Dali’s Nightclub Design Wonderfully Impractical!

By Paul Chimera

Salvador Dali Historian

The might-have-been’s in Salvador Dali’s colorful career are fascinating. He would have been an emperor in the classic movie, “Dune,” were it not for his salary demands that were too rich for director Alexander Jodorowsky’s blood. His idea to erect a large model of a woman with a fish’s head – an apparently blasphemous twist on the iconic “Birth of Venus” by Botticelli – was squashed by the 1939 World’s Fair moguls whose injunction derailed Dali’s original idea for his pavilion.

And, perhaps most outrageous of all, was Dali’s ill-fated design for a nightclub in Acapulco, Mexico.

Dali received a commission in 1957 to design a nightclub, and presumably he had, if not carte blanch, at least a wide swath of artistic license. Still, the Surrealist master’s concept was also too rich for this paymaster’s blood – one Cesar Balsa, Mexican owner of the St. Regis Hotel in New York and a friend of Dali.

The ill-fated Dali Noche

A May 4, 1958 New York Times story about the project opened with this lead, dateline Mexico City:

“Salvador Dali, the bizarre Catalan painter, appears to be on the way toward invading Mexican art, which in its day had its own full share of the bizarre. Dali’s invasion is through his designs for a fantastic night club at Acapulco.”

The new entertainment complex was to be called Dali Noche, and it was a wild idea to say the least. Let me share what the late Robert Descharnes – Dali’s friend and biographer – and his son, Nicolas, wrote about this unusual undertaking:

“The proposed night club was to be named ‘Dali Noche’: the cabaret would be a gigantic sea urchin with space for about 500 people. The seat cushions would breathe through a pneumatic system, representing the delicacy of delicacies for Dali, the edible part of the sea urchin. The guests would arrive in its interior via an elevator incorporated into the ‘digestive tube.’

“The urchin itself, supported by an ensemble of four gigantic fly legs, would be drawn toward the sea by 25 giraffes in rock, each one 15 meters high. These giraffes, each one alight, would illuminate the entire complex; the two first would be submerged for those guests who might wish to go swimming in the night.”

In the first-ever biography of Dali, author Fleur Cowles wrote in 1959, “Dali’s capacity for inventions has achieved such worldwide fame that he was even asked ‘by Mexico’ (as he puts it) to Dalinize Acapulco, the playground of the rich in the southwestern end of Mexico on the Pacific.” Cowles envisioned that the conception would surely have been “a constructional nightmare …to technicians.”

Needless to say, the outrageous surrealist project – which Dali had once declared to Balsa would be “the eighth wonder of the world” – was never realized, though I’ve often imagined its existence and the sensation it would have created!

Cowles summed it up well: “Like everything else he does, Dali cannot invent the practical; the object must be Dalinian – which means it is often synonymous with the impossible.”

Magical Costa Brava Put a Spell on Salvador Dali!

By Paul Chimera

Salvador Dali Historian

Sometimes I think Salvador Dali must have grown out of a rock formation in his native Spain!

That’s how hugely important the unique topology of his native countryside was in shaping his thoughts, ideas, and images. I’m talking specifically the Costa Brava and, more specifically, points such as Cadaques, Cape Creus, the Bay of Rosas, and, of course, Port Lligat.

In addition, specific points of interest in the region – certain buildings, for instance – also poured themselves into the well of inspiration into which Dali dipped his sable-haired brushes.

It is always fascinating to see actual photos of the craggy rock formations and various outcroppings of the landscape Dali saw and pondered daily, for it drives home the point that the artist drew heavily on real-life images and not entirely on his fecund imagination. This applies as well to certain landmarks that left an indelible impression on him and appeared in his oil paintings, watercolors, drawings, etchings, engravings, lithographs, and sculpture.

Today I want to look at two specific Salvador Dali works and how the distinctive, rocky terrain in one, and a landmark building in the other, pertain to corresponding photographs of the actual things Dali saw, admired, and painted. Again, while he mined his uncanny subconscious and his active dream world with unparalleled dexterity, Dali also faithfully depicted things he saw daily in the land he worshipped and from which he drew endless inspiration.

Take a look at Dali’s beautiful 1950 painting, “Landscape of Port Lligat” (Salvador Dali Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida). While the angel on the terrace may have sprung from Dali’s imaginative wheelhouse, the rocky mountainous landscape along the horizon is completely consistent with what this part of the Costa Brava looks like in reality. (See photo)

Dali painted what he saw!

Dali adored this region – he called Port Lligat the most beautiful place in the world – and, of course, he painted it time and time and time again in his various works, whether they were unabashedly surrealist or as tame as a Dutch still life.

Now focus your attention on a very early canvas, painted in 1924, called “Port Alguer, Cadaques.” The building with the circular window – the Eglisia de Santa Maria church – is seen today in these recent photographs, again demonstrating how Dali drew upon real-world experiences, geographical points of interest, and other images in creating his often stunning works, such as these enchanting paintings shown here today. Another early Dali canvas in which the same landmark appears is “”View of Cadaques from Playa Poal,” 1920.

Dali was a surrealist master, of course. But he was also a master landscape painter. And a master of realism who indeed mined his fertile imagination and leveraged the findings of Surrealism’s patron saint, Sigmund Freud, but who also simply painted what he saw every day, in and around the region he called home all his life: Spain’s magical Costa Brava.

Oh, getting back to the beginning of this post – where it seems Dali might have grown out of his own landscapes – I think he virtually does, given his background self-portrait in “Portrait of John Theodoracopoulos” of 1970!

Dali, a Dog, and ‘Dalinian Continuity’!

By Paul Chimera

Salvador Dali Historian

It’s possible that, were it not for Salvador Dali’s eccentricities and obsessions, he might not have preserved history quite as well.

What am I talking about?

Simply this: Dali’s locking onto certain details in works by masters who came before him – a focus that was often obsessive, such as his nearly pathological obsession with the painting, “The Angelus” by Millet – ensured that these artists’ works would be partially revived in more modern times.

One reference – as esoteric as it is charming – is that of the dog that lay so oblivious to the disquieting activity happening around it in Ayne Bru’s classic 16^th century painting, “The Martyrdom of Saint Cucufa.”

The languishing canine first showed up in 1950, when Dali painted a most unusual canvas titled, “Dali at the Age of Six When he Believed He was a Girl Lifting the Skin of the Water to See the Dog Sleeping in the Shade of the Sea” (private collection). As the title clearly tells us, the sleepy dog seems as relaxed as can be, tucked preposterously under the elevated edge of the water. His black markings have become brown in Dali’s version.

Dali’s dog, borrowed.

Then, four years later, a bizarre painting of unabashed narcissism emerged from Dali’s easel, bearing the extraordinary titled, “Dali Nude, in Contemplation Before the Five Regular Bodies Metamorphized into Corpuscles, in which Suddenly Appear the Leda of Leonardo Chomosomatized by the Visage of Gala.” And here again the dog borrowed from Bru’s work is under water, portrayed in the exact same manner as Dali’s 1950 painting (except the brown “spots” are black again), while both are virtually an identical copy of the dog in the “Martyrdom” work.

Dali’s dog, borrowed again.

When we think of Surrealism – especially Salvador Dali’s surrealism – I think we generally expect the imagery captured on canvas to be either Freudian-inspired, dream-derived, or representative of things from the artist’s personal surroundings and experiences. And that, in fact, is frequently the case.

But Dali made it a point to quote imagery from classical paintings that moved him, that remained indelible in his mind, that, in his view, deserved to be revitalized and remembered.

What’s more, the beauty of Surrealism as an artistic movement was that it allowed artists to express themselves freely, without any restraints. Things didn’t necessarily have to make sense; indeed, how could they, when the whole point was to mine one’s subconscious world – a place that defied rational explanation.

Thus, it was perfectly valid that the seeming incongruity of a dog, plucked from a several-hundred-year-old painting should find itself reappearing in a then-modern surrealist painting by Salvador Dali.

And once again, it provides us with another example of Dalinian Continuity, where Dali devised an intentional and ingenious linking of many of his paintings by repeating certain images – sometimes separated by years, sometimes by decades. In the case of the two Dali works here, the historical link to a painter who preceded Dali by several centuries is found in a cute little dog who surely never knew it would remain so popular!

The Shoes and Symbolism of Dali’s ‘Original Sin’

By Paul Chimera

Salvador Dali Historian

One of the most surprisingly simple and tranquil paintings by Salvador Dali – while at the same time one that’s puzzled and confounded many Dali enthusiasts – is his interesting little oil on canvas, “Original Sin,” painted in 1941.

Copyright Gala-Dali Foundation

The work is technically brilliant, really showing off Salvador Dali’s consummate draftsmanship. Look at the way he handled the veins in the woman’s foot. And the textured nuances of the old, worn pair of shoes. And the bejeweled, serpentine ankle bracelet: Dali realism at its finest.

The sterile background seems to leave something to be desired, one might claim. However, when we consider the symbolism in this work, the sort of blank slate backdrop makes perfect sense.

According to author Kristen Bradbury, in her book, Essential Dali, shoes for Dali “represented sin, based on the idea of the foot being the starting point of all sin.” Thus, it’s as if Dali were starting from a position of nothing – a sort of barren Garden of Eden. No cypress trees or craggy landscapes or any other creatures or outcroppings. Just an essentially empty space, save for the beautifully executed shoes and the temptress’s lovingly painted foot with its life-like adornment.

My astute friend and fellow Dali scholar Dr. Elliott King reminds me that the ankle jewelry in “Original Sin” is the same one gracing the wrist of Gala in the stunning 1944 “Galarina,” also in the collection of the Teatro-Museo Dali in Spain.

That shoes should occupy front and center here accords with Dali’s undeniable fetishistic interest in them; he incorporated shoes in a host of paintings, drawings, and objects. A short list would include “Cannibalism of Objects – Woman’s Head with Shoe” (1937); Paranoiac Metamorphosis of Gala’s Face” (1932); “The Sense of Speed” (1934); his iconic shoe hat for fashion icon Elsa Schiaparelli; and the sculpture, “Scatological Object Functioning Symbolically (The Surrealist Shoe)” of 1931.

Invariably, Dali’s works made direct or indirect references to other artists, most especially those he most revered: Velazquez, Vermeer, and Raphael — in that order of importance to Dali. But there were certainly many other great artists Dali admired, emulated, or otherwise nodded to in his paintings, drawings, watercolors, prints, and objects.

Dali undoubtedly pondered the scruffy boots of Van Gogh (seen here) when he was intellectually preoccupied with his “Original Sin” canvas.

Footwear by VanGogh

What stands out for me, when considering the present Dali painting, is how the Surrealist master’s mind went in so many directions. He was unpredictable, to be sure; one never quite knew just what would end up on his easel. In a period when Dali was creating some of the most Freudian-informed pictures in the annals of Surrealism, he delivers a lovely little oil like “Original Sin,” one of the many gems in the Teatro-Museo Dali in Figueres, Spain.

[Bible reference contributed by Dr. Elliott King]

Dali’s ‘Spectre’ Painting Little Known, Ideal for Halloween!

By Paul Chimera

Salvador Dali Historian

One of the most exciting things for me in this lifelong Dali adventure is encountering never-before or seldom seen works by the Surrealist master. It’s almost like the sublime feeling a scientist must get when the archaeological dig he or she is on suddenly turns up an ancient artifact of startling significance.

Today I’m focusing on an early Salvador Dali painting that was reproduced only in black & white in the big DALI book by Descharnes & Neret – Dali, The Paintings – which has unofficially come to be considered the catalog raisone of Dali oil paintings.

Otherwise, to my knowledge, it was never seen in any popular, English-language book on Dali, until it came up in color in the beautiful catalog produced for the big Dali retrospective held at the George Pompidou Center in Paris November 21, 2012 – March 25, 2013, after which it moved on to the Museo Nacional Centra de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid.

The picture is “Spectre,” painted in 1934, a very fertile time in Dali’s surrealist period, in which a number of other important Dali paintings invite comparison to it.

Dali’s rarely seen, ghostly “Spectre”

While many of Salvador Dali’s works are dreamlike and often pinned on his personal mythology, not all that many are necessarily what I would call “haunting.” But with Halloween just around the corner, I think the little-known “Spectre” – 27.5 inches x 23.5 inches – unquestionably qualifies as haunting and spooky.

There is great ambiguity in the central figure, eerily cloaked, sporting what appears to be a skull on its head. It’s holding, or at least juxtaposed with what looks simultaneously like a mirror and the face of a clock. The ghostly aura to it all accords with the work’s title and certainly presents us with an evocative image to ponder.

Meanwhile, the other figure embodies elements from at least four other well-known Dali paintings, and below it, the birds hovering above a barren ground recall Dali’s “Javanese Mannequin” (Salvador Dali Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida), painted the same year as “Spectre” and somewhat haunting in its own right.

Javanese Mannequin

The impossibly elongated leg of the kneeling figure, on which a wine bottle and glass rest, was seen the same year, 1934, in Dali’s dandy little oil, “The Ghost of Vermeer of Delft, Which Can be Used as a Table,” also in the Florida Dali Museum.

Ghost of Vermeer of Delft

The sacks in the shoulder and abdominal area of the kneeling figure are seen almost identically in Dali’s tiny jewel-like canvas, “The Specter of Sex Appeal” – one of the finest works in the Teatro-Museo Dali in Figueres, Spain.

Spectre of Sex Appeal

Meanwhile, the “head” here of potted flowers would essentially be seen the next year when Dali created the important Surrealist painting, “Woman with Head of Roses” (1935, Kunsthaus Zurich, Zurich).

Woman with Head of Roses

The knife cutting into the buttocks area of the kneeling figure in “Spectre” finds an echo in “Autumn Cannibalism” of 1936 (Tate Gallery, London).

Autumn Cannibalism

The privately owned “Spectre” ironically melds images from some five other, well-known Dali paintings, yet itself has pretty much remained under the radar for many decades. With Halloween creeping closer, it seems to me Dali’s “Spectre” needs to be dusted off and hung right beside all those nooses and skeletons and other sooky props we’ll soon be encountering on the scariest night of the year!

Dali gave us ‘Sex on the Beach’ in 1926 Picasso-inspired Work

By Paul Chimera

Salvador Dali Historian

Salvador Dali called Pablo Picasso his “artistic father,” and the elder Spaniard’s influence on some of Dali’s early work is undeniable – such as in the subject of today’s blog post: the small, approx. 8 inch by 11 inch “Figures Lying on the Sand” of 1926.

Sex on the beach?

Not only did Picasso paint “The Bathers” and several similar works that invite comparison to the Dali painting, but clearly Picasso’s Cubism is readily seen in the style in which Dali has formed the robust reclining female figures.

“This work must have been inspired by Dali’s visit to Picasso’s Paris studio, the impact the visit had on him along with his expulsion the same year from the Fine Art School of San Fernando in Madrid, representing a change in Dalinian work and the beginning of innovative aesthetic paths,” notes the painting’s owner – the Teatro-Museo Dali in Figueres, Spain.

But something it seems no one has acknowledged is the fairly overt sexual nature of this work. At age 22, it’s pretty safe to say Salvador had normal, healthy urges. That his libido was amped up as one would expect.

Dali’s erotic mind communicated directly with the guidance of his brush strokes, and there is no doubt that the hands of the two reclining women at left are quite purposely placed as they are. These are not merely figures lying on a beach, seeking a sun tan, dear reader. These are women in the act of self-pleasuring, their heads tilted back in obvious ecstasy, their inhibitions checked at the door, both seeking something in addition to a good tan!

While Salvador Dali unapologetically tossed the normally very private act of masturbation onto canvases like his well-known “The Great Masturbator” of 1929, obviously a focus on this form of human sexuality appeared well before that in Dali’s oeuvre, as the present work attests.

And while self-stimulation was almost exclusively centered on Dali’s own desires and conduct, we now see, in “Figures Lying on the Sand,” that what’s good for the goose is indeed also good for the gander!

If we were to cite four major influences or themes in the art of Salvador Dali, they would undoubtedly be these: the landscape of his native Spanish countryside; his wife Gala; the inevitability and tragedy of death; and, to be sure, the sexual instinct.

All four themes pervaded virtually all of Dali’s works throughout his remarkable career.

Holography was ‘New House of Creation’ for Dali

By Paul Chimera

Salvador Dali Historian

In the early 1970s, just when I thought Salvador Dali couldn’t top the amazing works he was creating at the easel, along came an article in TIME magazine that literally knocked me on my gluteus maximus.

I was introduced to an utterly new phenomenon – holography – and how Salvador Dali was the first major artist to leverage this breakthrough technology for fine art purposes.

Accompanying the TIME story, headlined “Dali in 3D,” was a black & white image of his hologram, “Polyhedron – Basketball Players Being Transformed into Angels.”

Polyhedron: capturing the third dimension.

Now, this will sound as inane as it does naïve, but – completely inexpert on the how’s and why’s of holography – I literally believed Dali had achieved a true third-dimension on a flat surface, without the aid of any optical devices.

The strange shape of the polyhedron and the distorted images of the basketball players as seen in the TIME article had me believing that, somehow, the great Salvador Dali had done it! He had actually figured out a way to have his painted images extend from his canvas. Again, using only his brushes, paints, and imagination! Crazy, I know.

However, as I came to understand what Dali was doing at this time, I grew more knowledgeable and sophisticated – but no less blown away by what Dali was exploring for the first time in history.

“All artists,” said Dali, “have been concerned with three dimensional reality since the time of Velasquez, and in modern times, the analytic cubism of Picasso tried again to capture the three dimensions of Velasquez. Now,” Dali continued, “with the genius of (Dr. Dennis) Gabor, the possibility of a new Renaissance in art has been realized with the use of holography. The doors have been opened for me into a new house of creation.”

That new house of creation took up residence for a time at the Knoedler Gallery in New York City, a long-since defunct gallery that was Dali’s exclusive New York exhibition venue for years. I had the special opportunity to privately tour that show, which included the hand-painted “Polyhedron” master, as well as several other holograms, one involving a crystal grotto and a deep sea diving helmet with adjoining outfit.

This was many years ago and my memory of it is murky. But I do recall how, for the first time, thanks to the technology underpinning holography, Salvador Dali works were now being expressed with a true 3D effect. Crude by today’s holographic capabilities, but unprecedented and innovative in their day.

Dali did a cylindrical hologram of musician Alice Cooper’s brain.

In Dali’s own description of “Polyhedron”: “Holographic view of a room in the Museum of Dali in Figueras, containing the double portrait of Gala, basketball players in the process of becoming angels painted in the facets of a giant polyhedron, and a terrestrial glove on which are pinned Figueras in Spain and Cleveland in America, places where the two Dali museums exist.”

Shortly after Dali delved into holograms, he opened the door to yet another new house of creation – using an old concept but cutting-edge optics technology: stereoscopic paintings. Many in much larger scale than the relatively small hologram works.

Dali’s artistic mind was never far from the latest in modern science, especially when it involved optical phenomena.

Dali Portrait of Gala Completely Devoid of ‘Shenanigans’

By Paul Chimera

Salvador Dali Historian

Salvador Dali’s unpredictability was an undeniable part of his appeal.

What would the “divine Dali” do next, we often wondered? What astonishment would emerge from his easel? What controversial new work was going to make worldwide headlines tomorrow? How would he shock us today?

So it must have come as a surprise to much of the art world when the splendid “Gala Nude, Seen From Behind” emerged from the studio of the eccentric, surrealist master and “clown prince of art” in 1960. This superb painting is possibly the single most straight-forward work of Dali’s career. Not a flicker of funny business here. Not a shard of shenanigans. Not a sliver of Surrealism.

Instead, the then-56-year-old Dali gave us a remarkable portrait of his wife Gala – one that demonstrates his astounding technical skill. From his subject’s detailed coiffure to the tactile quality of her skin to the exactitude of the sheeting, with its realistic folds and shadows, this is without doubt one of the most striking portraits by any artist of the 20^th century.

Striking simplicity.

It’s further evidence that Salvador Dali was a brilliant draftsman/technician while advancing some of the most mind-boggling and innovative ideas the art world had ever seen.

So what was the idea behind Gala’s pose in this work, which is owned by the Teatro-Museo Dali in Figheres, Spain? She seems clearly to have her gaze purposely fixed on…something. Something unseen. Something out of our view. Something invisible, yet clearly commanding her attention.

Alas, while the title is generally noted as “Gala Nude, Seen From Behind,” the Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali in Figueres, Spain, proffers a far more intriguing and perhaps more fitting title: “Gala From Behind, Looking in an Invisible Mirror.”

It’s certainly more fitting from the point of view of how Dali titled so many of his works – in a manner that often left us nonplussed. The “Invisible Mirror” title certainly changes things up some!

And there’s that unpredictability thing again. Is it a mirror Gala is looking up at, which simply is out of view to us? Was there ever a mirror in the first place?

In any case, it appears to account for the fixed gaze Gala adopted here, almost as if she was anticipating something that’s about to command her attention, as she posed for her artist husband.

How interesting that most of the early portraits Salvador Dali painted of his sister, Ana Maria, were rear views – and in this iconic portrait of Gala, Dali again paints his subject from behind.

One thing is certain. When people not especially familiar with Salvador Dali ask, “Isn’t he the artist who painted those droopy clocks?”, we can reply with assurance: “Oh, he was that guy, all right – and so much more.”