The Art of Salvador Dali

Because of these peccadilloes, Dali is often relegated to the margins of serious art history. In recent years, however, several important publications and a spate of large, international exhibitions, culminating in the current retrospective, have obscured the cult of personality and prompted reevaluations of Dali's contributions.

Indeed, the current retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art drives home the point that Dali was a serious artist of considerable intellectual vision and artistic talent. As a key figure in popularizing Surrealism, one of the most important artistic and literary movements of the Twentieth Century, he must be reckoned with in any substantial discussion of modern art.

With 150 paintings, works on paper, sculpture, photographs and a documentary section, "Salvador Dali" illuminates the range and quality of his oeuvre. The exhibition was organized by the Palazzo Grassi of Venice with the Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation of Figueres, Spain, in collaboration with the Philadelphia Museum and with the support of the Dali Museum in St Petersburg, Fla. The retrospective was curated by a team headed by Dali scholar Dawn Ades, who is also a major contributor to the exhibition catalog, and Michael Taylor, the Philadelphia Museum's curator of modern art.

"Salvador Dali" is on view at the Philadelphia Museum through May 15; and as museum director Anne d'Harnoncourt correctly observes, the show provides "a splendid opportunity for scholars, artists and visitors to encounter a complete and complex picture of the artist's oeuvre."

Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dali I. Domenech (1904-1989) was born in Figueres. His father was a respected lawyer and local government notary, his mother the daughter of a Barcelona haberdasher. Growing up in comfortable circumstances, Dali's art was encouraged at an early age.

The exhibition is organized chronologically, starting with Dali's earliest efforts at art school in Madrid, where he quickly absorbed the techniques of such Spanish masters as Goya, Velazquez and Zurbaran, as well as learning about Impressionism and Cubism.

Highlights among early works on view are two highly realistic paintings, "Figure at a Window," 1925, depicting his younger sister from behind gazing across a body of water to the land beyond, and "The Basket of Bread," 1926, a nearly photorealistic rendering of four slices of bread in a wicker basket resting on a rumpled white cloth. "Basket" drew admiration and started Dali on the road to international fame when it was shown in the United States.

An early and continuing influence on Dali was Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), whose theories about the "unconscious" and dream interpretations were the basis of Surrealism. That artistic and literary movement, arising in the 1920s, sought to express the inner workings of the mind through visual imagery and writing. Freud was dismissive of Dali when they met in 1938, prompting the artist to begin moving away from Freudian ideas and to embrace Catholicism and nuclear physics in his work.

In the late 1920s, responding to the example of his Spanish contemporaries Joan Miro and Pablo Picasso and drawing on his interest in Freud's theories, Dali began works such as "Unsatisfied Desires," 1928, in which he introduced eroticism in the form of an explicit representation of male and female sex organs. "Cencitas," or "Little Ashes," 1928, depicts a meticulously painted pink torso amidst a swarm of objects and fragments of figures.

In 1929, Dali met Russian-born Gala Eluard, wife of well-known Surrealist poet Paul Eluard. Charmingly seductive yet mercilessly cold and ten years Dali's senior, she soon left her husband for the 28-year-old artist. They married in 1934. Several portraits in the exhibition hint at the allure, power and secretiveness of this domineering woman, who served as Dali's enduring companion, artistic muse and alter ego. She apparently helped rid the artist of his fears of impotence and other sexual hang-ups. Under her watchful eye, he felt more secure, and his paintings opened up to new kinds of symbolism.

Dali is best known for the explosive Surrealist images he created over the decade 1929-1939, after meeting Eluard. In these works, he incorporated his personal dreams and obsessions into some of the most memorable images of Twentieth Century art. One of the more enigmatic works in the show, "The First Day of Summer," 1929, reflects Dali's commitment to Freudian symbolism. Depicting sexually oriented aspects of the artist's life, its autobiographical theme is documented by a childhood portrait of Dali affixed to the panel.

Other notable pictures, executed with the precise realism that Dali called "handmade color photography," include "The Enigma of Desire: My Mother," 1929, a complex homage to his mother, whom he worshipped and who had died when he was 16; and "Accommodations of Desire," 1929, in which he created a meticulously detailed view of a desolate Catalonian plain strewn with lions heads painted on stones - Freudian symbols of violence, passion and authority - and psychologically charged portrayals suggesting Dali's complicated relations with his parents. Andre Breton, the Surrealist writer, was so impressed with "Accommodations" that he purchased it and welcomed the artist into the Surrealist group.

Dali invented a technique that he called the "paranoiac-critical method" to explore the mysteries of the subconscious. Based on his knowledge of Freud's ideas, the artist sought to objectively depict the illusions and fantasies produced by delirium and paranoia. He used this method to give myths and legends disturbing psychological meanings.

Dali reached the peak of his Surrealist work with the celebrated "Persistence of Memory," 1931, the painting that forever secured his reputation in Twentieth Century art. This small, 91/2- by 13-inch oil on canvas introduced Dali and Surrealism to America when it was exhibited at a New York gallery in 1932. It is now owned by the Museum of Modern Art.

The precisely rendered painting features three limp pocket watches in the foreground drooping from a bare branch of an olive tree, the edge of a tablelike form and the amorphous head of the artist himself, respectively. In the background, viewed across a desertlike landscape are rugged cliffs of the Catalonian coast illuminated by the setting sun.

"Persistence" caused a sensation when displayed in Manhattan, with critics and the public alike both enthralled and perplexed by its enigmatic meaning. More recent observers think they have deciphered the message of this unforgettable painting. Art critic Robert Goff says it "depicts carefully chosen unconscious material that crystallizes Dali's paranoiac-critical method. Each watch tells a different time; their power in the conscious world vanishes in the dream state - a locus controlled by memory, not by linear time...Dali's message is that our unconscious mind is ever vigilant, ever present in our daily lives and exerts more power over us than any manmade object of the conscious world."

The paranoiac-critical approach prompted Dali's double images, as exemplified by "The Metamorphosis of Narcissus," 1937, and in the particularly remarkable "Apparition of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach," 1938. The latter is a detailed oil featuring a large white fruit bowl at the center from which emerges a visage - probably of Dali's friend, poet Frederico Garcia Lorca - a beach and distant mountains and the side of a huge dog that stretches across the width of the canvas.

While Dali lived in Paris and Italy, he displayed ambivalence toward the Spanish Civil War. Later, he supported the fascist dictatorship Francisco Franco in Spain, a stand that adversely affected his standing in the art world. His failure to take sides in the struggle, along with his perceived pro-Hitler views, led to his expulsion from the Surrealist circle in 1939.

Two paintings completed in 1936 do, however, suggest his pained reaction to the ravages of the conflict. His ambiguous stance is reflected in "Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War)," which was begun before the war broke out. The gnarled hands and head of the titanic central figure, set against a parched landscape and troubled sky, suggest Dali's fears about the impending carnage.

Also notable is "Autumnal Cannibalism," in which an entwined couple seems to represent a violent personification of the savagery of a country at war within itself. These nightmarish pictures look back to Spanish artist Francisco Goya, whose gory "Saturn Devouring One of His Children," circa 1820, may have inspired Dali's poignant allegories of his homeland in conflict.

Fleeing Europe at the outbreak of World War II, Dali and his wife came to the United States, staying first with friends and then at the St Regis Hotel in Manhattan. Although he continued to create art while in this country, most of his energies were devoted to enhancing his outrageous public persona and making money.

Capitalizing on his reputation as an expert on the unconscious, he undertook numerous commercial assignments and composed the dream sequence for Alfred Hitchcock's movie, Spellbound. The success of his first museum retrospective, at the Museum of Modern Art, late 1941, and publication of his self-promoting autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dali, 1942, made him an even bigger celebrity in America.

His serious art of this period reflected his ongoing interest in Surrealism, as well as the beginnings of a more representational, classical style. His "Soft Self-portrait with Friend Bacon" included a strip of bacon in honor of American eating habits. A rather bizarre Surrealist canvas, "Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate, One Second Before Awakening," 1944, is the standout from this time. Here, a reclining nude, modeled by Gala, hovers on flat rocks above the Mediterranean Sea, while overhead two ferocious tigers spring from the mouth of a giant red snapper, a bayoneted rifle is poised to pierce her right arm, and an elephant walks on stilted legs across the blue sea.

The retrospective explores in depth Dali's lesser-known postwar works that document his unabated technical virtuosity and interest in optical illusions, and his new concerns about religion, mysticism and nuclear physics. "The Madonna of Port Lligat (first version)," 1949; "Nuclear Cross," 1952; "Corpus Hypercubus," 1954; and "Still Life - Fast Moving," 1956, suggest the artist's effort to reconcile traditional Christian iconography with images inspired by discoveries in atomic energy and molecular biology. He called this blend of Catholicism and atomic age physics "Nuclear Mysticism."

"The Railway Station at Perpignan," 1965 depicts Dali and Gala in a complex vision of the train station near their place in Spain. The exhibition concludes with the artist's final painting, "The Swallow's Tail (Series on Catastrophes)," 1983, which features appealing Calder-like forms. Dali completed this work with a shaky hand while suffering from deep depression following the death of his soul mate Gala in 1982.

Thereafter, he refused to eat, due to a psychological inability to swallow, and was fed through tubes. Living in self-imposed isolation, he died of heart ailments at one of his homes in Spain in 1989. He was 84 - a legend in his own mind and time.

Although often denigrated in his lifetime, Dali emerges from this comprehensive retrospective as an artist whose talent and insights deserve greater appreciation. It also suggests how he sometimes frittered away his skills on kitsch works and money-making stunts. "Our role as curators of the centennial retrospective is to give Dali, the painter, writer, filmmaker, sculptor, mythmaker and performance artist, the proper recognition he deserves," concludes Michael Taylor, the Philadelphia Museum's curator of modern art.

The 608-page, illustrated exhibition catalog gives a survey of the artist's life and work, entries about each work in the retrospective; an encyclopedia explaining major personalities and areas of interest to Dali; an illustrated chronology; selected Dali writings; an exhibition list, and a bibliography. Titled simply Dali and published by Rizzoli International Publications in association with the Philadelphia Museum, it makes a huge contribution to a better understanding of Dali.

A second volume, containing essays presented by scholars at the Salvador Dali Museum in March 2004, will be published soon.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is on Benjamin Franklin Parkway at 26 Street. For information, 215-763-8100 or www.philamuseum.org. The Salvador Dali Museum is at 1000 Third Street South in St Petersburg, Fla. For information, 727-823-3767 or www.salvadordalimuseum.org.