34 Salvador — Liquid Desire The Sunday Age 2009 2009 The Sunday Age Salvador Dali — Liquid Desire 35

Graphic Design Megan Backhouse

Apart from being elephants. Delighted with this novelty, “His work ethic was incredible,” Gott He painted a Coca-Cola bottle required to get the full impact of his the airline bosses did, however, make says. “His mind was always churning To design something into one of his works from the 1940s, 1946 Vogue magazine cover, on which a one of the world’s Dali the surprise gift of an elephant, away like some incredible rotor machine. suggests it can be decades before Andy Warhol began woman’s face is only revealed when the great artists, Dali also which spent several days with he and He worked from seven in the morning incorporating everyday objects into his cover is folded. his wife Gala at their home, in right through to the end of the day and made over and over creations, and saw early how design But for all Dali’s burlesque, nudie- found time to design , before being dispatched to a zoo. then after dinner as well. He was a again. could be blended into every aspect of our show touches, he was also extremely The everything from “It was just another strange week in the raconteur but not a wild party boy. He lives as well as into his own art practice. well read in science, literature and life of Salvador Dali,” Gott says. was devoted to work and work would a couple of years ago, art critic Robert His 1940s ads for Bryans Hosiery psychology. Treatises on nuclear energy, ashtrays to ads for The ashtray, manufactured in encompass all sorts of things — on a Hughes wrote about surrealist design — which will be projected on to a screen research into DNA, and geometry women’s hosiery. porcelain by Limoges, is in this year’s given day he might have been painting, as seeming “almost a contradiction in for the NGV’s exhibition — depict were some of his pet subjects, and Melbourne Winter Masterpieces writing a treatise on the appreciation of terms” in that something “designed” women’s legs poking out of boxes, Gott maintains people are only now exhibition, but visitors to the show won’t art, designing a jewel, writing a film script implies it has been brought about in full or surrounded by butterflies, beginning to see his influence. elephant hy, you might well be seeing what must surely be his most and thinking about a perfume bottle.” consciousness, which is plainly not what or slotted in among building “I think he is an ask, would an artist ubiquitous offering — the Chupa Chups Some might argue that with such the surrealists were trying to achieve. He stones in a way not so far absolute genius, without given to such wild wrapper. To see what he came up with a mixed bag of projects, the man who wrote that to design something suggests removed from some of the hesitation,” he says. ideas and with such for its then Spanish manufacturer over so loved to shock was surely spreading it can be made over and over again, and imagery from his Dream “He was one of the a free-wheeling a long lunch, go to any shop selling himself a bit thin and was simply that surrealist design was “emphatically of Venus Pavilion at the greatest artists who W imagination as Salvador Dali get to his confectionary. turning some of his most weird and not” in this category. 1939 World’s Fair in ever lived, and the 60s only to design an ashtray for an The story goes that the pretty novel ideas into cliche. And perhaps Gott, however, insists Dali didn’t New York. more you read in the airline company and lollipop wrappers? type with the fancy “P” displayed money was not such a non-issue after differentiate between fine art and design, The same about Dali, the Even in the 1940s, little more than 10 inside a flower stem evolved from all, with fellow surrealist Andre Breton and that all his work blended seamlessly sensibility was at more the mask years after he dreamed up some of his sketches Dali made while dining with once spitting out the anagrammatic with the notion of design a completely work three years of the jokester most famous imagery — such as lobster a representative of the company who “Avida Dollars” as his nickname for natural aspect of his work. He says earlier, when, for a falls away and the telephones, limp watches and fried eggs had driven from to see him. Dali, and partner Gala’s reputation the quality of Dali’s work was “top- solo show Dali put typecasting of him with no plate — he was devising ads for The year before that, Dali had filmed repeatedly sullied over the years by talk notch all the way” and a “meticulous on in New York, he only being good in room women’s hosiery. a television advertisement for Lanvin of an insatiable appetite for cash. draftsmanship” underpinned everything devised a catalogue the 1930s falls away It certainly wasn’t the money, says chocolates, and he had also designed But since the 2004 centenary of he did. “Dali did not feel in any way that adorned with a bare- and you realise the Dr Ted Gott, the National Gallery of perfume bottles and lobster-patterned Dali’s birth, there has been something he was debasing himself by working breasted woman with incredible breadth of Victoria’s senior curator of international fabric for Italian fashion designer Elsa of a revival of interest in surrealist art commercially,” Gott says. “Nothing was press-stud nipples that the man.” art, who maintains Air paid the Schiaparelli, men’s ties and theatre and specifically Dali displays around too low for him to attempt, and he felt could be manipulated Megan Backhouse famous surrealist no more than a few costumes. Then there were the record the world. Writing about an exhibition the artist’s role was to bring beauty and to disgorge images of the is a freelance writer hundred dollars for his design of an covers, book illustrations, theatre on and design put on at intellectual rigour to everything that the works in the show. and frequent contributor ashtray that has swans morphing into backdrops and film scripts. London’s Victoria & Albert Museum artist could touch.” Reader interaction is also to The Age arts pages

Opposite page, from far left:

Advertisement for Bryans Hosiery page 44 in Vogue, November 15, 1946 colour photo-offset lithograph The Conde Nast Publications, Inc, New York, publisher, US, est 1909 National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Shaw Research Library. © Salvador Dali, Fundacio Gala- Salvador Dali, VISCOPY 2009.

Ashtray for Air India (1967) Jules Teissonniere, Limoges (decorator), France (1908–’60s) France, Limoges (manufacturer) 8.5 x 15.6 x 12.4 cm National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne Gift of Lady Potter, 2009. © Salvador Dali, Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali, VISCOPY 2009.

Facade of the Dream of Venus pavilion, A Dali ashtray designed for Air India. 1939 New York World’s Fair type C photograph Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali, Figueres. Eric Schaal, Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali, VISCOPY 2009.

This page, left:

Cover of Vogue, December 1, 1946 The Double Dali cover — making a face from a fantasy, colour photo-offset lithograph 31.2 x 23.4 cm (sheet) Shaw Research Library National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. © Salvador Dali, Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali, VISCOPY 2009.

Right: Dali designed the Chupa Chup logo in 1969; the company was founded in Spain.

Dream of Venus, from the 1939 New York World’s Fair.