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Galacidalacide Soxiribunucleicacid (Homage to Crick and Watson)

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Galacidalacide Soxiribunucleicacid (Homage to Crick and Watson) This document is posted publicly for non-profit educational uses, excluding printed publication. To cite include the following: The Dali Museum. Collection of The Dali Museum Library and Archives. 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 <><s h fffyt J»i memo?y of the history of Spain, my country, and of the Arab people, consubstantially mingled to the point that only the cybernetic machines of the future will be able to disentangle them with clarity, thanks to the microphysical structures of moire,5 mescaline of the retina. The artist's dedication, reproduced at right, is from a manuscript which accompanied the painting in 1965. 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.
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