S A L V A D O R M U S E

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"'What is Surrealism?'...surrealism is myself."Salvador Dali in Manuel del Arco: Dali in the Nude

With these words, Dali summarized the feelings of thepublic at large. For many, Dali is the heart and soul of theSurrealist Movement. To recognize the importance of sur-realism in Dali's career, the Salvador Dali Museum presents"Memories of Surrealism," an exhibition opening onSaturday, September 24 in the Raymond James CommunityRoom. "Memories of Surrealism" features two completegraphic suites and one partial suite from the 1970s in whichDali surveys his accomplishments as a surrealist artist in thelate 1920s and early 1930s. Throughout these suites, Daliswings back and forth between jocularity and provocation,recapturing the euphoric nature of his best surrealist work.

The exhibit's centerpiece, which is also the show's title,is "Memories of Surrealism." Combining etching and col-lage, it consists of twelve original etchings on photolithosof original gouaches, published by Transworld Ait in 1971.The suite represents Dali's meditation on Surrealism bothas an historically-bound movement and as a timelesssource of inspiration which has not lost its vitality.

This suite will be supplemented by two additional printsuites which also present Dali's reflection on his surrealistaccomplishments. "Quevedo's Visions" is a suite of six orig-inal engravings with stencil published jointly byBorjeson/Eclitions Graphiques Internationales and Jean-Paul Loup in 1975. "After Fifty Years of Surrealism" is asuite of twelve original etchings with stencil published byTransworld Art in 1974. Six will be featured in this exhibit.

Surrealistic portrait of Dalisurrounded by butterflies

Continued on inside page

This image 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.

It was Allan Rich ofTransworld Art whoapproached Dali with theidea for the "Memory ofSurrealism" suite. Dalilatched onto the ideaimmediately, possiblyintrigued by the theme ofmemory which held sucha powerful grip on hisown career. When Dalicreated these twelveimages in 1971, fifty yearshad passed since hepainted The Persistence ofMemory, his mostcelebrated canvas. In theintervening decades, Dalihad moved far afieldfrom his original ties withsurrealism. He hadbecome involved in bothmodern science and reli-gious symbolism, sum-marized in his 1951 pam-phlet Manifesto Mystique.He had developed unfor-gettable double-imagepaintings, a series ofmonumental canvases inRenaissance masters, and

the style of thethree-dimensional

works using holography and stereo-optics.Dali had also become a household name, forhe had attached his name to outlandish com-mercial ventures while developing a personalflair for public spectacle. People were wearingDali ties and jewelry while regularly seeing theartist on television shows such as "What's MyLine" and "The Jack Parr Show."

Yet all of this fame and success would havebeen impossible to imagine without the nurtur-ing role of the Surrealist Movement, which pro-vided Dali with memories coloring all of hissubsequent work. When Dali arrived in Paris in1929, he was greeted as the golden boy whocould do no wrong. Andre Breton, the leader ofthe movement, was prompted to say, "It is per-haps, with Dali, the first time that the mentalwindows have opened wide." While he was amember of the group, Dali developed his artis-tic skills while honing his ability to shock, twotools which he would use eventually to, in his

words, "conquer theworld."So it is quite apt to findDali in 1971 re-exploringhis own memories of theperiod when everythingwas still new, when hewas developing his cele-brated "paranoiac-criticalmethod." In "Memoriesof Surrealism," Dalirenews his ability toastonish and confound,the two traits that char-acterize his best surreal-ist work. The titles alonedemonstrate his excite-ment for the subject, asin A ngel of DadaSurrealism, Ultra Sur-realistic corpusculaireGalutska, Caring for aSurrealistic watch andSurrealistic gastronomy.These references to thepast have been cap-tured visually in a typeof graphic shorthand, forDali has employed a

rapid, improvisational approach to these printscharacteristic of his fluency during his latercareer. Using collage as his primary method,Dali places recognizable imagery within abstractpatterns to create a truly strange, enigmaticworld; a world where false memories are asimportant as the real ones. As Dali said in theSecret Life, "The difference between false mem-ories and true ones is the same as for jewels: itis always the false ones that look...the mostbrilliant." In a way, this suite is similar to aRorschach test where Dali can fluently connectwith earlier memories without worrying about"getting it right." The feeling of the memory ismore important than the actual historical factdepicted.

Turning to the images themselves, many arereadily identifiable from Dali's surrealist years.Some of the classic icons from the 1930s foundin this suite include the rose-faced woman inSurrealist flower girl, the stork-legged elephantof Space elephant, and the clock-eye peeringover the horizon in The eye of Surrealistic time.

Crazy, crazy, crazy, Minerva

Angel ofDada Surrealism

Dali's past is still a fertile ground for provoca-tive imagery. However, while the sources forthese images may be discernible, their specificmeanings prove much more elusive. For exam-ple, in the Surrealist king, Dali has combinedphotos of starfish with a royal crest of arms toform the shape of a person. Is Dali saying thatthe surrealist king is the king of aquatic life,beyond the human terrain? Or could he be theking of rejuvenation, since starfish can growback broken limbs? Such possibilities seemendless in these prints.

Other images suggest inspiration on aneven deeper level. In Crazy, crazy, crazy,Minerva, one of the most memorable imagesin the suite, Dali ponders the nature ofinsanity and its inherent power to create a self-enclosed reality. Minerva's face is the face ofthe famed Venus de Milo, which Dali trans-formed in his Hallucinogenic Toreador. TheVenus wears a garment made of decorativeabstract patterns, including a swatch of pulsingcolor and a magnified photo of sperm. A

butterfly adorns her forehead and she iscrowned by a large golden headpiece contain-ing two penguins and a knobby orb in betweenthem. The placement of these odd penguinsrecalls earlier designs where Dali would usetwo faces looking at each other to create theshape of a chalice in the negative space. Buthere there is an orb instead of a chalice, creat-ing the effect of a nose between the two pen-guin eyes, thus becoming a monstrous facelooking directly out from the headpiece. Thistransformation suggests the type of camouflagethat insects have developed to scare awaypredators, and possibly alludes to the kind ofprotective mask that Minerva can clon in "civi-lized" society.

Dali's own self-portrait is one of his mostentertaining prints in the suite. Surrealistic por-trait of Dali surrounded by butterflies featuresthe photo of Dali by Philippe Halsman fromthe book Dali's Mustache where Dali's facewas superimposed on Leonardo da Vinci'sMona Lisa. This photo originally referred toMarcel Duchamp's L.H.O.O.Q., whereDuchamp had drawn a mustache on a repro-duction of the Mona Lisa. Dali makes the hilar-iously irreverent effect of Duchamp's transfor-mation even more perverse by presenting him-self as the new Mona Lisa, the man behind themustache who is the fabled "woman."

In this print, Dali places the same photo onthe face of a young girl whose breast isexposed. Dali's bug-eyed gaze and upturnedmustache completely undermine the sense ofgrace and sweetness that the girl's originalimage must have conveyed. The flowers in herhand and the garland of leaves around herhead indicate that she may have been a repre-sentation of spring. Thus Dali becomes the leastattractive flower girl imaginable, ushering in aspring unlike any seen before. The swirl of but-terflies around the Dali/girl reinforces thetheme of metamorphosis suggested by themale/female self-portrait. Dali often said that heand his wife Gala were one being, a singleandrogynous male/female entity. He evensigned their names together on many of hisworks; "Gala-Salvador Dali." Here he pokes funat this idea while inviting all comments possi-ble through his provocative exhibitionism.Surely a fitting image for a Pandora's box worthof memories.

In "Quevedo's Visions" from 1975, Daliagain returns to the fertile ground of his surre-alist days. The decaying, putrefying figures thatpopulated his surrealist canvases in the 1930sare redeveloped in six prints inspired byFrancisco Gomez de Quevedo (1580-1645.)Quevedo was a Spanish satirist who merciless-ly exposed the vices of mankind. One of hismajor works, Suenos, features a horrific seriesof descriptions of Hell. Dali's printscapture the flavor of this early Spaniard'srelentless depiction of suffering in the afterlife.This theme is similar to Dali's own surrealistcanvases which dealt with a nightmarish suf-fering more of this world than the next, suchas Soft Co nstru ctio n with Bo iled Bea ns(Premonition of Civil War). The endlesscrutches, bones and pieces of raw meat inthese prints are another return to Dali's surre-alist occupations.

"Fifty Years After Surrealism," also createdfor Transworld Art in 1974, is a continuation of

Surrealistic king

the "Memories of Surrealism" suite. Limitinghimself to hand-colored etchings instead of theearlier suite's combination of collage and etch-ing, Dali fashions an austere summary of fur-ther icons from his surrealist years. These iconsinclude three "Average Bureaucratic" giantswith drawers in their heads, an image ofFreud's head in the shape of a snail's shell, andDali's unforgettable image of a burning giraffebeing thrown from a window. An enigmaticportfolio from an artist who transformed theway people see the world around them.

"Memories of Surrealism" will be on exhibitin the Raymond James Community Room untilJanuary 29, 1995.

- Peter Tush,Assistant Curator

Dressed in the nude in the Surrealistic fashion

I \I I I! I I I II \ II I E

Tir&geMEMORIES OF SURREALISMThere are 250 examples for the American edition and 250 examples for the Frenchedition. Each is numbered as follows:

exami

• 175 copies on Arches numbered A/1 to 175• 40 copies onjapon numbered A/I to XL• 10 copies onjapon dedicated by the artist and lettered A/Ato J• 25 Artist proofs on Arches numbered A/I to XXV

|M \ I9lfEach print is signed and numbered by the artist. All etching plates and stones have beendestroyed.The lithographs were made at the Atelier Claude Jobin, Paris, France.The etchings were made at the Ateliers Rigal, Fontenay-aux-Roses, France.The Salvador Dali Museum owns example A/17.

AFTER 5O YEARS OF SURREALISMThere are -i6() examples of this suite, with t\vo American editions and two Frencheditions. Each is numbered as follows:

• The two Regular editions are each limited to 195 examples on Arches paper,numbered either A/1 to 195, or F/l-195.

• The two Deluxe double editions are each limited to 35 examples; consisting ofone suite onjapon and one on Arches, numbered A/I to XXXV and F/I to

The Salvador Dali Museum owns a partial, mixed set.

VISIONS E>E QUEVEDO(also known as Dalinian Fantasia)There are 700 examples of this suite, numbered as follows:

• 100 on Richard de Bos, numbered 1/100 to 100/100 (Loup)• 20O onjapon, numbered 1/200 to 200/200• 100 on Richard de Bas, numbered I/C to C/C• 300 on Arches, numbered 1 to 3OO, with Swedish text (Borjeson)

The Salvador Dali Museum owns example I/C.

S A L V A D O R

DALI

Events s s

Continuing Exhibition:Selections front the Permanent Collection,

In the museum's main gallery, 56 major paintings, representative of the panorama of Dali's art selected from the muse-um's enormous permanent collection, are exhibited chronologically and illustrate the four principal periods of Dali'swork.

February 3 - 12, 1995:Surrealist Student Art Exhibit

The museum will host the Third Annual Student Surrealist Exhibit in the Raymond James Community Room. Students,parents, teachers and the public will have an opportunity to see the quality of art being taught in local Pinellas Countyschools.

February 18 - August 27, 1995:Galuchka: Dali's Russian Muse.

Gala atid Dali in photographs byRobert Deschames.

90 photographs celebrating Gala Dali, Salvador Dali's Russian wife. These photos were primarily taken by RobertDescharnes and span Gala's life from 1894 to her death on June 10, 1982. Gala, whom Dali fondly referred to as"Galuchka" after a remembered Russian character from childhood, was the most significant person in Dali's life, fulfillingthe roles of mother, lover, business manager and muse. Robert Descharnes, a French photographer and friend to the Dali'sfor over forty years, was Dali's personal secretary from 1981 until Dali's death in 1989.

September 24, 1994 -January 29, 1995:Memories of Surrealism,

A collage of significant themes and recollections of Dali's years in the Surrealist Movement in the early 1930s is repre-sented by these colorful graphics. The suite of 12 drypoint etchings on photolithographs was published by TransworldArt in 1971. The exhibit will be supplemented by selections from Dali's 1974 suite "After 50 Years of Surrealism "athe 1975 suite "Visions ofQuevedo."

T, Marshall RousseauKxecitlitv Din-clur

Joan R. Kropl"Curator

Mark L ElliottOfx-ratious Director

Wayne AlherholtMarketin&I'R Director

Kathy WhiteMerchandise Director

Hal PiperIX't 1'lopitit'itl Director

Sherman TaylorFinance Director

Exhibition Notes is published by Salvador Dali Museum, Inc. 1OOO '{"bird Street South, St. Petersburg, FL 33701, USA,Telephone. (813) 823-3767, Fax: (813) 894-6068. Copyright 1994, all rights reserved. No reproduction of this mate-rial is permitted without the permission of the Marketing/Public Relations Director.

Sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs and the Florida ArtsCouncil.

Notes by S a l v a d o r D a l ir e g a r d i n g h i s

MEMORIES OF SURREALISM

ANGEL OF DADA SURREALISMHe does not hold back his laughter since this is noth-

ing but a poster and posters are the most serious epito-mes of the objective amalgrams of the ideas of our time.The angel of melancholy will obviously remain melan-choly with its black wings but the picture itself is like apiece of gruyere cheese in an advanced stage of putre-faction, or rather like a roquefort cheese as painted byValdes Leal in the "Triumph of ihe Cross" at the CharityHospital in Sevilla, or in the "Two Corpses". Valdes Leal,painter, sculptor, engraver and architect was born anddied in Sevilla, 1622-1690; he was, with constant com-pkiccncy, pictured the most repulsive horrors of death:thanks to this poster he is sure to become one of theforemost surrealistic figures with the help of Mr.Rosenberg who wants to publish it. The work is nowready, it is the sweet at the end of the meal; a true trib-ute to Juan Valdes Nica Leal who said that life is a bitterexperience: death, after all, is only perhaps a sweet expe-rience.

SURREALISTIC FLOWER GIRLA tribute to Guy de Maupassant: one of his short sto-

ries has always been my favorite. You will remember it.It is the one of the baker with a temperature of 102, Ibelieve, and his wife has put some eggs under hisarmpits for him to brood. Because of the high fever,there is a wonderful moment when the bed is full of lit-tle chickens emerging from the unfortunate baker'sarmpits filling the room with sweat odour. And this, inaddition, at a time when surely hormones did not exist.All the liille chickens are atnning behind you gloriously.The same all with the vegetating surrealistic little licewhich I have brooded under my own armpits.

ULTRA SURREALISTICCORPUSCLAIRE GALUTSKA

The picture which is the origin of this son of glori-ous and delirious collage is exactly called "Assumpta cor-puscularia lapis lazulina", and yesterday morning at 11p.m. - you will notice that I always say yesterday morn-ing at 11 p.m. so that nobody should think that mywatches work like any other watches - I had the genialintuition which is going to enlighten you about nuclearphysics. The true anti-protonic forces can only be seenthrough the action of neutrinos. Everybody knows, andhas learned in school since this is elementary nuclearphysics, that neutrinos have no atomic weight, nor anysubstance of any kind. The only thing they have, andthey are the only ones to have it, is this marvelous thing

called "spin", a rotary energy force, and this is why,instead of making everything revolve, I give it anti-pro-tonic vertically.

SPACE ELEPHANTIn the text of picture 8 we refer to the famous stork

leg. Now in order to make it legitimate and monumentalI shall proceed to give it a shape; not the shape of acrutch but of a true stork leg in the legs of the famousDalinian elephant. This can only be a true TriumphalArch, since Houlle, the great cabinet maker of Louis XIV,had always thought that he should erect this elephant,which thanks to Dali, will forever have stork legs, in theexact place of the present Arc de Triomphe in Paris, builtfrom Chalgrin's plans, dedicated on July 29, 1836, (Aftera mile of prose on the Arc tie Triomphe, full stop.)

SURREALISTIC KINGLet this be quite clear today: I am not only a first

class plagiarist, but also one of the first thieves, just likethe God Mercury who was chief of the thieves. Lest any-body say that I am dishonest to the people I rob, let it beknown by all, according to the tradition of the legitimatekings, that I hereby declare that all I am doing is a repe-tition of the appropriation process, which is not achievedby Marcel Duchamp in his ready-made, but that of LouisXIV, when at the glorious time of his reign, he said "L'etatc'est Moi" (Some information on Louis XIV, the Great:called Dieuclonne—Heaven-sent—for his birth had beenawaited 23 years, son of Louis XIII and Anne of Austria,he was born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye in 1638, was kingof France from 1643 to 1715 and died in Versailles. Hewas not yet five when he succeeded his father under theregency of his mother and the ministry of Mazarin. In1661, after Mazarin's death,. Louis XIV announced to theCouncil of Ministers that he intended to rule by himselffrom then on "L'etat c'est Moi".)

THE EYE OF SURREALISTIC TIMEThe first idea I ever had about the Eye of Time. I

know it well: with it I made a jewel for the Owen R.Cheatham Foundation. A jewel representing a large eye,and in its pupil you can see the wheel-work of a clockand the lens which must preferably belong to someonewho has never drunk any liquor, for the bottom must beblueish and pure, like an aquamarine without the stigmaof a liver complaint. The hands on the clock dial move-in slow motion, because liver complaints accelerate thepulse of life, as Theophrastus Bombastus vonHohenheim, known as Paracelsus proved in his book on

the combustion of stomachs (one could devote, at thisjuncture, ten pages to Paracelsus, the father of hermeticmedicine, horn in Einsiedeln, Switzerland in 1493 anddied in Salzburg, Austria in 1541, to his doctrine of cor-respondences between the outside world and the variousparts of the human body; especially to the combustion ofstomachs).

SURREALISTIC PORTRAIT OF DALISURROUNDED BY BUTTERFLIES

If you wish to attract bombyx moths, all you have todo is to hang into your bedroom, your dining room oranywhere else, the tail of a cod. Fifteen minutes laterthere come the moths which are those the divine Dalibrought to the ball given by the Baron de Rede. Themoths were still in their little silk cocoons and had beensupplied by Mao Tse Tung's embassy in Paris; they weresupposed to hatch exactly at the time the Baron wouldhave opened the ball. This unfortunately did not happendue l<> a mistake on the pan of the specialist who hadcalculated the time at which the cocoons would open. Ifthe hatching had taken place at the right time, theBaron's palace would have been completely full of bom-byx moths; this would have been the greatest surrealistichappening of the century. I immediately informed Mr.Rosenberg in New York, by telephone; from the otherside of the Atlantic he sent me a cable saying "Bombyx,bombyx, bravo, bravo, bravo".

DRESSED IN THE NUDEIN THE SURREALISTIC FASHION

This surrealistic object originates in the Dalinianmotto: when you pretend to leave in the memory of thearistocratic society, dear to our hearts, an almost imper-ishable recollection, the best advice you can get is thisone: when you are still very, very young, preferably inyour teens, kick, as strongly as you can the right leg ofthe person you love, that is to say of the aristocrat whocan help you in life. This aristocrat will say "Ouch!" andwill raise his right leg and therefore stand in the precar-ious position of a stork, since storks stand on one leg.Just at that time Salvador Dali will turn up hypocritically,according to the manners of the Company of Jesus andthe theories of St. Ignatius of Loyola, carrying a crutch sothat the aristocrat will not fall. So, first a strong kick inthe aristocratic leg, then as soon as the aristocrat hasbecome one-legged, Dali rushes in, double faced as ever,bringing the famous crutch in its sheath. (This text canbe repeated as many times as you wish and as slowly aspossible so that the aristocrat, whilst remaining slightlygrateful for not having been thrown to the ground, willremember for the rest of his life having been kicked bySalvador Dali as a young man).

CRAZY, CRAZY, CRAZY, MINERVAMinerva is the opposite of a grass-hopper, and my

enemy, my phobia is the hopper. For hoppers, "cavalet-ti", are like the "cavali", the wild boars that are hunted,

and in respect of which Nietsche recommended that theybe killed so that Dionysios be changed into Apollo: thusby killing the grasshopper or the boar you can reach theGoddess of intelligence. The Emperor Trajan was a greathunter of wild boars; he killed them with a lance as youcan see on the medals in Rome, and so did Philip IV ofSpain. The same sort of hunting was practiced in the timeof Velasquez, as he proved when he painted the "TelaReal", the Royal Canvass which is in the National Galleryin London (and on which one can write several immor-tal pages of surrealistic litterature).

CARING FOR A SURREALISTIC WATCHDali has chosen Georges de Latour's painting, which

represents a new born child carried under the light of acandle with a luxury of precautions, for a very definitereason: to show that it is with the same delicate care thatone should deal with the Great Question, the most tran-scendental of the super-Einstcinian era, of AlbertEinstein, at first super-gelatinous, then Freudian andfinally Dalinian, in the direction of the explosive legiti-macy of everything looking terribly soft and peaceful.

SURREALISTIC CRUTCHESA tribute to Spanish architect Emilio Pinero whose

^eoilesical dome is designed to protect ihe most surrealistic of all genetic structures discovered so far. (The domeis that of the Dali Museum at Figueras.) This genetic dis-covery has been made by two Nobel Prize winners,Crick, and Englishman and Watson, an American biolo-gist: the double helix is an anticipated representation ofnothing less than continuity between heaven and earthin Jacob's ladder, based on the molecular slnictures ofdesoxyribonucleical acid—but perhaps, and even proba-bly also of the structures that are going to defeat, in anultrasurrealistic way, the flood of cancer on our earth.

SURREALISTIC GASTRONOMYFilms will be completely out in five years. Out, first-

ly, because nothing good has ever come out of them,except—perhaps—"Le Chien Anclalou" which I madeand which could have given to those who would haveliked to work a feeling of continuity. Then, and aboveall, because now exists the "video-cassette" which I justreceived as a gift from Mr. Rosenberg. Just as squires, atsome point, had their homecorpse, they can now owntheir home-video-cassette; with this they will be able tomake their own pseudo-artistic shit and will no longerrequire film studios, for it is unthinkable, that in order toproduce shit one should have to go through film studios.People will produce their shit every morning without ascript, without a photographer, without anything. Withvideo-cassettes, the world will become a monumentalgarbage dump, where everyone will he able to relieveone.seIf at ease wi thou t any need lo 140 to the movies.

Text from portfolio boxcourtesy of Transwortd Art Corp.