzzle picture” that reveals itself as fortune to agriculture and light of Victoria’s Melbourne Winter over the plaza below. The museum’s Continued page 10 10 Salvador Dali — Liquid Desire The Sunday Age 2009

1 2 3

4

Left: 1. The Casa-Museu Right: Portrait of my Salvador Dali, Portrait of the sister 1925 Portlligat, seen from cellist Ricard oil on canvas the beach. Pichot 1920 92.0 x 65.0 cm 2. The Teatre-Museu oil on canvas Salvador Dali Dali, viewed from 61.5 x 50.0 cm Fundacio Gala- Placa Gala-Salvador Salvador Dali Salvador Dali, Dali, Figueres. Fundacio Gala- Figueres. 3. Torre Galatea Salvador Dali, Dali Bequest annex of the Teatre- Figueres. © Salvador Dali, Museu Dali, Figueres. © Salvador Dali, Fundacio Gala- 4. Inner courtyard of Fundacio Gala- Salvador Dali, the Castell Gala Dali, Salvador Dali, VISCOPY 2009. Pubol. VISCOPY 2009. PICTUREs: Jean- pierre Chabrol

From page 8 Dalinian Studies and the Gala-Salvador It opened the Portlligat and Pubol Gala’s 11th-century castle, known as a portrait of Abraham Lincoln when Dali Foundation. houses to the public in the mid-1990s, the Castell Gala Dali (Gala Dali Castle) at viewed through a telescope. There is The foundation was set up in 1983 by bringing an additional 350,000 visitors a Pubol, is where she lived alone from the also the Mae West Room, where objects Dali with an ambit that could only have year to the region. Both house museums late 1970s until her death in 1982. Here, including a sofa and curtains comprise a been conceived by him. Its immodest offer intimate insights into the couple’s in ornate Dali-designed splendour, 3-D image of the actress’s face. mission statement is to “promote, foster, lives and show how they were certainly Gala entertained her husband and her Dali was so involved in the museum explain, give prestige, protect, defend extraordinary, but also very ordinary. young lovers. The castle today remains that after Gala’s death in 1982 he moved in , and the rest of the world, The Portlligat house is a series much as the superstitious Gala left into an apartment within the museum. the artistic intellectual oeuvre of the of fishermen’s huts that Dali began it. There is her “throne room”, her Sometimes he’d take his daily siesta in painter ... and the universal recognition acquiring in 1930 and gradually sybaritic bedroom, and the crypt in the one of its galleries, furnished with a snail- of the genius of his contribution to the connected into one villa, which snakes cellar where she is buried, alone, next shaped bed, and had to be awakened by fine arts, culture and contemporary along and up the beachfront. The house to the empty tomb meant for Dali. He’d guards when visitors approached. thought”. was his main Spanish home when he planned to be buried there but changed The museum’s chief curator, Montse On Dali’s death in 1989 the and Gala returned from self- imposed his mind after she died and was laid to Aguer i Teixidor, who is co-curating foundation was bequeathed his and exile in the US in 1948. rest instead in the Theatre-Museum. A the NGV’s Liquid Desire exhibition, Gala’s art collection, their two homes at Once it was a magnet for Dali’s gallery has since been installed showing worked in the museum when Dali was Portlligat and Pubol, and most of their friends and hangers-on. But now only a selection of her designer gowns. still resident but ailing. “I read him personal effects. (The couple’s only small groups of visitors are admitted to The house’s utilitarian features, the newspapers. He was interested in heir was Gala’s daughter from her first the house at 10-minute intervals to make such as bathroom and kitchen, are science so I read him a A Brief History of marriage to the French painter Paul their way safely through the narrow also accessible, but perhaps nothing Time, by Stephen Hawking,” she says. Eluard, Cecile, who was estranged from white-washed warren. more reveals Gala’s Norma Desmond- As with most who knew Dali well, her mother and only wanted to keep The house has some extraordinary like final years than the Cadillac still Aguer recalls that in private the artist Gala’s library.) features, including a found object parked in the garage. Her driver would was “very polite and not demanding The foundation administers Dali’s sculpture titled Christ of the Rubbish Tip, transport her and Dali from Pubol to and not a big ego”. But when the media copyright, organises exhibitions with and the views across the bay that would Portlligat along the scenic coast that came calling, it was time, he would say, other museums, authenticates and be familiar from many of his paintings. informed so much his life’s works. But to put on his “Dali uniform”. acquires Dali works, and operates an Visitors can also see his workman-like outside the garage still stands the orange Aguer is one of the museum’s exhaustive archive. Occasionally it is studio, a cellar where his paints and Datsun 180B station wagon that served 90 staff who oversee this 4000-piece called upon to answer those who claim brushes are still stored, and a wall as their more practical daily runabout. collection of works in the complex of to be Dali’s heirs, although none so far covered with press clippings and Dali Raymond Gill is chief arts writer buildings that also houses the Centre for have proved authentic. pictured with famous identities. at The Age 12 Salvador Dali — Liquid Desire The Sunday Age 2009 Magnificent obsession

In St Petersburg, Florida, A. Reynolds and Eleanor Morse gathered one of the world’s best collections of Dali art.

n the 1920s in Europe, arts patrons were often as exotic and A lot of the major adventurous as the artists they supported. The stupendously rich museums didn’t want and glamorous French couple all that Dali. Many I Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles had given Luis Bunuel a million francs people thought of him to make his filmL’Age d’Or. So when, as a charlatan. in 1930, Salvador Dali asked them JOAN KROPF, Dali Museum for 29,000 francs so he could buy a fisherman’s hut at Portlligat, near Morses from buying them. Cadaques, it was not only a trifle to them The Morses’ Dali collection grew but also a wise investment, because its to become the biggest outside Spain. setting was an inspiration for Dali’s art About half the works in the National until his death in 1989. Gallery of Victoria’s Liquid Desire show For most of his career, Dali’s wife, come from the Dali Museum in St Gala, expertly handled the genuine Petersburg, Florida, which was given the collectors and fashionable swells who Morse collection in 1982. The museum, wanted his creations. Such was the which attracts about 200,000 visitors a demand for Dali’s works in the 1930s year, is moving into a $US35 million that she instigated a collectors’ “zodiac”, purpose-built facility to accommodate in which 12 well-heeled patrons held the interest in Dali. Its 2140-piece a lottery each month, with the winner collection includes 96 of his oil paintings allowed to buy a new Dali artwork. and eight large-scale master works. By the end of the couple’s self- The Dali museum in Figueres has imposed eight-year European a larger, more extensive collection, but exile in the US in 1948, however, St Petersburg owns some of his best- fashionable and rich patrons had quality early works, when the young moved on from and were artist was influenced by impressionism smitten by the shock of the new and painters such as Matisse and abstract expressionism. Dali had been Picasso (who knew Dali but was 23 years working more in a field of commercial older than him). surrealism in America — Hollywood, Particularly important works coming window displays, fabrics, magazines to Melbourne from St Petersburg — and he had become better known for include Memory of Child-Woman (1932), his personality than for his art. which took Dali two years to paint; Girl’s It was fortuitous that a Cleveland Back (1926), and collector introduced Albert Reynolds (1929). Morse and his wife Eleanor to the Dalis The Morses opened their first Dali at their New York digs at the St Regis museum in Cleveland in 1971, when Hotel in 1942. their collection outgrew their house. The Morses might have been very When their still-growing collection rich but they were as far removed from eclipsed that facility in the late 1970s, Charles and Marie-Laure de Noailles as they tried to give it to some prestigious Ohio is from the Cote d’Azur. Reynolds US galleries, all of which declined. was from Colorado “old money”, made It was an unfashionable time for from silver mines, but he’d made his Dali’s art, says Joan R. Kropf, deputy Top: Salvador Dali with Eleanor and own fortune in plastic mouldings. They director at the St Petersburg Dali A. Reynolds Morse in Portlligat, 1959. lived well but plainly in Cleveland and Museum, who also worked with the PICTURE: ALAMY IMAGES were not art speculators, or interested Morses at the Cleveland museum. “A lot Above: Salvador Dali Museum, St Petersburg, in the glamour and notoriety that of the major museums didn’t want all Florida. surrounded Dali. They loved Dali’s that Dali. Many people thought of him PIcture: Garry Sommerfeld landscapes, however, and developed an as a charlatan.” interest in his surrealism, buying his After a story appeared in The Wall Girl’s back 1926 paintings over a 45-year period. They Street Journal headed “US art world bought as he produced and so helped dillydallies over Dali”, a St Petersburg oil on wood panel fund his forays into new areas such lawyer talked city leaders into offering 32.0 x 27.0 cm Salvador Dali as nuclear mysticism and interest in a warehouse to the Morses to house the The Salvador Dali Museum, St Petersburg, Fl. science and holograms. collection. Worldwide rights: © Salvador Dali, Fundacio The Morses also sought out his early A. Reynolds Morse died in 2000 and Gala-Salvador Dali, VISCOPY 2009. works before surrealism, which irritated Eleanor Morse lives in St Petersburg. In the US: © Salvador Dali Museum Inc, Dali and Gala, who tried to dissuade the RAYMOND GILL St Petersburg, Fl, VISCOPY 2009. 2009 The Sunday Age Salvador Dali — Liquid Desire 13

Lobster telephone (Aphrodisiac telephone) 1936 painted plaster, Surreal or fake? telephone 18.0 x 30.5 x 12.5 cm Salvador Dali The Dali Foundation is working to control the extending National Gallery of his Australia, Canberra. ‘inspired-by-Dali’ industry. Portlligat Purchased 1994. house, and © Salvador Dali, here are two Such is the allure of his name on keeping up his Fundacio Gala- comprehensive, scholarly worldwide, however, that there are residences at the St Regis Salvador Dali, VISCOPY 2009. museums in the world many commercial and unofficial Dali Hotel in New York and Le Meurice devoted to Salvador Dali. galleries variously calling themselves Hotel in . For quick money he The biggest is in Figueres, “museums”, “spaces” and “universes”. would agree to produce a limited T Spain, his home town, where his own A Dali show came through Melbourne edition of prints but he often collection of 4000 works is shown in 2003, setting up in a shopping centre. ran late with his images at the Dali Theatre-Museum, which The Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation, and developed the habit he designed. The other is the Morse based in Figueres, manages copyrights, of signing blank sheets of collection, housed in the Dali Museum trademarks and the moral rights of paper. in the small town of St Petersburg, most Dali works, including those in It’s been estimated Florida. St Petersburg. But it does not own all he signed 40,000 to 60,000 A few important Dali works are held copyrights. There are many works, of these blanks, creating a by private collectors and prestigious particularly from the 1970s, which are minor industry of Dali graphics museums in , Rotterdam, Paris, considered “not serious”, for which Dali in the 1970s and ’80s. These can’t be Dali museums and making them London and New York, including sold the copyright with the work. They authenticated and are said to be simply differentiate between real Dalis and its Museum of Modern Art, which can be reproduced on as many tea towels “inspired” by Dali. works made “after Dali”. So far the owns his most famous painting, The and coffee mugs as the owners want. It continues to have a serious impact foundation has not taken legal action Persistence of Memory (1931), the first to Dali himself helped complicate this on the appreciation of Dali. Many people against any of these operators. feature his “soft watches”. problem. By the 1970s Gala was no don’t know about his importance to Its most effective way of countering There is not one Dali painting in longer closely monitoring their business 20th century arts. Further, most of these misinformation has been to join with an Australian public gallery, but his interests and it was left to a series of commercial operations use confusing the Dali Museum in St Petersburg to famous sculpture (there “secretaries” — some more diligent marketing to imply Dali scholarship and loan their collections for significant are 10 in the world) has been loaned by than others. During that time, Dali was authenticity. exhibitions at prestigious museums, Canberra’s National Gallery of Australia spending vast amounts of money on The Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation such as Melbourne’s NGV. to the NGV for its Liquid Desire show. renovating Gala’s castle in Pubol, on now vigorously monitors so-called RAYMOND GILL 2009 The Sunday Age Salvador Dali — Liquid Desire 15

Artist of destiny RayMOND Gill

Daddy Longlegs of the evening – Hope! 1940 oil on canvas 40.6 x 50.8 cm Salvador Dali The Salvador Dali Museum, St Petersburg, Florida. Worldwide rights: © Salvador Dali, Fundacio Gala- Salvador Dali. In the US: © Salvador Dali Museum Inc, St Petersburg, Fl, 2009.

What dreams may come

Salvador Dali used his prodigious talent He did, however, have an abiding Marcel Duchamp, Federico Garcia love of the landscape of Catalonia, a Lorca, Max Ernst, Paul Magritte, Man to create a life that was as colourful and dedication to masturbation, a phobia Ray, and filmmaker Luis Bunuel, with entertaining as his many iconic works of art. of grasshoppers and ants, an obsession whom Dali made the world’s first with excrement, and a fascination for surrealist film, the radical and shocking women’s buttocks. All of these became (1929), which made rom birth, Salvador Dali began as the eccentricities of a painfully motifs in his art through his long Europe’s avant- garde take notice. was destined to be noticed. shy adolescent, but as he matured these career, as did his complex and fractious His painting also developed beyond He was born in Figueres, antics became both more outrageous and relationship with his father. youthful impressionist and cubist Spain, on May 11, 1904, nine more an expected feature of his “sales” His apparently blessed life included influences into his distinct surrealistic, months and 10 days after pitch. He was the first artist to realise finding Gala, the Russian woman who taboo-breaking style, which he called F the death of his brother, who was also that in the age of mass communication he said he dreamed of as a youth. He “critical paranoia”. This “system” — it’s named Salvador. This second son of a and reproduction, all publicity was good met her when he was 25, she 35 and said he would often jam his fingers prosperous, authoritarian town notary publicity. Later artists such as Andy already married, and, much to his into his eyes to reach the desired state had attention, education and cultivation Warhol and Jeff Koons learnt first from father’s fury, they spent most of their — allowed him to translate his dreams in the arts lavished upon him. Dali that self-promotion is an art in itself. lives together with Gala as his lover, into images. The method was inspired Dali was a prodigy whose unusual Unlike many artists with a unique muse, model, manager and wife. by Sigmund Freud’s studies into the behaviour began as a toddler when he if disturbing vision, Dali came from a Gala is said to have had frequent interpretation of dreams, although was given to interminable coughing stable home, other than that he was just lovers, which Dali did not object to, and Freud’s opinion of the surrealists paroxysms to get what he wanted. His 16 when his mother died of breast cancer. in later years he had a modest number was that most were ratbags. He was artistic talent was noticed when he held He drank modestly when at university in of platonic girlfriends, including the intrigued by Dali, however, whom he his first exhibition, at age 15, at the Madrid but soon gave it up completely; French chanteuse Amanda Lear. met briefly late in his life. Figueres Municipal Theatre. He became he never smoked or took drugs. He didn’t He and Gala mixed with the most Dali also produced some of his the world’s first art star. appear to suffer depression and he never interesting thinkers and artists of the most famous paintings in this period, Dali’s attention-grabbing antics had a nervous breakdown. time — Andre Breton, Paul Eluard, Continued page 16 16 Salvador Dali — Liquid Desire The Sunday Age 2009

Left: Soft self-portrait with grilled bacon 1941 oil on canvas 61.0 x 51.0 cm Salvador Dali Fundacio Gala- Salvador Dali, Figueres. © Salvador Dali, Fundacio Gala- Salvador Dali, VISCOPY 2009.

Right: Anthropomorphic bread 1932 oil on canvas 24.0 x 16.5 cm Salvador Dali Fundacio Gala- Salvador Dali, Figueres. Permanent loan from the Town Hall of Figueres. © Salvador Dali, Fundacio Gala- Salvador Dali, VISCOPY 2009.

From page 15 fashion, jewellery, magazines, fabrics, But at this time, until he stopped including those with his instantly collaborated on films (see page 30), Dali’s ‘ambiguity’ painting in the the late 1970s, the ever- recognisable “melted camembert” and completed portraits of high-society inquisitive Dali was embracing new features, including The Great figures who loved to be seen with him at on most matters has forms of art, including holograms and Masturbator (1929), The Enigma of Desire openings and parties. He was a guest on been misunderstood optical works. He developed a form of — My Mother, My Mother, My Mother talk shows, gave public lectures, wrote neo-mysticism inspired by his interest (1929), and the first of his “soft watch” his fanciful autobiography, The Secret by the left. in science, nuclear physics, and a return works, The Persistence of Memory (1931). Life of Salvador Dali, much of which was Few in Spain forgot that. The lives to his Catholic roots. Despite the radical images, later contradicted by his younger sister, and work of Picasso and Joan Miro have The works brought together in Liquid Dali was a painter of extraordinary Ana Maria, in her own book, which always been taught there, but it is only Desire explore the full breadth of his craftsmanship, and his role model was enraged Dali. He also wrote a guide to in the past 15 years, since after his death work in painting, prints, objects, film, his artistic hero and compatriot Diego his own artistic methods, titled 50 Secrets of heart failure at the age of 85 in 1989, design, and his life as a celebrity . Velasquez (1599- 1660). of Magic Craftsmanship, and published a that schools and art academies have The National Gallery of Victoria’s Dali’s realistic depictions of the Costa newspaper, The Dali News, in which he included Dali in their studies. When the exhibition follows recent large shows at Brava landscapes were combined with wrote every story — all about him. He Dali museum was proposed in Figueres, London’s Tate Modern and the Museum his dreams, so that in these paintings, was rich. He was a star. the city council did not want to name the of Modern Art in New York. These are says Dr Ted Gott, the National Gallery of The left had long held suspicions square in front of the building after him. recognition of Dali’s enormous output Victoria’s senior curator of international about about Dali’s politics — was he According to those who run the of work, and of his role as artist who art, “the real becomes unreal”. apolitical, had he joined the right, was Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation in used the media for his and his art’s Soon Dali was a fully fledged he a supporter of the fascist General Figueres, from where it operates three purposes. “There’s a rebirth of interest member of Andre Breton’s surrealist Francisco Franco? — which followed Dali museums and helps organise in Dali,” Sevillano Campalans says. group, until doubts about his once him the rest of his life. These doubts international exhibitions such as the The director of Figueres’ Centre fervent left-wing politics saw him simmer in some parts of Catalonia. NGV’s Liquid Desire show, Dali’s for Dalinian Studies, Montse Aguer i excommunicated in a “trial” in 1934, Locals still tell tall tales about “ambiguity” on most matters has been Teixidor, believes contemporary art now which Dali refused to take seriously. Dali entertaining Adolf Hitler at his misunderstood by the left and so he has is concentrated “on the self”, which she When the Spanish Civil War broke Portlligat house, gossip that probably not been given his due in his homeland. says is “very Dalinian”. out in July 1936, Dali was conveniently derives from what got him into trouble “Dali was an old man who wanted to Further, the NGV’s Gott theorises in London and only returned to Spain with the surrealist group in the first come back home to his house on the that the rekindling of interest in Dali’s art briefly before beginning a self-imposed place. Dali depicted Hitler in a series of beach, so does that mean he was giving has something to do with the advent of exile in the United States with Gala, works in the early 1930s (all were later in to regime? I don’t think so,” says the CGI in films. “The kind of pyrotechnics from 1940 to 1948. destroyed), but the artist said this was foundation’s managing director, Joan we can now see in films are the kind Dali had been on the cover of Time simply a fascination with the despot who Manual Sevillano Campalans. of pyrotechnics Dali was providing magazine in 1936, which began a appeared in his dreams. Dali’s return to Spain from the from the 1930s,” he says. “We’re also mutual love affair with that country. The Dali never condemned the Franco US also coincided with the rise of a interested in, and no longer as critical Americans loved the handsome, wacky regime, as his compatriot Pablo Picasso new form of art in America, abstract of, artists promoting themselves. In artist with his stunts, such as giving a did from his self- imposed exile in Paris. expressionism, which captured the the age where it’s fine to be Jeff Koons, lecture while wearing a deep-sea diving But Dali and Gala happily returned to imagination of critics, museums and it’s fine to be Dali. We are over the cool, suit, or his propensity for scandals, live in Spain in 1948, although many collectors, but which Dali dismissed conceptual, contemporary abstraction.” which included designing a hat for Gala of the country’s intellectuals and artists as a joke. But the surrealist had Joan R. Kropf, deputy director of the featuring a baby’s corpse at the time of had either emigrated or been killed. The become something of a joke in the art Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, the Lindbergh baby kidnap trial. regime made the most of their return, establishment. His art was seen as old says Dali’s appeal is timeless. “We all The American years represented a claiming it was an example of forward- hat while his relentless preening for say, ‘I should paint my dreams’, and form of “commercial surrealism” for looking Spain where the arts were the cameras was regarded as money- that’s what Dali did, and we can relate to Dali as he designed for opera, theatre, appreciated. grabbing and pathetic. that in our own personal ways,” she says. 18 Salvador Dali — Liquid Desire The Sunday Age 2009

Left: Salvador Dali and his wife, Gala, in New York in 1951. Dark star Picture: Bettmann/CORBIS Dali’s life remains relatively unexamined by biographers, but that appears to be changing.

e was an artist at the forefront of so many of the 20th century’s artistic, political and social events and developments, and yet there are remarkably few H serious appraisals of Salvador Dali’s life and times. In recent decades there have been just a handful of biographies of the man, most of them written in English, Below: reflecting that biography is more of anA nglo literary tradition Gala wearing the shoe-hat than a European one. created by Elsa The most highly regarded biography is by the Spanish- Schiaparelli from based Irish historian Ian Gibson, whose 1997 book The a Salvador Dali Shameful Life of Salvador Dali is now out of print. design 1938 The lack of biographical material might be due to Dali’s fear gelatin silver of biographers and his own Herculean efforts to exaggerate, photograph fantasise and obscure elements of his life and times. In his 23.0 x 28.6 cm innumerable lectures and television appearances, in his writings Andre Caillet Fils, in learned journals and popular magazines, and most especially Paris. in his fact-meets-fantasy autobiography, The Secret Life of Fundacio Gala- Salvador Dali, the artist knew which outlandish stories and Salvador Dali, rewrites of history best served the Dali image as a mad artistic Figueres. © Salvador Dali, genius. Fundacio Gala- As Gibson notes in his book, “Dali shrouded his life in Salvador Dali, self-created myth in a desperate effort to ward off discovery VISCOPY 2009. of the paranoia and sexual torment lurking behind the dazzling technique and nightmarish images that captured the imagination of the century.” The Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation’s director, Joan Manual Lover, model, muse Sevillano Campalans, appreciates Gibson’s scholarship but is critical of the historian’s habit of presuming to know what Dali was thinking. “I think the referential book is probably still to be She had her critics, but Dali’s wife Gala his annoying laugh and scatological written,” he says. obsessions. But she also thought he But Gibson’s book has become the default official biography, was the driving force of his career. was a genius. Their union was also a and extensive research can be seen in the just-released movie practical one, with Gala acting as shrewd , with Twilight star Robert Pattinson as Dali. The alvador Dali met Gala business manager for the hopelessly film focuses on Madrid in the 1920s and Dali’s friendship and Eluard in 1929 on the beach impractical artist. Her skill was in collaboration with filmmakerL uis Bunuel and his possible in Cadaques, where his unlocking the showman in Dali, which sexual relationship with the poet Lorca. family spent each summer. he described as her fulfilling his “myth”. The small-budget Spanish-British production is one of the The 25-year-old Dali was Whichever it was, Gala took to the astonishingly few films made about Dali, owing, for better or S already making his name as a budding role of artist’s wife with alacrity and worse, to the Dali Foundation’s strict control over allowing artist after the film he’d made with Luis knew how to use his growing fame to images of his works to be reproduced. Bunuel, the shockingUn Chien andalou, drive hard bargains and attract patrons, “We can’t stop movies being made but we can make life had screened that year. But he was which allowed them to pay for their miserable for them by not allowing the image rights,” says still a youthful bundle of personality increasingly costly and glamorous life. Sevillano Campalans, who has had about 11 film scripts (“most contradictions; painfully shy but given to By the late 1970s Gala moved into a of them awful”) sent to him in recent years. hysterical laughing fits and outrageous 11th-century pile at Pubol, near Figueres, There’s a rebirth in interest in Dali,” he says. “We see it in the attention-seeking antics. now a Dali museum called the Gala numbers who come to the museum (in Figueres), in publishing He was immediately attracted to the Dali Castle. While Dali lived most of the permits and the number of people who call us for research, in the Russian-born Gala, who was 10 years his trois with Eluard. Her sexual charisma time 60 kilometres north, by the beach demand for exhibitions and in the number of movies being made.” senior and who had come to visit Dali and appetite for men continued into her at their house Portlligat, Gala spent Films said to be in the planning stages have had names such with her husband, the French poet Paul 70s. In later years she was a scandalous her final years in her private domain. as Peter O’Toole, Al Pacino, Antonio Banderas and Johnny Eluard, and their daughter Cecile, 11. topic of gossip in small-town Figueres. Dali even designed a throne room and Depp all tossed about as possible Dalis. Sevillano Campalans Gala’s Russian heritage, fierce Gala would tolerate women if they heraldic icons for her, along with cards would love to see Depp play Dali in a big Amadeus-like bio-pic. intellect, masculine beauty, and eyes so were useful to her, although she found with which she would extend invitations “With the richness of Dali, you don’t need to invent stuff just searching they could, Eluard once said, most women as “boring” as children. to him or her lovers to visit. She died in to make it commercially successful,” he advises prospective “pierce through walls”, were irresistible. and Coco Chanel 1982 and is buried in the castle’s crypt. producers. According to his recollections, Dali tried competed to dress her slim-hipped body Written records about Gala portray RAYMOND GILL to show his attraction to her by shaving in their creations. Gala played the two her as manipulative and money- his armpits, painting them blue, then designers off one another to get free grabbing, but it’s doubtful Dali would smearing his body with goat dung and outfits, although she preferred Chanel. ever have become the artist he did fish glue as a kind of “nuptial costume”. Gala is escalatingly described as without her. As much as she is blamed It worked, or so said Dali. Gala “vain”, “difficult”, “a piece of work”, for turning him towards shallow apparently laughed, promised never to or simply a “bitch”. But to Dali she celebrity, she was his muse during his leave him, and then abandoned Eluard was his inspiration, critic, confidant, most fecund artistic period in the 1930s. and their daughter, with whom she had therapist, missing mother figure, lover The Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation’s little to do with again. She spent the next and goddess. He signed his paintings director, Joan Manual Sevillano 53 years with Dali. with her name within his as “Salvador Campalans, says Dali and Gala were Gala’s attraction to men was already Gala Dali”; the foundation controlling one of the 20th century’s great love legendary among a band of brilliant his works and the museum in Figueres affairs. “They were on another plane of artists and intellectuals, which variously bears her name; and her face looms in existence, as all geniuses are. Much of included Marcel Duchamp, Andre his numerous masterworks. the judgemental stuff we read is done by Breton, Man Ray and Pablo Picasso. She Gala was initially attracted to Dali’s little people judging giants,” he says. A still from the movie Little Ashes, with Robert Pattinson as had lived with Max Ernst in a menage a youthful good looks, which offset RAYMOND GILL Salvador Dali and Javier Beltran as Federico Garcia Lorca.