Salvador Dali in Florida

 

Persistence of Memory

 

Salvador Dalí Museum

St. Peterburg, Florida

 

Thirty-six years after his death, Salvador Dalí (1904-89) continues to fascinate everyone from college students adorning their rooms with cheap Dalí posters to collectors who shell out millions for canvases at art auctions. Not bad for an enigmatic artist whose works often induce more head-scratching than deep understanding. Part of that has to do with Dalí’s singular talent for inventing himself. His mustache is instantly recognizable as are his famed “melting clocks,” which first appeared in a 1931 painting “Persistence of Memory.” 

 

 

 

There is much about Dalí that surprises, not the least of which is St. Petersburg, Florida is home to the second-largest repository of his works in the world. (Dalí’s home town of Figueres, Spain is number one.) The St. Petersburg collection is built upon 1,500 works belonging to Reynolds and Eleanor Morse, who befriended Dalí and became major patrons for some 40 years. Last month I paid a visit to the “new” facility (1982). The museum is located several blocks from the facility I toured the previous time I was in St. Petersburg. Frankly the exterior of the old building was more interesting than architect Yann Weymouth’s glass dome encased by glass cubes, but the interior space works well.

 

Dalí is so well-known for his surrealist works and outlandish personal display that they can obliterate his other personae. He didn’t begin as a surrealist or as a mustached peacock. Most young artists start by emulating their influences. A special exhibit titled Dalí and the Impressionists launched with cooperation of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts shows how he was shaped by Monet, Degas, Renoir and cubists such as Matisse and Cézanne. He also spent his youth painting in the style of Spanish (and Catalan) masters, especially Diego Veláquez (who was also a prototype for Dalí’s mustache) and then toyed by academic realism. Only then did he turn to the style for which he is most remembered.  

 

Dali work age 14

 

 

 

 

As for surrealism, if you have to ask what you’re seeing, you’re asking the wrong question. The surrealists insisted that these were dream images. That can be tempered a bit. It’s no accident that Dalí went in that direction in the 1920s . World War One left much of Europe a devastated landscape. This helps explain the nightmarish quality of many surrealist paintings, as does substances such as absinthe, mescaline, and peyote. Dalí later denied he used drugs, but many believe that was another reinvention. There is no doubt, though, that the past war was on his mind–a bandaged soldier with crutches where his trunk should be, horses fired from canons, crucified figures, a giant hand looming over a barren landscape, the wreckage of buildings personified….

 

 

 

There is debate over Dalí’s ideology during the rise of fascism in the 1930s. He feigned neutrality but there is strong evidence that he was sympathetic to Hitler it’s irrefutable that he was a Falangist (supporter of Franco). Dalí’s chameleon nature and reputation were such, though, that his 1934 visit to the United States was a sensation. You can date the American love of Dalí to that visit. One giant Dalí canvas, “Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea,” is a masterful trompe l’oeil. Up close, it’s a nude woman with an elongated head looking through a portal. But why is there a blurry head-shot of Lincoln on the lower left. Ahh, step back about 30 yards, the woman disappears, and the entire composition morphs into Lincoln. (Squint and you can see it.)

 

Whither Dali? 

Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea

 

 

By the 1950s Dalí was putting surrealism in the rearview mirror. He became a Catholic mystic putting a religious spin on “The Discovery of American by Columbus” and in his 1960 painting “The Ecumenical Council.” Dalí’s ego is on full display in the latter. You can see Dalí on the lower left painting the enormous scene before your eyes. 

 

The Discovery of America by Columbus

 

 

Ecumenical Council

 

Dalí was perhaps a problematic human being, but he was never boring. The museum also has whimsical 3-D objects such as one of his lobster telephones. And who but Dalí would create a nude bust topped by a baguette? 

 

 

 

If you find yourself in St. Pete, make sure to get to the  Dalí Museum. One tip: Avoid the 360-degree “Dalí Alive” show in the courtyard dome. It’s an upcharge and tells you nothing you won’t see inside. It was cutting edge in the 1980s, but it’s not a patch of the immersive art shows of today.

 

Rob Weir