On May 11 this year. 120 years have passed since the birth of one of the most unusual and famous artists of the 20th century. Salvador Dali made the whole world talk about him by turning his name into a successful brand.
„The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad”, Dali says and leads a small anteater on a leash with a brisk step towards the television studio. He has absolutely no idea how to handle the pet and just throws it into the lap of the woman sitting next to him, then starts answering questions in a wild Spanish accent.
This is not Dali's first appearance with animals - he once exited the subway with a large anteater, and is also often seen with an ocelot named Babu. The artist holds him by the neck so he doesn't accidentally bite him. Accent, clothing, shape of mustache, personal life, every appearance in public - all this is a performance in which Dalí plays the main role and sits in the front row. The main principle in his life is that people talk a lot about him. To criticize or flatter - it doesn't matter.
Salvador Dali takes on all the projects in which he can experiment: he participated in a chocolate commercial, developed a logo for Chupa Chups and Eurovision, is interested in perfumes, invents a telephone in the shape of a lobster and a sofa in the shape of lips. He collaborated with Walt Disney, Alfred Hitchcock, fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli and choreographer Leonid Myasin. The artist even gives extravagant lectures: once he dresses in a diving suit and he clings to it so much that he has to be rescued.
Dali's works are so expensive that the founder of surrealism, André Breton, made the anagram Avida Dollars from his name - “greedy for dollars”. In response to the joke, Salvador painted the picture “Apotheosis of the Dollar&ldquo ;. However, financial matters are mostly decided by his Russian wife, the emigrant Elena Dyakonova, nicknamed Gala. It was she who handled the business while Dali created - she did not bargain so much as raise scandals and threaten clients.
The artist was not interested, he was so fascinated by Gala that he was ready to break off relations with his family. And endures the endless antics of his beloved, no less perverse than his own. When Dalí bought her the Gothic castle of Pubol, she forbade him to visit her without written permission. But she freely takes her lovers there: measured family life does not interest her. After meeting Dalí, she left her 11-year-old daughter Cécile in the care of her husband, the poet Paul Eluard. Her children weighed her down and took her away from the bohemian life.
Salvador and Gala like to invent legends about themselves, often contradicting each other. For a long time, the origin of the woman remained a mystery - Dali's muse could not have had an ordinary childhood. In fact, she was born in Kazan to a lawyer, went to Switzerland to be treated for tuberculosis - and ended up staying in Europe. Salvador also likes to fantasize about his childhood and the origin of his “abnormality”. Until one day his sister writes in her memoirs that he is a completely calm and ordinary person who at one point “puts on the mask of Dali”.
Unlike the external buffoonery, the inner world of the artist is depressingly calm - he expresses it in his paintings. His mature paintings are desolate and cold surreal spaces with many metamorphoses. Here a fish flies out of a pomegranate, and tigers fly out of its mouth. There, elephants roam on spider legs with historic buildings on their backs. In the works, it is easy to recognize each image individually, be it a horse, a woman, a clock or a giraffe, but together they form something inexplicable. Like a dream you try to remember but always slips from your memory.
Surrealism is not Dali's discovery. Attempts to escape from reality interest many artists. Metaphysical themes were explored in particular by the Italian Giorgio de Chirico - his desert spaces are also full of symbols. Later, the writer Andre Breton created a whole manifesto of surrealism, the essence of which is to free the mind from the rational. To do this, one can resort to hypnosis, psychoanalysis and dreams.
Early in his career, Salvador seriously studied the artistic craft - techniques and styles from antiquity to cubism. I admired Raphael's work, he tries to paint in the spirit of impressionism and realism, works with volumes, perspective and color. And then he chooses surrealism, not according to Breton's rules - Dalí hates rules - but at his own discretion.
He complements the complex, philosophical and sometimes dramatically frightening pictures with his extravagant image and behavior. Because he understands: to attract interest in art in the modern world, it is not enough to be a good artist – you have to be able to present yourself and sell yourself. He masters this skill to perfection: even critics are always looking forward to his next trick, picture or show appearance. During his lifetime, Dalí managed to turn his own name into a brand, becoming one of the highest paid and most extravagant stars of the 20th century.
Source: RIA Novosti