About book The Secret Life Of Salvador Dalí (1993)
The most striking aspect of Dali is his essential conservatism. Beneath the exhibitionism, the surrealism, the extravagance is a 19th century, perhaps Spanish, clinging to rules, rigor, discipline, hierarchy, and finally religion. He found freedom within tradition, and criticized Picasso for struggling (‘reduced to slavery’) endlessly in the complete freedom of revolution. Here is his frustration at the art school faculty:I was already in full reaction against cubism. They, in order to reach cubism, would have had to live several lives! I would ask anxious, desperate questions of my professor of painting: how to mix my oil and with what, how to obtain a continuous and compact matter, what method to follow to obtain a given effect. My professor would look at me, stupefied by my questions, and answer me with evasive phrases, empty of all meaning. “My friend,” he would say, “everyone must find his own manner; there are no laws in painting. Interpret—interpret everything, and paint exactly what you see, and above all put your soul into it; it’s temperament, temperament that counts!”“Temperament,” I thought to myself, sadly, “I could spare you some, my dear professor; but how, in what proportion, should I mix my oil with varnish?”“Courage, courage,” the professor would repeat. No details—go to the core of the thing—simplify, simplify—no rules, no constraints. In my class each pupil must work according to his own temperament!”Professor of painting—professor! Fool that you were. How much time, how many revolutions, how many wars would be needed to bring people back to the supreme reactionary truth that “rigor” is the prime condition of every hierarchy, and that constraint is the very mold of form. Professor of painting—Professor! Fool that you were! Always in life my position has been objectively paradoxical—I, who at this time was the only painter in Madrid to understand and execute cubist painting, was asking the professors for rigor, knowledge, and the most exact science of draughtsmanship, of perspective, of color.It’s hard to know whether to review this as memoirs, fiction, or art, since it is all three. I didn’t realize at first that Dali added to, and amended, the facts considerably, so I found the first quarter of the book rather horrible since the portrayal of his childhood is laced with sadistic tricks and violent lashing out at innocent peers. But as I reflect it seems that, in the powerlessness of one’s early years, fantasizing about extravagant acts and violent revenge, about trying dangerous things just to see what will happen, is normal. For Dali, this extravagance is combined with constructing an artistic event out of a momentary impulse. Of course it is impossible to know how much of the imagining actually occurred at the time, and how much he is creating retrospectively with an adult’s artistic skills. But one imagines that he was quite precocious, and he certainly was suspended and expelled for something out of the ordinary.Dali’s youth is equally extreme—a lengthy description of his conversion from romantic to dandyism and an accompanying bender is of uncertain accuracy, but hilarious. In the midst of this period, a visit to a brothel brings out a typical observation: ‘So it is true for me eroticism must always be ugly, the esthetic always divine, and death beautiful.’Then Dali moves on to Paris, and his first collaboration with Bunuel on the film Le Chien Andalou. His description of how he prepared the scene of the rotten donkeys and the pianos is not for weak stomachs, but it is a compact example of his focus on detail and the meaning of his images. He knew that Paris would make or break him, and he relied on his Spanish colleagues to pave his way.The Chien Andalou distracted me from my society career to which Juan Miro would have liked to initiate me.“I prefer to begin with rotten donkeys,” I told him. ‘This is the most urgent; the other things will come by themselves.”I was not mistaken.Back in Spain later with his wife Gala (who left her husband Eluard for Dali) Dali painted in his spiritual home on the barren Spanish coast, Cadaques. He had a falling out with his family, and associated mostly with fishermen, in between trips to Paris to sell paintings and promote himself (about which he is quite open here). He describes his return to Catholicism, but it seems to be based on the outward forms: tradition, baroque exoticism, and hierarchy, not faith itself. The outrageous stunts seem a little more desperate, self-promotion necessary to sell his work, not intrinsic surreal acts. Still a late quote embodies his devotion to tradition and the original Renaissance, and his post-war aesthetic:My metamorphosis is tradition, for tradition is precisely this—change of skin, reinvention of a new original skin which is precisely the inevitable consequence of the biological mold of that which is preceded it. It is neither surgery nor mutilation, nor is it revolution—it is renaissance. I renounce nothing; I continue. And I continue by beginning, since I had begun by finishing, in order that my end may be again a beginning, a renaissance.The most remarkable thing about the Secret Life is Dali’s superb writing. He is a true author, creating both spectacular scenes and introspective commentary. He has an exacting analytic mind, able to describe his thoughts and motivations in shockingly honest completeness. This is not a quick read; one needs to bite off chunks and then come back because it is challenging and unsettling, but also very very funny.
Dali was a fantastic writer. Here is his autobiography from youth to the age of 30, tracing his ascent to fame. He includes anecdotes that would be interesting to anyone familiar with his work: his formative years in art school, the Surrealist Exhibition at the World's Fair, his inspiration for the melting watches... but those facts pale in comparison to his writing style, which is compelling in its own right. His intricately nested metaphors, extravagant vocabulary and vainglorious attitude makes reading a fascinating (if sometimes exhausting) experience.
Do You like book The Secret Life Of Salvador Dalí (1993)?
This book changed my life and the way I used to perceive the inner lives of visual artists. It flows like a painting, it's packed with surreal images and symbols that only Dali could relate to. it's a real memoir, nothing fake, nothing hidden, just insane, strange and beautiful like Dali was.It's number one on my list of favorite books.However, I do understand why some people might not enjoy it so much, it's not for everyone. one has to know a little about the artist and surrealism in order to grasp it.
—Marlena
Salvador Dalí was thirty-seven years old when he completed this autobiography, his book of secrets, he says. He had become at this more mature age a serious Christian, a Catholic to be exact, and his quest for heaven was really all that mattered to him by then besides the love of his life, Gala, his personal fame and glory, his home and possessions, and the faith in God that has eluded him all his life. The god part was all a surprise to me and I was not expecting to learn of these extraordinary godly beliefs given the audacious mendacity of his previous behavior. Dalí was a genius and a very good writer. There really isn't any argument from me on those points at all. Actually there isn't a good argument I can come up with for not reading this book and learning something about the life of Dalí even if all he said was all made-up. I am sure some of it wasn't. But for the most part it is Dalí glorifying Dalí through every advent of his life. He did keep out of politics and the social issues of his time. But his fervor for controversy and upheaval in the art and fashion world is unmatched by any other artist I have ever studied.This large coffee-table size book is also full of photographs and copies of paintings Dalí deemed important enough to have included here. His stories of visiting New York City were interesting and I am not at all surprised he was well-received there. I did believe there would be more eroticism in his writing and his life. I am not sure why I believed this to be, but I was disappointed to find little of his sex life included here for my hungry appetite.I read this book in order to learn something I did not know, something that I could use in my own art perhaps. I do not think that happened for me. But sometimes the unconscious at work gives us what we least expect, so time will tell. But the book is definitely worth reading, if only to learn that even geniuses can believe in a Catholic god, or any god for that matter, which is something I doubt I will ever understand. There are desperate times that call for desperate measures and I too have sought comfort in a belief that would get me through my days. I have professed from time to time my own faith in God, been born-again a time or two, but in reality the stuff just doesn't take for me long-term. Yes, my ass has been on fire and the hope of redemption has been satisfying. But the truth is I don't believe a word of it. Yes I believe I live in a remarkable world and nature is itself glorious and quite spiritual in many ways for me. This amazing nature is the power greater than myself that I must believe in, not some anthropomorphic version of a deity.But I will confess to you that Jesus did visit my bedside many years ago once when I was very ill with the disease of alcoholism. I was desperate and prayed daily for relief of my pain of living without my daily beer. For almost five years I suffered without taking a drink, and a good half of that time I prayed to a god I did not understand, tithed to churches that insisted on taking my money because the bible said to, and attended regular AA meetings where the message was continually to get off my pity pot, keep it simple stupid, and quit complicating a steel ball. I prayed to accept the things I could not change, to change the things I could, and somehow learn to know the difference. I became engaged in my life again and slowly but surely left the Lord and his hungry pocketbook by the wayside. I realized that the Jesus I witnessed at my bedside was only my mind giving me what I needed at the time. Everybody has to have something to believe in, especially when the chips are down. Dalí had just been through a time of very terrible upheavals in Spain, France, and Italy during the Great Wars of the Forties and he, I suppose, had to cling to whatever belief would give him peace and a sanctuary in which to work and live in. The atomic bomb had to have been a devastating reality. But I was surprised, totally, and never saw his reconversion coming at all. In a Mike Wallace interview of 1958 Dalí said, "Just one month ago-- is one tremendous operation of appendix - a broken appendix. After this operation becoming three times more religious than before."On a curious side note, when this 1958 interview was over Wallace said, "Tonight's interview ends my series which started a year ago for the Philip Morris Company, the makers of Philip Morris, Parliament, and Marlboro cigarettes and I want to thank the Philip Morris Company, sincerely, for helping me to bring you these programs." Perhaps you remember the maverick insider, Jeffrey Wigand, who in 1995 blew the whistle on big tobacco. In an interview with the same Mike Wallace, Wigand became the first major tobacco insider to reveal that the cigarette companies were consciously trying to get us hooked on nicotine. I guess the circle can remain unbroken, even for Salvador Dalí.
—M. Sarki
