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GALACIDALACIDE SOXIRIBUNUCLEICACID (HOMAGE TO CRICK AND WATSON)

Oil on Canvas. 120"x 1962-63 GAIACIDAIACIDESOXIRIBUMTCm

DEDICATION 1965 By Salvador Dali

Galacidalacidesoxiribiuiucleicacid (sic). Hommage a Crick et Watson (Homage to Crick and Watson.)J Into the name of my own genetic memory I mix the name of my wife Gala, of Allah,2 that of the Cid Campeador (the feminine Cid)3 with that ofdes- oxiribunucleic acid. The arm of the eternal God carries the man- Christ back up to heaven as the Jesuit Father Teilhard de Chardin4 would have had it, thus verifying the Dalinian idea of the "persistence ofmemo?y"; in my own life, the persistence of K • flam -MAIIX/H <>

1 Dr. Francis Crick and Dr. James Watson were the Nobel-prize-winning GALACIDALACIDESOXIRIBUNUCLEICACID scientists who in 1953 discovered the DNA molecule which contains the 1965 genetic code of life, and is shaped like a spiral staircase. This form is often By Carlton Lake referred to as the double helix. Curator of the Humanities Research Center of the University of 2 Allah is the Muslim name for the one God, derived from the Arabic name Texas at Austin el illah, "the god."

3 Cid Campeador is a combination of the two names for the central character For more than a generation Salvador Dali's work has provoked in the Spanish epic poem entitled Poemo del Cid. It was written in 1140 by controversy. During the 1930's, at the heart of the Surrealist an unknown Castillian bard. The poem centers around the exploits of movement, his pictorial exploration of Freudian theory charmed Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar who was a chief marshal in Iberia during Moorish the avant-garde and distressed the conventionally minded. rule. The name el Cid means "lord," and el Campeador means "the Champion." Today the situation is somewhat the reverse. By mutual agreement Dali and the avant-garde have parted company. 4 Father Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was a French Jesuit priest and a mystic who lived from 1881-1955. He had been trained in paleontology and devoted But the conventionally minded find in his more recent work much of his life trying to reconcile the discoveries of modern science with the the comfort and reassurance that, in an age of shifting values, teachings of religious faith. may be drawn from solid craftsmanship and technical brilliance 5 A wavy pattern often used by Op artists. in the service of ideals that seem less disturbing. The Freudian myth in Dali's work has given way to the Christian equivalent. Dali's Spanish heritage, with a two-way view toward trdition and posterity, weighs more heavily on him now. His wife, Gala, the key to much in his life and work, still plays a focal role in his painting. His concern with nuclear Credits: Painting installation by Jan Stenson, Conservator. physics and biochemistry provides a basis for his claim that Catalog edited by Joan R. Kropf, Curator, Salvador Dali today he is the avant-garde, and that the by-now-traditional Museum, and Peter Tush, Assistant Curator. avant-garde is old hat. ID^SOXIRIBUNUCLEICACIDGAIACIDAIAa^

The painting that New England Merchants National of Modern Art, New York. Entitled The Persistence of Memory, Bank has acquired (currently in the collection of the it includes among its pictorial symbols three "soft" watches, one Salvador Dali Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida, Editor) - of which is draped over the lone branch of a defoliated tree. GALACIDALACIDESOXIRIBUNUCLEICACW (Homage That painting was Dali's first approach to an idea which re- to Crick and Watson) - is one of the most important in Dali's searchers such as Crick and Watson have, since then, clarified postwar production. Characteristically it runs counter, in spirit scientifically: the genetic transmission of memory. In and execution, to the work of almost any present-day painter of GALACIDALACWESOXIRIBUNUCLEICACID, he returns to comparable renown. The virtuoso finish that comes from preoc- that theme, this time with specific theological and scientific ref- cupation with matters of craft has had low priority with most of erence: everything is based on memory, he seems to be saying, Dali's contemporaries, but Dali's devotion to the Renaissance and memory has its source in God. ideal has never wavered. Without it, how would he bring off the illusionistic effects that have always tempted him? Beginning at lower right and receding into the middle distance are small cubes formed of Arab riflemen, each one aiming at the This picture is built around a series of double images based on figure on his left. These represent the molecular structure of four of the principal latter-day Dalinian elements: Christianity, minerals. They symbolize "a kind of destruction," Dali says, Gala, Dali's Spanish heritage, and modern science. Its plains "like minerals in the process of annihilating themselves." This and mountains are landscapes Dali has seen in Spain or process he intended as the counterpoise of the spiraling balls at imagined in North Africa, the home of his Arab ancestors. left center. Study of the cloud formations, top center, reveals the head of God, in which we can make out two figures: one a Madonna, the In a period when color is so often used for its shock value, this other small and less distinct. To the right of the head, from the painting, based (if we overlook the slight trickle of red oozing light-filled folds of the clouds, emerges the body of God, its left from Christ's body) on only three colors—a brown, a yellow, and arm missing, the stump covered by a small winged figure. The an ultramarine blue—brings a shock of its own, one based not right arm of God trails down the mountainous area at the left to on brutality of contrasts but on the subtlety of its nuances. support the body of the dead Christ, whose form and features Some may see this painting as a step back toward the 18th gradually assemble themselves from the play of light on rocks century of Watteau. Dali acknowledges the thread but sees it and sand. Immediately to the right of the God-figure is a saint leading in the other direction. "I am," he cheerfully explains, in adoration; further to the right, two monks kneel in prayer. "fifty years in advance of my time." At the left, the prophet Isaiah unfurls a scroll on which we read some of the letters of the painting's title.

At lower center, catching the light from an invisible sun, is the figure of a woman draped in white, back to the viewer but recog- nizable at once to anyone familiar with Dali's work, as his wife, From a pamphlet written for the Gala. Her hair, the only identifying feature, is yellow and New England Merchants National Bank brown and has the texture, here, of a freshly baked loaf of Reprinted by kind permission of the author country bread. Dali sees in bread its Eucharistic significance and has painted it before with animistic intent. (In one of his earlier paintings, two pieces of bread are shown "expressing the sentiment of love.")

The little balls at the left center of the canvas represent the mol- ecular structure of DNA - deoxyribonucleic acid - the genetic material that determines life functions. Superficially they are one phase of the homage to scientists Crick and Watson. Beyond that, one may see in them a reference to one of Dali's best-known canvases, painted in 1931 and now in the Museum EXHIBITION NOTES into the depth of the picture. 1989 By Dr. Karin V. Maur With the Arabs Dali points to Spanish history, which is insepara- Chief Curator of Modern Painting and Sculpture, Staatsqalerie bly connected with Arabic culture, and he suggests the presence Stuttgart, Germany of Arabic blood in his own origin. The cubic formation repre- sents the mathematical knowledge that the Arabs possessed, In the winter of 1963, when Dali exhibited this monumental which was used by Ramon Llull (one of Dali's Spanish heroes composition at the Knoedler Gallery for the first time, he provid- who was stoned to death by the Arabs) as the basis for his meta- ed the following explanation: physics. Here, however, they personify the molecular structure "At a time when the titles of pictures are very short (i.e. Painting of minerals and suggest a kind of destruction, "like minerals in #1 or White on White) I call my Hommage to Crick and Watson: the process of annihilating themselves."2 Thus, this molecule GALACIDALACIDESOXIRIBUNUCLEICACID (sic). It is my represents the counterweight to the life spiral on the left side. longest title in one word. But the theme is even longer: long as the genetic persistence of human memory. As announced by the The soft gold-ochre sfumato^ of the colors, reminiscent of prophet Isaiah—he Savior contained in God's head from which Watteau, implores in a summary the birth, death, and rebirth of one sees for the first time in the iconographic history of his arms creation. repeating the molecular structures of Crick and Watson and lift- Dali, who had just recently completed over one hundred water- ing Christ's dead body so as to resuscitate him in heaven."1 colors to illustrate Dante's Divine Comedy, describes this work This cosmologic multivision, which unfolds in front of Gala's as his "Dantesque antidote" and one of his "most angelic and gaze, is reminiscent of Michelangelo's ceiling fresco in the transcendental pictures in which science and heaven form Gala's Sistine Chapel. In Michelangelo's work, the outstretched arm of arch of triumph."4 God brings life to man by touching Adam's finger. In Dali's work, the outstretched arm of God elevates the dead body of Thus, in this work Dali combines the basic idea of his cosmologic Christ, symbolizing the Resurrection. This body, which recalls world landscape: "Gala looks at the body of Christ lifted up by Michelangelo's Adam, appears to be shaped out of the lights that God the Father and this vision would have been that of the reflect off the mountains and plains as on the day of creation. Jesuit father, Teilhard de Chardin, if he had seen the famous This scheme-like Corpus Christi bridges the distance between spiral of Crick and Watson, which transmitted the persistence of heaven and earth, leading to Gala, who is thus included in this memory of God to the last living cell at the core of life."5 scheme in the form of a Pieta-Madonna. She looks at the blood coming from Christ's side, the midpoint between the two spirals Virtually the artist evokes the cultural heritage of the Orient in this work. Her hair resembles freshly baked bread, suggest- and Occident as simultaneously present in our actual life and ing the Eucharist. mind. In the upper left corner resides the Prophet Isaiah, who is mod- Written for catalog to the Stuttgart/Zurich eled after Michelangelo's Moses. It was Isaiah who predicted the Dali Retrospective (May-November, 1989)6 birth of Christ, and here he is placed next to the head of Translation by Liana Pardo -Jehovah. Below Isaiah, next to the double arm of God/Christ, Used by kind permission of the author appears a spiraling point-structure created by the double helix of 2Carllon Lake, In Quest of Dali (New York; G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1969), p.19. the macromolecule deoxyribonucleic acid, the genetic material "Italian art term referring to a haziness of outline and a general smokey that determines the life functions and stores them in its memo- appearance. ry, transmitting them from generation to generation. Across ''Andre Parinaud, The Unspeakable Confessions of Salvador Dali (New York: William Morrow & Co., Inc., 1976), p.250. from this structure, in the plain, is a chain of regular cubes 5Max Gerard, ed., Dali (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 19681, from the formed of Arabs with guns. They stretch from the foreground introduction to the chapter entitled Mysticism. 6Dr. Karin V. Maur, Salvador Dali 1904-1989. Eintuhrung und Katalog 1 Knoedler Gallery catalog (New York, 1963, No. 1). (Stuttgart: Verlag Gerd Hatje, 1989, p.362-363). GAIACIDAIACIDESOXIRIBlJNUCm

AN APPRECIATION impression that it was a rather drab gray work and not one Fall 1989 of the distinguished Masterworks. By Dr. A. Reynolds Morse Salvador Dali Museum Founder However, when I saw it again in Zurich a quarter of a century later, I was totally overwhelmed. It had a delicate The Dali Museum is proud to have acquired Dali's great but predominantly orange hue which I had totally forgotten. canvas Galacid (Homage to Crick and Watson), painted dur- It was truly one of Dali's great and inspired Masterworks! ing 1962-1963. I first saw this canvas in Barcelona. The two The Pieta group in this work is as subtle as it is superb, themes which inspired Dali to paint it were as remote from with the arm of God supporting the dead Christ below, and each other as possible: the great flood west of Barcelona and being at once part of the landscape and part of the sky as the discovery of DNA. well. The painter was truly excited about the discovery of the The references to Crick and Watson, and Dali's whimsical spiral form of the DNA molecule which Dali had predicted in interpretations of molecules, are indicative of this artist's the early 1950's on his American lecture tour, long before involvement with the then current events. The spirals on the public had even heard of DNA. The artist was equally the left stand in sharp contrast to the cubic groups on the moved by his deep feelings for his fellow Catalans in right. This cubic group relates to the religious war just Barcelona who had been swept from their homes and building in the Near East, where one trigger pull initiates drowned in a flash flood on Rio Llobregat which runs another until no one is left. Thus matter can be destroyed through the suburbs west of the city. in contravention to the laws of physics. This later event is seen in the silver traces of water and a The lesson for all of us here is that each Dali work is flood plain running under the lowering clouds across the assuredly a magnificent and always renewable adventure. center of the canvas. (Dali had already commemorated the Early impressions can be changed as we change and learn great flood in Christo de Valles, a small oil of 1962 which that Dali's genius has always been there whatever his sub- was sold for the benefit of the flood victims.) ject. And it will never be surpassed in this century as this When Galacid was shown at the Knoedler Gallery in New great canvas so clearly proves. York (November 26-December 26, 1963), Eleanor and I went to the uernissage and our traditional dinner with the Dalis. Not long thereafter, the President of the New England Merchants National Bank of Boston came to Knoedler's. His aim was to buy another Andrew Wyeth oil to add to the dozen or more Wyeths already hanging in the office of his bank. When he walked into the gallery—and before he could be ushered into the first viewing room—he spotted Galacid on the gallery wall. He was so taken with it that he completely forgot about the Wyeth and bought the Dali on the spot. The canvas was then shipped to Boston where for more than two decades it hung on the wall of the Boston Bank. When Eleanor and I finally went to see it, we spotted the Wyeths at once, but we had to inquire about where the Dali was. In fact, it hung almost right behind us! It was hard to locate because of the bright light of a large window above it. And Dali in his studio in Port Lligat, Spain. Photograph MELI because it was not too well displayed, I somehow had tbe (FIGUERES) )XimBlJNUClJEIQVCIDG/^VCIDAIjVCIDESOXimBUNUCLEIGVCIDGALAClDAIAaDESOXIMBlJNUCLEICACID

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