A. Petryakov

Today, June 3, 2017, the TV game “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” is on air. Today's show featured two pairs of players. This is Elmira Abdrazakova with Alexander Serov and Irina Apeksimova with Daniil Spivakovsky. The first pair of players chose a fireproof amount of 200 thousand rubles, and the second pair chose as much as 800 thousand rubles. Unfortunately, both pairs of players lost. The first participants were a little short of winning, while the second participants were far from winning. Despite the difficulties, the players carried themselves well and played with optimism and determination. The article will first contain the questions themselves, and at the end you can read the correct answers in it.

Questions for the first pair of players

1. What, figuratively speaking, does conscience do to a person who repents of what he has done?
2. What is the name of Mayakovsky's poem?
3. What, according to popular wisdom, is the way to a man’s heart?
4. Where does viburnum bloom in a popular Soviet song?
5. What word means "long chair" in French?
6. What is the name of both the houseplant and the cold appetizer made from zucchini and eggplant?
7. Which Beatles member's daughter became a fashion designer?
8. What day is considered the first day of the week in Israel?
9. With what lines did Alexander Vasilyevich Suvorov compare service and friendship?
10. Who played the saxophonist in the restaurant and in the cinema in the TV movie “The Meeting Place Cannot Be Changed”?

Questions for the second pair of players

1. Where does the drummer perform?
2. How does the expression describe Noah's Ark: "Every creature..."?
3. What instrument is often mentioned when talking about long and boring action?
4. What color is the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco painted?
5. What was the name in Rus' for a person who carried out trading assignments?
6. What sport is the movie "Million Dollar Baby" dedicated to?
7. What, by his own admission, was Ole Lukoje from Andersen's fairy tale the god of what?
8. Members of which musical group wrote the musical "Chess"?
9. Which African people's name translates to "fist-sized"?
10. Who did Salvador Dali put on the telephone receiver in one of his sculptures?

As you can see, both parts of the game were the same in terms of player achievements. Both pairs of participants made it to the tenth question, which turned out to be beyond their ability. The questions were difficult, as they always are at such a distance in the game.

Answers to questions for the first pair of players

1. gnawing
2. "Fine!"
3. through his stomach
4. in field
5. chaise lounge
6. "mother-in-law's tongue"
7. Paula McCartney
8. Sunday
9. with parallel
10. Sergey Mazaev

Answers to questions for the second pair of players

1. on the stage
2. in pairs
3. bagpipes
4. in orange
5. clerk
6. boxing
7. dreams
8. "ABBA"
9. pygmies
10. lobster

“When I write, I don’t understand what meaning is contained in my painting. Do not think, however, that it is meaningless! It’s just that it’s so deep, so complex, not deliberate and whimsical, that it eludes ordinary logical perception,” the artist once said...

A whole chain of philosophical reasoning was reflected in the work of Salvador Dali itself. Or, as they also say: “Creativity is a reflection of life!”

The creativity and outrageousness in which the artist lived and worked make it possible for people to always remember him.

Expensive paintings do not bother art connoisseurs and collectors; to this day, many people are ready to pay huge sums for the creations of the Catalan artist.

Perhaps the most bright and famous representative of surrealism, both in painting and in life. In other words, life was imbued with surrealism no less than his work!

A variety of subjects, certain styles and manner of painting make Dali’s work diverse, interesting and unique. Every creative person strives for development, everything new, unknown and interesting, Salvador Dali was no exception.

The Temptation of Saint Anthony, 1946, oil on canvas

The future hoaxer was born in 1904 in the city of Figueres, in Catalonia. The mother was a deeply religious person, and the father was an atheist. This formed a certain ambiguity in his character. As a child, Dali was uncontrollable, arrogant and often started fights for no reason. The future genius of surrealism had phobias, for example, he was terrified of grasshoppers...

Restlessness, the desire to always and in all cases express his opinion, as well as a wild imagination did not allow Salvador to be a diligent student, which, in principle, is characteristic of many creative individuals. Such an emotional rebel...

Later he will say:“Even in early childhood, I acquired the vicious habit of considering myself different from everyone else, and behaving differently from other mortals. As it turns out, this is a gold mine!”

IN Royal Academy of Fine Arts,into which he was accepted, Dali lasted 5 years, after which he was expelled, allegedly for his arrogant attitude towards teachers. Belief in one's exclusivity and uniqueness was destructive at many stages of the creator's life. Even after trying to re-enter my studies, I was unable to continue my studies. But the artist became acquainted and experimented with such techniques as Dadaism And cubism, precisely at the academy

Expulsion from the academy and non-recognition of his talent did not in any way affect Salvador Dali’s self-esteem; he independently organized exhibitions at which he presented his works to the attention of the audience. Having left for Paris in 1926, the young artist met Pablo Picasso. The work of Salvador Dali in the 20s was strongly influenced by Picasso, it was a time to find his own style of painting.

"Flesh on the Stones" 1926. Wood, oil

Inspiration for creative people usually comes from interactions with loved ones, because this is how you can get multifaceted emotions that help create a variety of masterpieces. Gala (Elena Dyakonova) became the Muse and object of adoration of Salvador Dali. Unbridled passion guided the actions of a woman who left her husband and completely surrendered to the hands of a talented and unlike everyone else young man.

Gala was 10 years older than her chosen one. But for Dali she was everything - a beloved wife and friend, mother and cook, manager and Muse. He idolized Gala and tirelessly portrayed her either as the Mother of God or as Helen the Beautiful. So that the outrageous artist could create in peace, she fenced him off from everyday worries, as well as from searching for buyers.

“I love Gala more than my father, more than my mother, more than Picasso. And even more than money!” — This is how the artist expressed his feelings for his beloved Muse

Gala made a lot of efforts so that the paintings sold better and Dali could become famous. The scale of fame gradually acquired a completely different level, and the artist’s works began to be recognized.

Gala went through the most difficult years with the artist, when, for example, there were financially critical days in the life of the spouses. It even happened that in order to keep warm and light the fireplace, Dali used his own paintings for fuel! I burned paintings in the name of salvation...

They say that after the death of Gala, the old Dali was no longer there, he faded and seemed to have lost his mysticism. Gala was the brightest meaning in his life

“Gala is my only muse, my genius and my life, without Gala I am nothing”

Constant pursuit of excellence and thirst for glory

Self-improvement, development of one's talent and transformation of technology have always been characteristic! Dali. Nothing could stop the artist, even when he was excluded from the list of surrealists in 1936. The reaction to the exclusion was the phrase: “Surrealism is me!”
Bold and daring...

“Surrealism is me!”

The exhibitions attracted millions of people, the artist’s work was recognized by the audience, sincerely admiring the canvases. Dali's autobiography, which was published for public viewing, gave the artist greatness and popularity. He became commercially successful

The artist died in 1989, at the age of 84! Salvador Dali wanted his body to be frozen after his death, but instead, according to his will, he was embalmed and walled up in the floor of the theater-museum, where the body remains to this day. Dali bequeathed that visitors could walk right along it, looking at his paintings hanging on the walls

A non-standard decision regarding his burial, as well as his shocking life itself. Did you know that Dali himself was an atheist? Dali once spoke about death like this: “Death fascinates me with eternity.”

By the way, few people know that in addition to paintings, books and short films, Dali created his own jewelry collection. The history of jewelry began in America in 1941. Based on Dali's sketches, 37 pieces of jewelry were created. He himself worked out everything down to the smallest detail: the choice of material, shape, color. All the decorations are, of course, surreal, but sophisticated and mesmerizing!

And packaging for Chupa chups lollipops also his brainchild, the location of the yellow flower is not on the side, but directly on top.

The life and work of Salvador Dali surprises no less people to this day. With all his behavior on camera and behind the scenes, in paintings and in books, he clearly wanted his unconventional behavior and strange pictures to remain in memory forever. Well, he succeeded!

“When I paint, I feel crazy. The only difference between me and a crazy person is that I'm not crazy! »

And who said that when looking at a picture, you need to experience only positive emotions? Or give only joy within the confines of a small, comfortable, awkward world?! And why do people consider everything they don’t understand bad? What do you think? Everything has a place in this world, understandable and not so understandable.>>> <<<

Video bonus: my visit to the Salvador Dali Exhibition at a museum in the USA/Florida

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Ask your questions below in the comments, I usually answer all questions quickly

Andy Warhol as a cultural phenomenon: illogical success or pop art phenomenon

You can understand any artist only by experiencing his paintings. It is not recommended to feel Dali's works: it will damage your psyche. All that the artist will allow you to do is to understand his place in art, his contribution to painting and, if you are lucky, he will open the door to his life a little for you...

The beginning of the way...

Dali is a titan of 20th century art, and he was born precisely when the century was just beginning to come into its own. He was born in Figueres, a Spanish town, which a little later would certainly appear in his numerous paintings.

Since childhood, Dali was haunted by the thought of his uselessness, as if his parents loved not him, but his older brother, who died a year before Dali was born. By the way, the psychological state of inferiority was not in vain for the artist; many researchers later noted that a number of mental deviations can be discerned in Dali. To which the maestro himself answered them even before they had time to voice their thoughts out loud: “The difference between me and a crazy person is that I’m not crazy.” And he certainly added: “Even the great psychologists could not understand where genius ends and madness begins.”

This is how Salvador Dali worked, on the verge of madness and genius. His first paintings saw the light of day on the pages of textbooks. Don't think that such a young artist was published. No, it’s just that often, instead of listening to the teacher, Dali drew in the margins of books and notebooks. I must say, I drew beautifully even then...

Creative quest

Salvador's talent was developed by a family friend, the artist Ramon Piho, and then in Madrid Dali met those who certainly influenced his work: avant-garde film artist Luis Buñuel, poet Federico García Lorca, who, by the way, became his best friend. For Dali, a new time began - a time of quest. He tried himself in impressionism and realism. However, all paths certainly led the artist to surrealism, a movement that became synonymous with the name Dali.

In 1925, Salvador painted “Figure of a Woman at a Window,” where he depicts his sister Anna Maria looking out of the window of their house onto the bay in Cadaques. The canvas is painted in a meticulous and detailed realistic style, but stroke by stroke the spirit of the unreality of a dream comes through in the picture. There is also an aura of emptiness here, and at the same time - something invisible that lurks behind the space of the picture. In addition, the artist perfectly created an atmosphere of silence.

With each new work, Dali joined the wave of surrealism more and more. He drew images familiar to the mind: people, animals, buildings, landscapes - but allowed them to connect under the dictation of consciousness. And he often merged them in a grotesque manner so that, for example, the limbs turned into fish, and the torsos of women into horses. Later Dali would call his unique approach the “paranoid-critical method.”

Woman of a lifetime

Everyone knows that behind a great man there is certainly an equally great woman. In Dali's fate, she became Gala Eluard, the wife of the French poet Paul Eluard. After the first meeting between Dali and Gala, who, by the way, was much older than the artist, both realized that their life paths could no longer go separately: they had to be together.

Gala became more than just a wife for Salvador. A magnificent lover, a devoted friend, a wonderful model and an inspiring Muse - this is all Gala.

Marriage to Gala awakened an inexhaustible fountain of creativity in Dali. A new period has begun. At this time, his personal surrealism began to prevail over norms and attitudes. Dali broke with Bretton and other surrealists and loudly proclaimed: “Surrealism is me!” And... he took up the brush.

You can talk about the paintings of the genius created in subsequent times for days on end. However, you yourself can feel the depth and incomprehensibility of his creativity, just look at his canvases. Read aloud the titles of great works: “Geopolitical Baby”, “The Mystery of Hitler”, “Autumn Cannibalism”, “Partial Obscuration. Six apparitions of Lenin on the piano”, “A dream inspired by the flight of a bee around a pomegranate a moment before awakening”...

I could go on, but is it worth it? Just take a look at the master’s paintings. You will not show indifference: you will either be turned away once and for all, turned inside out from his paintings, or you will get real pleasure, and later - many hours of reflection and analysis of what Dali wanted to say...

... A concert man, a fantasy man, the embodiment of creativity and surrealism, a child of voluptuousness and the brush of his own imagination. His genius had dough in the whole world. He said: “I am grateful to fate for two things: for the fact that I am a Spaniard and for the fact that I am Salvador Dali.” And what can we add?...

On May 11, 1904, a boy was born into the family of Don Salvador Dali y Cusi and Dona Felipa Domenech, who was destined to become one of the greatest geniuses of the era of surrealism in the future. His name was Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dali.

His father was a public notary in Figueres. He knew his place in society and, like many Catalans, was an anti-Madrid republican and also an atheist. Salvador's mother was also a typical representative of her class. She was a loving wife and a staunch Catholic who undoubtedly insisted that her family attend church regularly.

Salvador had a strong opinion that his parents did not love him at all, but his older brother, also named Salvador, who died two years before his birth. This revelation appeared in The Unspoken Revelations of Salvador Dali, a book published in 1976, following the publication of his three previous autobiographies. Whether this was the expulsion of the consequences of trauma or the fruit of the vivid imagination of an artist who spent his entire life creating hidden and ambiguous images, the author of the so-called process of paranoid-critical thinking, we can only guess. Despite Dali's opinion, both parents apparently loved Salvador and his younger sister Anna Maria and provided them with the best education available to them at the time.

Dali claimed that he began to think while he was still in his mother’s womb, at seven months. “It was warm, soft and quiet,” he said. “It was paradise.”

Already in early childhood, from the behavior and preferences of little Salvador, one could note his uncontrollable energy and eccentric character. Frequent whims and hysterics made Dali's father angry, but his mother, on the contrary, tried in every possible way to please her beloved son. She forgave him even the most disgusting tricks. As a result, the father became a kind of embodiment of evil, and the mother, on the contrary, became a symbol of good.

Dali showed a talent for painting at a young age. At the age of four, he tried to draw with surprising diligence for such a small child.

At the age of six, Dali was attracted by the image of Napoleon and, as if identifying himself with him, he felt the need for some kind of power. Having put on the king's fancy dress, he took great pleasure in his appearance.

Dali spent his childhood and most of his youth in a family house near the sea in Cadaques. in Catalonia, in northeastern Spain, the most beautiful corner of the globe. Here the imaginative boy interacted with local fishermen and workers, absorbing the mythology of the lower classes and learning the superstitions of his people. Perhaps this influenced his talent and became a prerequisite for weaving mystical themes into his art.

Salvador Dali painted his first painting when he was ten years old. It was a small impressionist landscape painted on a wooden board with oil paints. The talent of a genius was bursting forth. Dali sat all day long in a small room specially allocated to him, drawing pictures.

Dali searched for new solutions and forms in art already in childhood. Once, having decided to use an old door for his exercises (due to the lack of a canvas), he painted a still life with only three colors and without using a brush, which amazed the friends and relatives who saw it then. It was an image of a handful of cherries lying in the sun. One of the spectators noticed that the cherries did not have tails, which the young artist actually forgot about. Having quickly found his bearings, Dali began to eat the cherries that served him in kind, and attach real tails to the berries in the picture. The woodworms, which had eaten away the wooden door and were now crawling out through the layer of paint, swapped places with the worms made from natural cherries. The delight of the audience knew no bounds.

In Figueres, Dali took drawing lessons from Professor Joan Nunez. We can say that under the experienced guidance of the professor, the talent of young Salvador Dali took its real forms. Already at the age of 14, it was impossible to doubt Dali’s ability to draw.

When Dali was almost 15 years old, he was expelled from the monastic school for obscene behavior. But he was able to successfully pass all the exams and enter college (as in Spain they called a school that provides a completed secondary education). He managed to graduate from the institute in 1921 with excellent grades. Dali was seventeen at the time and had already begun to gain recognition in the artistic circles of Figueres. He left home, persuading his father to help establish his own art studio in Madrid at the Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, one of whose most famous directors was Francisco Goya. Salvador Dali went to Madrid in 1922. He was full of the self-confidence of a young man looking for adventure, but knowing that a quiet haven awaits him at home. However, this belief was subsequently greatly shaken.

At the age of sixteen, Dali began to put his thoughts on paper. From that time on, painting and literature became equally parts of his creative life. In 1919, in his homemade publication "Studium", he published essays on Velazquez, Goya, El Greco, Michelangelo and Leonardo. Participates in student unrest, for which he goes to prison for a day.

In the early 20s, Dali was delighted with the work of the Futurists, but he was still determined to create his own style of painting. At this time he made new friends and acquaintances. In Madrid, Dali met people who had a great influence on his life. One of them was Luis Buñuel, who would go on to become one of Europe's most respected film avant-gardes for the next half century. Another great friend of Dali who had a huge influence on him was Federico García Lorca, a poet who soon became one of the most popular playwrights in Spain. During the civil war, he was shot and killed by soldiers of dictator General Francisco Franque. The relationship between Dali and Lorca was very close. In 1926, Lorca's poem "Ode to Salvador Dalí" was published, and in 1927, Dalí designed the sets and costumes for a production of Lorca's "Mariana Pineda." Both Buñuel and Lorca were part of the new intellectual life in Spain. They challenged the conservative and dogmatic doctrines of the political establishment and the Catholic Church, which largely shaped Spanish society at the time.

In Madrid, Dali was left to his own devices for the first time. The artist's extravagant appearance amazed and shocked ordinary people. This brought Dali himself into indescribable delight.

In 1921, Dali's mother died of cancer. Her death was a huge emotional shock and a heavy blow to the family.

In 1923, the talented young man managed to simultaneously receive several prizes for the best works and be suspended from classes at the academy for a year for inciting students to revolt against what he believed was the wrong appointment of a new professor.

During this period, Dali's interest was focused on the works of the great Cubist genius Pablo Picasso. In Dali's paintings of that time one can notice the influence of Cubism ("Young Girls" (1923)).

Even before Dali's trip to Paris, his work exhibited surreal qualities. In the painting “Figure of a Woman at a Window,” painted in 1925, the artist depicted his sister Anna Maria looking out of a window onto the bay in Cadaques. The canvas is imbued with the spirit of the unreality of a dream, although it is written in a meticulous realistic style. There is an aura of emptiness and at the same time something invisible that hides behind the space of the picture. In addition, the picture creates a feeling of silence. If this were the work of the Impressionists, the viewer would feel its atmosphere: he would hear the sea or the whispering of the breeze, but here it seems that all life has stood still.

In 1925, from November 14 to 27, the first personal exhibition of his works was held at the Dalmau Gallery. At this exhibition there were 27 paintings and 5 drawings of the aspiring great genius. Most of his works at that time were made in the spirit of exploring new trends that then prevailed in the artistic world of Paris. He tried his hand as an impressionist in Self-Portrait with Neck in the Style of Raphael (1921-22). The mountains in Cadaques in the background of the painting have become a typical landscape motif in Dali's works. Then there was an attempt to create a painting in the style of cubism. Imitating its founders Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, Dali painted another self-portrait: “Self-Portrait with La Publiccitat” (one of the Barcelona newspapers). In 1925, Dali painted another painting in the style of Picasso: “Venus and the Sailor.” She was one of the seventeen paintings exhibited at Dali’s first personal exhibition.

The influence of the ideas of Lorca and Buñuel stimulated Dali's already radical thinking. This led him to disagree with the methods of the Academy of Fine Arts of Madrid, where he studied. Dali hoped to find worthy teachers here who could teach the sacred craft, but he was quickly disappointed. Publicly declaring that he did not intend to pass exams to “those who know immeasurably less, understand almost nothing and can do nothing at all,” Dalí was expelled from the Academy in 1926 for inciting unrest among students.

In the same 1926, Salvador Dali and his family went to Paris, the world center of art, trying to find something for themselves there. Dali had not yet seen the originals of modern paintings, although an exhibition of modern art was held in Barcelona in 1920. At that time, the artist was greatly influenced by magazine reproductions. In Paris, Dali visited Picasso's studio. However, Dali was in no hurry to make his next trip to Paris. Perhaps he wanted to understand what he was looking for there. But also, as it turned out later, when he had to move frequently to maintain his growing global status, he did not like to change the familiar environment of Cadaques and the Costa Brava in Catalonia.

Another factor influencing Dali's way of thinking during this period was his lack of real interest in developing new aesthetic approaches to writing techniques. The perfection of technique achieved by the artists of the Renaissance, as he soon admits to himself deep down, cannot be improved. This assumption was confirmed after a trip to Brussels, which he made during a visit to Paris. The art of the Flemish masters, with their amazing attention to detail, made a huge impression on Dali.

When Dali returned to Cadaques after being expelled from the Academy of Arts, he continued to paint in his style. In the painting, “Figure of a Girl on a Rock” (1926), he depicted his sister lying on the rocks. Outwardly, the painting seemed to be painted in the style of Picasso, but it was not similar in spirit to his work and was simply a realistic study of perspective.

The second exhibition of Dali's works, held in Barcelona at the Delmo Gallery at the end of 1926, was greeted with even greater enthusiasm than the first. Perhaps thanks to this, Dali's father somewhat came to terms with the shocking expulsion of his son from the Academy, after which any opportunity to make an official career disappeared.

In 1928 in Paris, Dali became close to the surrealists and, with the support of the Catalan artist and surrealist Joan Miró, he joined the new movement, which began to increasingly influence the artistic and literary circles of Europe, and was accepted into the ranks of the surrealists in 1929, immediately after his arrival in Paris. Having joined the group that united around Andre Breton, Dali began to create his first surrealist works (“Honey is Sweeter than Blood,” 1928; “Bright Joys,” 1929). A. Breton treated this dressed-up dandy - a Spaniard who painted puzzles - with a fair amount of distrust. He did not see the benefit that Dali could bring to their common cause. Dali's interest in the activities of the surrealist group led by Breton quickly faded. Dali returned with pleasure to his admiration for the Renaissance masters and forgot about Paris for a while. But in 1929, an invitation came from a friend of Buñuel, which the artist could not help but accept. He was invited to Paris to work on a surreal film using images taken from the human subconscious.

At the beginning of 1929, the premiere of the film “Un Chien Andalou” took place, based on the script by Salvador Dali and Luis Buñuel. The script itself was written in six days! Now this film is a classic of surrealism. It was a short film designed to shock and touch the heart of the bourgeoisie and ridicule the excesses of the avant-garde. Among the most shocking images is the famous scene, which is known to have been invented by Dali, where a man's eye is cut in half with a blade. The decaying donkeys that appeared in other scenes were also part of Dali's contribution to the film.

After the first public screening of the film in October 1929 at the Théâtre des Ursulines in Paris, Buñuel and Dalí immediately became famous and celebrated.

After the scandalous premiere of this film, another film called “The Golden Age” was conceived.

Dali worked a lot. The plot of a large number of paintings was based on his complex problems of sexuality and relationships with his parents.

In 1929, Dali painted The Great Masturbator, one of the most significant works of that period. In this painting, the artist expressed his constant preoccupation with sex, violence and guilt.

The painting shows a large, wax-like head with dark red cheeks and half-closed eyes with very long eyelashes. A huge nose rests on the ground, and instead of a mouth there is a rotting locust. Ants crawl along the insect's abdomen. The painting also contains a pile of rocks that will accompany the artist throughout his work, and such a typical Dali image as locusts - one of the insects that inhabit his nightmares. Similar themes were typical for Dali’s works in the 1930s: he had an extraordinary weakness for images of grasshoppers, ants, telephones, keys, crutches, bread, hair. Dali himself called his technique manual photography of concrete irrationality. This deeply personal picture is very significant. It was inspired by Dali from his own subconscious.

By 1929, surrealism had become a controversial and, for many, unacceptable movement in painting.

The personal life of Salvador Dali until 1929 did not have any bright moments (unless you count his many hobbies for unrealistic girls, young women and women). But it was 1929 that became fateful for Dali. Having completed work on Un Chien Andalou, which he created with Buñuel, the artist returned to Cadaques to work on an exhibition of his paintings, which the Parisian art dealer Camille Goemans agreed to organize in the fall. Among Dalí's many guests that summer was the poet Paul Eluard, who came with his daughter Cécile and his wife Gala (née Russian Elena Deluvina-Dyakonova). Gala's relationship with her husband by that time was already cool.

Her meeting with Salvador Dali in the summer of 1929 was fatal for both. Gala, who was almost ten years older than him, seemed to Dali to be a sophisticated, self-confident woman who had been moving for a long time in the highest artistic circles of Paris, while he was just a simple young man from a small provincial town in northern Spain. At first Dali was struck by Gala's beauty and burst into embarrassed, hysterical giggles when they talked. He didn't know how to behave in front of her. She soon became Dali's mistress and then his wife. Gala—whose reaction to Dali's fiercely passionate love was said to be the words: “My boy, we will never part”—became for him more than just a passion-satisfying lover. It is Gala who will become the muse and inspiration of the genius Dali for the rest of her life. When she eventually left her husband and moved in with Dali in 1930, she proved herself to be an excellent organizer, business manager and patroness.

To express his feelings for this amazing woman, Dali depicted her as Gradiva, the heroine of the popular novel by William Jensen, where Gradiva appears as a animated statue from Pompeii with whom a young man fell in love, which ultimately changed his life. Gradiva Rediscovers Anthropomorphic Ruins, against a backdrop of rocks inspired by the rocky landscape of the Costa Brava, shows Gradiva in the foreground, modeled after Gala, shrouded in a rock on which stands an inkwell, perhaps as an allusion to her ex-husband, poet.

Dali enjoyed the shock caused in society by both “Un Chien Andalou” and his paintings. But at the same time, his painting “Sacred Heart” caused unwanted personal consequences. In the center of the painting was a silhouette of the Madonna with the Sacred Heart. Around the silhouette was roughly scrawled: “Sometimes I like to spit on my mother’s portrait.” What may have been intended by Dali as a small advertising joke seemed to his father to be a desecration of the sacred memory of his first wife and mother of the family. Mixed with his dissatisfaction with his son’s paintings was his disapproval of Dali’s relationship with Gala Eluard. As a result, Dali was forbidden by his father to ever visit the family home. According to his subsequent stories, the artist, tormented by remorse, cut off all his hair and buried it in his beloved Cadaques.

In 1930, Salvador Dali's paintings began to bring him fame ("Blurry of Time"; "The Persistence of Memory"). The constant themes of his creations were destruction, decay, death, as well as the world of human sexual experiences (the influence of the books of Sigmund Freud).

At that time, the image of a deserted shore was firmly entrenched in Dali’s mind. The artist painted the deserted beach and rocks in Cadaques without any specific thematic focus. As he later claimed, the emptiness was filled for him when he saw a piece of Camembert cheese. The cheese became soft and began to melt on the plate. This sight evoked a certain image in the artist's subconscious, and he began to fill the landscape with melting clocks, thus creating one of the most powerful images of our time. Dali called the painting "The Persistence of Memory."

The Persistence of Memory was completed in 1931 and has become a symbol of the modern concept of the relativity of time. In addition, the painting evokes other deeply hidden feelings in the viewer that are difficult to define. A year after the exhibition at the Pierre Colet Gallery in Paris, Dali's most famous painting was purchased by the New York Museum of Modern Art.

In the early 30s, Salvador Dali entered into some kind of conflict on political grounds with the surrealists. His admiration for Adolf Hitler and his monarchical inclinations ran counter to Breton's ideas. Dali broke with the surrealists after they accused him of counter-revolutionary activities.

In January 1931, the second film, The Golden Age, premiered in London. Critics received the new film with delight. But then he became a bone of contention between Buñuel and Dali: each claimed that he did more for the film than the other. However, despite the controversy, their collaboration left a deep mark on the lives of both artists and sent Dali on the path of surrealism.

By 1934, Gala had already divorced her husband, and Dali could marry her. The amazing thing about this married couple was that they felt and understood each other. Gala, in the literal sense, lived the life of Dali, and he, in turn, deified her and admired her. Marriage to Gala awakened Dali's inexhaustible imagination and new inexhaustible energy. A fruitful period began in his work. At this time, his personal surrealism completely prevailed over the norms and attitudes of the rest of the group and led to a complete break with Breton and other surrealists, who in 1934 expelled the already famous painter from their movement, declaring that “he shows an unhealthy interest in money and is guilty of vulgarization and academicism."

Now Dali did not belong to anyone and claimed: “Surrealism is se mua” (“Surrealism is me”).

Between 1936 and 1937, Salvador Dali painted one of his most famous paintings, The Metamorphosis of Narcissus. This was his most successful painting of that period with dual images. At first glance, it appears to depict the limbs of two figures against a plain background. But then you notice that the limbs on the left side of the picture belong to the figure of a man, partially hidden in the shadows and looking into the water, which reflects his image - the image of Narcissus. On the right is a set of similar shapes, but now the limbs are fingers holding an egg, from the cracks of which a daffodil flower grows.

At the same time, his literary work was published entitled “Metamorphoses of Narcissus. Paranoid Theme.” By the way, earlier (1935) in the work “Conquest of the Irrational” Dali formulated the theory of the paranoid-critical method. This method is the only way to obtain what he called irrational knowledge and explain it. The artist was firmly convinced that in order to release deeply buried thoughts, the mind of a madman or someone who, due to his so-called madness, would not be limited by the guardian of rational thinking, that is, the conscious part of the mind with its moral and rational installations. A person in such delirium, Dali argued, was not limited or constrained by anything and was therefore simply forced to be crazy. However, as Dali assured his viewers, the difference between him and the madman was that he was not crazy, therefore his paranoia was associated with critical ability. The key to Dali's world was Sigmund Freud, whose exploration of subconscious sexual trauma in his patients through psychoanalysis opened wide the doors of the human soul. It was as shocking and incredible an event as Charles Darwin's discovery half a century earlier. For Dali, the discovery of the subconscious had three advantages: it gave rise to new themes for paintings, it allowed him to explore and explain some of his personal problems, and it was the explosive that could destroy the old order. In addition, it was an excellent means of advertising creativity.

Dali was an ardent admirer of Freud’s ideas, having studied his “Interpretation of Dreams” in his youth and had high hopes for the liberating power of sleep, so he began painting immediately after waking up in the morning, when the brain had not yet completely freed itself from the images of the unconscious. Sometimes he got up in the middle of the night to work. In fact, Dali's method corresponds to one of the Freudian techniques of psychoanalysis: recording dreams as soon as possible after waking up (delay is believed to bring with it distortion of dream images under the influence of consciousness).

Dali's trust in the irrational and admiration for it as a source of creativity was absolute, not allowing any compromises. “My whole ambition in the field of painting is to materialize, with the most militant command and precision of detail, images of concrete irrationality.” This is, in essence, an oath of allegiance to Freudianism. It is believed, and not without reason, that it was Salvador Dali who was almost the main conductor of Freudian views in the art of the twentieth century. It is no coincidence that he was the only contemporary artist who managed to meet the elderly, sick and withdrawn Freud in his London home in 1936. At the same time, Dali received an approving mention from Freud in his letter to Stefan Zweig - also a unique case, since Freud was not at all interested in contemporary painting trends.

Dali often quotes, paraphrases, and retells Freud's thoughts in his Diary. For example, Dali writes: “Errors always have something sacred in them. Never try to correct them. On the contrary: they should be rationalized and generalized. After that it will become possible to generalize them.” This is one of the most well-known ideas of Freudianism, according to which mistakes, slips of the tongue, and witticisms are uncontrolled emissions of boiling, fermenting matter of the subconscious, which thus breaks through the frozen crust of the “Ego.” It is not surprising, therefore, that the Diary opens with a quote from Freud. Dali treated Freud, in fact, as a spiritual father and never showed disobedience in anything, did not doubt a single word.

According to Dali, for him the world of Freud's ideas meant as much as the world of Holy Scripture meant for medieval artists or the world of ancient mythology for Renaissance artists.

Dali introduced the idea of ​​the existence of a whole world of the subconscious in 1936 in his painting “The Suburbs of a Paranoid-Critical City: An Afternoon on the Outskirts of European History.” At first glance, this picture shows a typical city. Annoying details do not immediately evoke a sense of surprise and shock. However, soon the viewer begins to understand that the perspectives of individual parts of the picture are not connected with each other, which, however, does not violate the unity of the composition. The depicted city seems to have emerged from a subconscious dream and makes a certain sense until the viewer begins to critically examine it. In addition to details inherent only in dreams, events take place in different parts of the city that are in no way connected with each other, but are real fruits of Dali’s memory. Gala holds a bunch of grapes, which echoes the partial figure of a horse and a classical building in the background, which in turn is reflected in a toy house placed in an open dresser drawer. In general, a complete but disjointed plot is explained in the subtitle of the film’s title: this is truly the story of Europe, having passed halfway, breathing with nostalgia and regret.

Dali's desire to be recognized in a society that was essentially indifferent to art, especially modern art, gave rise to his natural inclination to attract attention. It was at this time, around the mid-1930s, that the artist began to create surreal objects that became his most famous works. He made a bust from a hairdressing mannequin, placing a French loaf and an inkwell on it. This was followed by a shocking and provocative tuxedo - an aphrodisiac, hung with wine glasses. His other memorable works were Telephone - Lobster, a composition created in 1936, and the shocking Sofa Lips of Mae West (1936-37): a wooden frame covered in pink satin.

But it was not these strange objects that attracted the most attention to Dali, but his lecture at the London Group Rooms, Burlington Gardens in July 1936. It was held as part of the International Surrealist Exhibition. The artist appeared in a deep-sea diver's suit. “This way it will be more convenient to descend into the depths of the subconscious,” the artist said, maintaining complete seriousness, and was greeted with noisy applause. Unfortunately, he forgot to take his breathing tube with him and during the lecture he began to choke and began to gesticulate desperately, causing fear and confusion among the audience. It was not exactly what Dali had intended, but the attention of the general public was drawn to the first exhibition of surrealist works held in London, at a gallery on Cork Street. The extremely popular exhibition was hosted by American collector Peggy Guggenheim. In addition to advertising the exhibition, the incident with the diver's suit attracted the attention of the publishers of Time magazine to Dali: his photograph was placed on the cover of the last issue of 1936. Under the photo taken by Man Ray was the following comment: "A burning pine tree, an archbishop, a giraffe and a cloud of feathers flew out of the window."

Miss Guggenheim became Dali's second patron of the arts from wealthy New York patrons of artists (he had previously lectured on surrealism at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1935). Soon these patrons became his most ardent supporters.

Dali's return to Spain after the London Surrealist Exhibition in 1936 was prevented by the civil war, which began with the uprising of General Franke and his loyal troops against the people's government. The government was forced to flee to Valencia, and then,

Dali's fear for the fate of his country and its people was reflected in his paintings painted during the war. Among them is the tragic and terrifying "Soft Construction with Boiled Beans: A Premonition of the Civil War" (1936). The feelings expressed by Dali in this painting are comparable to Picasso's stunning Guernica.

Although Dali often expressed the idea that world events such as wars had little bearing on the world of art, he was greatly concerned about events in Spain. He expressed his enduring fears in "Autumn Cannibalism" (1936), in which intertwined fingers eat each other. The artist’s horror is softened here by the familiar landscape of Cadaqués in the background as an expression of the idea that such events, even civil war, are transitory, but life still goes on.

Dali's commentary on the Spanish Civil War was simply titled "Spain". The painting was painted in 1938, when the war reached its climax. This ambiguous, paranoidly critical work depicts the figure of a woman resting her elbow on a chest of drawers with one open drawer, from which hangs a piece of red fabric. The upper part of the woman's body is woven from small figures, most of which are in militant poses, reminiscent of the groups of Leonardo da Vinci. The background shows a deserted sandy plain. Many of Dali's friends became victims of the civil war in his homeland. Out of habit, he tried not to think about the bad. One way to forget was to anesthetize the mind, for which sleep was ideal. This is reflected in the painting “Dream” (1937), where the artist created one of the most powerful images. The head without a body rests on fragile supports that can break off at any moment. In the left corner of the picture there is a dog, which is also supported by a support. A village grows on the right, similar to one of the villages on the Costa Brava. The rest of the painting, except for the distant small fishing boat, is empty, symbolizing the artist's anxiety.

During the Spanish Civil War in 1937, Dalí and Gala visited Italy to view the works of the Renaissance artists Dalí most admired. They also visited Sicily. This trip inspired the artist to write "African Impressions" (1938). The couple returned to France, where there were rumors of an imminent war in Europe, and took time to visit the United States again in the first half of 1939.

Another group of paintings, which showed Dali's anxiety about the clearly approaching world war, used the telephone theme. The Riddle of Hitler (circa 1939) shows a telephone and an umbrella on a deserted beach. The picture alludes to the unsuccessful meeting between British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and Adolf Hitler. In both “The Sublime Moment” and “Mountain Lake,” painted in 1938, the artist used (in addition to the telephone) the image of a crutch, a typical symbol of foreboding for Dali.

Immediately after the outbreak of war in September 1939, Dali left Paris and went to Arcachon, on the sea coast south of Bordeaux. From here Gala and he moved to Lisbon, where among those fleeing the war they met the famous designer Elsa Schiaparelli, for whom he had already designed dresses and hats, and the film director René Clair. After the occupation in France in 1940, Dali left for the United States, where he opened a new workshop.

Meanwhile, large sums were paid for Dali’s paintings. The anagram "Avida Dollars" was made in 1941 from Salvador Dalí's name by André Breton as a mockery of Dalí's fuss about making money. But it contained something much more than a pang of envy caused by Dalí's growing success, which began to rise in 1936, and the surprisingly warm reception the artist received in the United States from both wealthy patrons and ordinary spectators.

The popularity of Dali's paintings was partly due to the fact that they looked like the work of old masters, carefully and conscientiously made. It was also important that they were written by a man who, although sometimes eccentric during his public appearances, was handsome, well-mannered, well-dressed and, most likely, not a revolutionary or a communist.

But the main reason for Dali's popularity in America was different. In European artistic circles, Dali was not considered a serious contender for the crown of esthete, since he was immersed in exoteric theories of art. But in the USA, where art was still guided by traditional guidelines and traditional European art was hunted by millionaires and business kings, Dali was greeted with enthusiasm. His paintings, although with mysterious content, were accessible to visual perception, since they depicted understandable objects, so this impulsive personality, rejected and irritated everywhere in Europe, was accepted in the United States, which prided itself on its frank, strong-willed, comprehensive personalities and showmen.

Dalí and Gala reluctantly left Europe, but soon settled comfortably in Fredericksburg, Virginia, in Hamton Manor, in the home of Carey Crosby, an avant-garde publisher. Here Gala began to build a cozy nest for Dali, requisitioning the library and ordering the necessary painting supplies from the nearby city of Richmond.

A year later, Dalí and Gala moved with Mrs. Crosby across the United States to Monterey, near San Francisco, California. The house in this city became their main refuge, although they lived for a long time in New York, basking in luxury. During the eight years that Gala and Dali spent in America, Dali made a fortune. At the same time, according to some critics, he paid with his reputation as an artist.

In the world of the artistic intelligentsia, Dali's reputation has always been low. He not only behaved provocatively, which brought him some advertising dividends, but was considered by art lovers as a simple antics to attract attention to his works. During a trip to America, Salvador Dali showed the reporters who met him a painting of his naked girlfriend Gala with lamb chops on her shoulders. When asked what the chops had to do with it, he replied: "It's very simple. I love Gala and I love lamb chops. They come together here. Great harmony!"

Most artists and amateurs saw the art of that time as a search for a new language through which modern society and all the new ideas that were born in it would find expression. The old technology, both in literature and in music or plastic arts, in their opinion, was not suitable for the twentieth century.

It seemed to many that Dali's traditional style of writing was not compatible with the work to find a new language of painting, reflected in the paintings of such twentieth-century masters as Picasso and Matisse. However, Dali had a following among European art lovers, especially those interested in the surrealist movement, who saw in his work a unique way of expressing the hidden parts of the human spirit.

During his stay in America, Dali participated in numerous commercial projects: theater, ballet, jewelry, fashion, and even published a newspaper for self-promotion (only two issues were published). As the number of projects grew over time, he seemed more like a mass entertainer than a serious artist engaged in the study of expressive means. Although his popularity grew, Dali began to lose, at least in Europe, the support of the art critics and historians on whom the artist's reputation depended throughout his life.

From his safe haven in Virginia and then in California, Dalí began his triumphant conquest of the art world of a new continent. American friends were ready to continue helping the artist in his career. One of his first commissions was the design of the “Venus’s Dream” pavilion at the New York International Exhibition in 1939. Dalí planned to build a swimming pool inside the pavilion, in which he intended to place the mermaids. On the facade, he wanted to depict the figure of Venus in the style of Botticelli, but with the head of a cod or similar fish. The exhibition management did not approve these plans, and the pavilion was not built, but Dalí had the opportunity to publish his first American manifesto: “Declaration of the Independence of the Imagination and the Rights of Man to His Own Madness.”

The Bonwith Teller incident occurred before the International Exhibition incident. Dali was commissioned to design the windows of the Bonuit Teller department store in New York. Dali fulfilled this order in his inimitable extravagant style, displaying a black satin bathtub and a canopy made of a buffalo's head with a bloody dove in its teeth. This composition attracted so many people that it was impossible to walk along the sidewalks of Fifth Avenue. The administration closed the composition. This upset Dali so much that he overturned the bathtub, breaking the plate glass window, and walked through it onto the street, where he was arrested by the New York police.

Dali received a suspended sentence. This attracted so much attention to his personality that his next exhibition in a New York gallery was a wild success. Such incidents, sometimes shocking, created good publicity for Dali among the general public, who saw in the artist the embodiment of the individual freedom of which the United States was so proud and which, as he declared, could only be found in America (that is, not in Europe).

When some journalists doubted Dali's sanity and the appropriateness of his antics, he accepted the challenge. Responding to an article in Art Digest asking whether he was just a madman or an ordinary successful businessman, the artist replied that he himself did not know where the deep, philosophizing Dali began and where the crazy and absurd Dali ended.

All this was part of the New World spirit of the time and made Dali a sought after commodity outside the purview of dealers and art galleries. He had already designed models for Elsa Schiaparelli. Now he began to invent more fantastic fashion items, which ended up in the pages of Vogue and Harper's Bazaar and won him popularity among the rich and sophisticated public. The Marquis de Cuevas, founder of the Monte Carlo Ballet, also brought Dali into his world, commissioning the stage design for “Bacchanalia” with costumes from Coco Chanel. Other orders for stage design for ballet from Marquis de Cuevas were “Labyrinth” (1941) with choreography by Leonid Massin, “Sentimental Conversation, Chinese Cafe” and “Broken Bridge” (1944).

It was in America that the great genius wrote, probably one of his best books, “The Secret Life of Salvador Dali, written by himself.” When this book was published in 1942, it immediately attracted serious criticism from the press and supporters of the Puritan society. In New In York, Dali and Gala's refuge was the St. Regis Hotel, where the artist set up his studio, where he worked on portraits of Mrs. George Tate II, Elena Rubinstein, the queen of cosmetics (Dali also worked on the design of her apartment), Mrs. Luther Greene.

In addition, Dali was again involved in working on films. He enthusiastically welcomed this method of self-expression, in which he saw the realm of creativity of the future, despite the fact that he later belittled the contribution of cinema to art. He created the famous surreal dream sequence in Alfred Hitchcock's 1945 film Spellbound. Hitchcock wanted to make the first film about psychoanalysis at a time when Freud's teachings were beginning to have a profound influence on American thinking, so God himself told him to turn to Dali. The following year, the artist began working on Walt Disney's "Destino" project, which, unfortunately, was not completed. Only one more full-length film was created based on Dali's script, Don Giovanni Tenorio, made in Spain in 1951.

Dali, as a rule, liked active work, and with Gala constantly at his side, he became known throughout the United States of America as the king of modern art. He even found time to write a novel, Hidden Faces, about a group of aristocrats on the brink of World War II.

A new vision of the world, as Dali argued, was born in a flash of enlightenment, which was another consequence, in addition to the roar and radioactive glow, of the explosion of the atomic bomb over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Dali was looking for a mystical answer in the black clouds raised by the explosion. The absolute vision of the meaning of all this must be granted, he believed, by God's grace and the grace of truth. The idea of ​​God's mercy was cultivated in him as a child during his religious upbringing. As for the mercy of truth, the artist expected to find it in the discoveries of modern physics.

Although Dali's ideas about life, God and modern science began to mature in the artist's brain back in the United States and began to appear in his works of that period, they finally matured and began to bear fruit only after returning to his homeland in Spain in 1948.

Dali was so shocked by the atomic bomb that he painted a whole series of paintings dedicated to the atom. The first of this series was the Three Sphinxes of Bikini Atoll, created in 1947. The Sphinxes are three mushroom-shaped bodies similar to the mushroom cloud formed after the explosion of this weapon of mass destruction. The first mushroom in the foreground grows from the woman’s neck like a cloud of hair, the second appears in the center and looks like the foliage of a tree, the third, most distant cloud rises from behind the landscape of Cadaqués.

This was the first work in a series of paintings and drawings, with which Dali addressed the destructive post-war world, which the artist viewed with concern and which pushed him towards a mystical approach to his work.

After the end of the war in 1945, Dalí decided to remain in the United States, where he prepared for his artistic renaissance. Now he was more confident than ever that the artists of the Renaissance were right to paint on religious themes, and in the way they did. He declared war on the academic style of writing favored by the traditional salons, on African art, which deeply influenced such important figures in European art as Modigliani, Picasso and Matisse, and on the decorative plagiarism of artists who became abstract artists because they really had nothing to say. . Dali stated that he was going to revive Spanish mysticism and show the unity of the Universe by depicting the spirituality of matter.

One of the first paintings that conveyed his new vision of the world was “Dematerialization near Nero’s Nose” (1947). It depicts a dissected cube under an arch, in the bend of which a bust of Nero floats. The dissection symbolizes the splitting of the atom. Dali began to constantly use this technique.

At the same time, Dali was working on several other projects, including sets and costumes for Manuel de Fall's ballet "El sombrero de tres picos" ("The Triangular Hat"). Dali placed sacks of flour and trees on the stage, floating in space, while the miller's house itself flies apart with slanting doors and windows, one of which flies into the sky.

Dali also painted many portraits, including a portrait of art collector James Dana, made in 1949. In the 1950s, Dalí painted a number of fine portraits of theater performers, including Catherine Corneille (1951) and Laurence Oliver as Richard III (1951). Portraits, as a source of large income, were in first place for Dali until the 1970s. The portrait of Francisco Franca's daughter Carmen Bordue - Franco was presented to the Spanish leader in 1974 at a special ceremony. Dalí's most significant painting of 1951 was The Crucifixion of Christ by St. John, with the crucifix hanging in the sky above Port Ligat. This immaculate and unobtrusive painting, without any surrealist overtones, was sold to the Glasgow Art Gallery.

However, immediately after she was hanged, she was cut to death by a vandal protesting the £8,200 the gallery had paid for the painting. (Within five years, the gallery had made that money back from interest, the sale of admission tickets, and the rights to produce reproductions.) Another painting with a similarly simplistic visual approach is called “Eucharistic Still Life.”

It depicts a table covered with a tablecloth with bread and fish lying on it. Both of these paintings breathe a simplicity unusual for Dali. Perhaps they reflected Dali’s joy and gratitude at his return to his native land in Port Ligat.

Soon after returning to Spain, Dali began work on two orders. For Peter Brook, the English theater director who staged Strauss's Salome, and for Luchino Visconti, the Italian film director making a new version of Shakespeare's As You Like It. While in Port Lligat, Dali turned to religious and fantastic themes in his creations. Religious motifs, classic composition, and imitation of the techniques of the old masters are characteristic of his paintings of the 1950s, such as “Madonna of the Port of Lligat” (1949), where Gala was depicted as a Madonna, “Christ of St. John on the Cross" (1951), "The Last Supper" (1955), "The Discovery of America, or the Dream of Christopher Columbus" (1958-1959).

In 1953, a large retrospective exhibition of Salvador Dali took place in Rome. It presents 24 paintings, 27 drawings, 102 watercolors!

Earlier in 1951, on the eve of the Cold War, Dali developed the theory of “atomic art”, published in the same year in the “Mystical Manifesto”. Dali sets himself the goal of conveying to the viewer the idea of ​​the constancy of spiritual existence even after the disappearance of matter (The Exploding Head of Raphael. 1951).

In 1959, Dalí and Gala built their own home in Port Lligat. By that time, no one could doubt the genius of the great artist. His paintings were bought for huge sums of money by fans and lovers of luxury. Huge canvases painted by Dali in the 60s were valued at huge sums. Many millionaires considered it chic to have paintings by Salvador Dali in their collection.

Pursuing new ideas with his usual inexhaustible energy, Dalí created several more ballets, including The Grape Gatherers and Ballet for Gala, for which he designed the libretto and scenery, and Maurice Béjart designed the choreography. The premiere took place in 1961 at the Venice Phoenix Theater. He continued to amaze audiences with his extravagant appearances. For example, in Rome he appeared in the "Metaphysical Cube" (a simple white box covered with scientific icons). Most of the spectators who came to see Dali's performances were simply attracted by the eccentric celebrity. However, his real fans did not like these antics. They believed that the showman was casting a shadow on the artist's work. To this Dali replied that he was not a clown, and the terribly cynical society, in its naivety, did not suspect that he was playing a serious play in order to hide his madness. Criticizing modern art for leading the public into a dead end, Dali spoke favorably of such once beloved but now unpopular French historical artists as Jean-Louis-Ernest Meissonnier and Mariano Fortuny, who painted great and noble epic scenes for buildings where the power structures were located.

These artists, whom lovers of modern art called "pompiers" ("firemen"), according to Dali, painted in a good realistic manner. He demonstrated his ability to paint in the same spirit in the large painting The Battle of Tetuan (1962), which was placed next to Fortuny's work at the Palacio del Tinel in Barcelona. This painting by Dali was strongly influenced by the style of Eugene Delacroix with his numerous fight scenes. In addition, the artist worked out the details well, made the plot active and effective and, of course, placed Gala in the background.

At the end of the 60s, the relationship between Dali and Gala began to fade. And at Gala’s request, Dali was forced to buy her his own castle, where she spent a lot of time in the company of young people. The rest of their life together was smoldering firebrands that had once been a bright fire of passion.

Beginning around 1970, Dali's health began to deteriorate. Although his creative energy did not decrease, thoughts about death and immortality began to bother him. He believed in the possibility of immortality, including the immortality of the body, and explored ways to preserve the body through freezing and DNA transplantation in order to be reborn. More important, however, was the preservation of the works, which became his main project. He put all his energy into it.

The artist came up with the idea of ​​building a museum for his works. He soon took on the task of rebuilding the theater in Figueres, his homeland, which was badly damaged during the Spanish Civil War. A giant geodesic dome was erected over the stage. The auditorium was cleared and divided into sections in which his works of different genres could be displayed, including Mae West's bedroom and large paintings such as The Hallucinogenic Bullfighter.

Dali himself painted the entrance foyer, depicting himself and Gala panning for gold in Figueres, with their feet hanging from the ceiling. The salon was named the Palace of the Winds, after the poem of the same name, which tells the legend of the east wind, whose love married and lives in the west, so whenever he approaches her, he is forced to turn, while his tears fall to the ground. This legend really pleased Dali, the great mystic, who dedicated another part of his museum to erotica.

The Dalí Theater and Museum had many other works and other trinkets on display. The salon opened in September 1974 and looked less like a museum and more like a bazaar. There, among other things, were the results of Dali's experiments with holography, from which he hoped to create global three-dimensional images. (His holograms were first exhibited at the Knoedler Gallery in New York in 1972. He stopped experimenting in 1975.) In addition, the Dali Theater Museum displays double spectroscopic paintings of a nude Gala against a background painting by Claude Laurent and other art objects. created by Dali.

The Dali Museum is an incomparable surreal creation that still delights visitors to this day. The museum is a retrospective of the life of the great artist.

The demand for Dali's works has become crazy. Book publishers, magazines, fashion houses and theater directors competed for it. He has already created illustrations for many masterpieces of world literature, such as the Bible, Dante's Divine Comedy, Milton's Paradise Lost, Freud's God and Monotheism, and Ovid's The Art of Love. He also created surreal compositions such as "Napoleon's Death Mask on a Rhinoceros", "The Hallucinogenic Toreador" with drums, scissors, spoons, a soft watch, topped with a crown, or "Vision de l'Ange with the Thumb of God and the Twelve Apostles". Many Salvador Dalí devoted decades of his life to business and commerce. For several years, he painted one painting a year - usually for a huge fee, while he did everything from selling lithographs to designing costume designs and advertising for airlines. "Dali sleeps better after receiving checks for large sums,” he liked to say. Probably, Dali really slept like a child, because his name appeared on packages of cosmetics, on bottles of brandy, on furniture sets. One of his most frivolous activities was passenger panels painted by Dali in 1973 The artist's work in advertising has led most critics to agree that at least the last two decades of Dali's work were remarkable more for his eccentricities than for any real artistic achievements.

The cult of Dali, the abundance of his works in different genres and styles led to the appearance of numerous fakes, which caused big problems in the world art market. Dalí himself was implicated in a scandal in 1960 when he signed many blank sheets of paper intended for making impressions from lithographic stones kept by dealers in Paris. An accusation was made of illegal use of these blank sheets. However, Dali remained indifferent to this scandal. “People wouldn’t worry so much if I were a mediocre artist,” he snorted. “All great artists have been counterfeited,” and in the 1970s the artist continued to lead his chaotic and active life, as always, continuing to search for new flexible ways to explore his amazing world of art.

In 1974, Dali signed an agreement with an American advertising agency for a television advertisement in which he painted the tights worn by a model. Later, when he left America for France, he was seen with a huge Buggs Bunny doll, a parting gift from the company. “This is the ugliest and most terrible creature in the world,” said Dali. “I will paint it with mayonnaise and make it an object of art.”

In recent years, Dali has often turned to photography. He gives lectures and publishes books dedicated to himself and his art, in which he unrestrainedly praises his talent (“The Diary of a Genius,” “Dali by Dali,” “The Golden Book of Dali,” “The Secret Life of Salvador Dali”). He always had a quirky demeanor, constantly changing his extravagant suits and mustache style.

In 1976, Dali's biography, The Extraordinary Confessions of Salvador Dali, was published. In it, the artist claimed that he was the only sane person in the world: “The clown is not really me, but our terribly cynical and insensitive society, which so naively plays at being serious that this helps him in the best way to hide his own madness. And I will not get tired repeat this! - I’m not crazy.”

Salvador Dali had two dreams: one was born from the ideas swarming in his head, the other was the result of youthful dreams of living a full life with the necessary amenities. The first, completely his own, sometimes opened slightly and allowed the outside world, which never fully understood the mystery of the artist’s mind, to catch its reflection. The second was nurtured by Gala and friends, who helped him gain recognition and achieve world fame. Dali constantly expressed recognition of the important role of Gala in his life in his works. Her influence as a muse and model was very important for most of his paintings. In the late 1960s, Dali's gratitude took a more tangible form: he bought her a castle in Pubol, near Figueres, decorating it with his paintings and providing it with all the amenities and making it luxurious. It remains unclear whether Gala wanted to have a castle. Many believed that she would like to live in Tuscany. It is also unclear whether the gift of the castle to his wife meant the beginning of a separate life. The life and business partnership of Gala and Dali were so inseparable that it was impossible to imagine their complete separation.

Throughout her life with Dali, Gala played the role of an eminence grise, preferring to remain in the background. Some considered her to be the driving force behind Dali, others - a witch weaving intrigues. When English television journalist Russell Harty interviewed Dali for a BBC television program in 1973, Gala reluctantly agreed to appear at the door for a few seconds. But when the film crew was about to follow Dali into the pool, she completely disappeared. Perhaps now she is tired of antics and tricks designed for the public.

Gala and Dalí always managed their affairs and his ever-growing wealth with efficient efficiency. It was she who insisted on taking money for his public appearances and closely monitored private transactions for the purchase of his paintings. She was needed physically and mentally, so when she died on June 10, 1982, Dali took her death as a terrible blow. They had no children. The artist always said that he never wanted to have them. “Great geniuses always produce mediocre children, and I don’t want to be a proof of this rule,” he said. “I want to leave only myself as a legacy.”

Pushed by a strong desire to be close to her spirit, Dali moved to Pubol Castle, almost ceasing to appear in society. Despite this, his reputation grew. In 1982, the Salvador Dalí Museum, opened in Cleveland, Ohio and containing much of his work collected by E. and A. Reynolds Morse, moved to an impressive building in St. Petersburg, Florida. The Center Georges Pompidou in Paris staged a major retrospective of Dali's work in 1979, which was later sent across the English Channel to the Tate Gallery in London. The double showing of the retrospective allowed wide sections of the European population to become acquainted with Dali's works and brought him enormous popularity.

Among the awards that rained down on Dali as if from a cornucopia was membership in the Academy of Fine Arts of France. Spain gave him the highest honor by awarding him the Grand Cross of Isabella the Catholic, given to him by King Juan Carlos. Dalí was declared Marquis de Pubol in 1982. Despite all this, Dali was unhappy and felt bad. Closer to the 80s, he began to have health problems. Franco's death shocked and frightened Dali. Being a patriot, he could not calmly experience the changes in the fate of Spain. Doctors suspected Dali had Parkinson's disease. This disease once became fatal for his father.

Dali threw himself into his work. All his life he admired the Italian Renaissance artists, so he began to paint paintings inspired by the heads of Giuliano de' Medici, Moses and Adam (found in the Sistine Chapel) by Michelangelo and his "Descent from the Cross" in St. Peter's Church in Rome. He also began to paint in a free style. The linear, expressionist style of painting, reminiscent of Vincent van Gogh, is evident in paintings such as Bed and Bedside Table Furiously Attack a Cello (1983), where the clean, classical lines of Dali's early work give way to a looser, more romantic style.

By the end of 1983, Dali's mood seemed to have lifted somewhat. He began to sometimes walk in the garden and began to paint pictures. But this did not last long, alas. Old age took precedence over a brilliant mind. On August 30, 1984, a fire occurred in Dali's house. The artist almost lost his life. He had been bedridden for several days when somehow his bed caught fire. Perhaps the cause was a faulty bedside lamp. The whole room was on fire. He managed to crawl to the door. Robert Desharnais, Dali's business manager for many years, saved him from death by pulling him out of the burning room.

Dali suffered severe burns, and little has been heard from him since then, although in 1984 Desharnais published the monograph “Salvador Dali: The Man and His Work.” Soon the inevitable rumors began to spread that Dali was completely paralyzed, that he had Parkinson's disease, that he was being forcibly kept locked up. And even that for several years he was physically unable to do the works that continued to appear under his name.

Dali's professional activity fell into complete decline. Secretaries and agents extorted money from him as best they could, selling his copyrights and reproduction rights all over the world. Most of the income ended up in their deep pockets.

By February 1985, Dali’s health had improved somewhat and he was able to give an interview to the largest Spanish newspaper Pais.

But in November 1988, Dali was admitted to the clinic with a diagnosis of heart failure.

Salvador Dali's heart stopped on January 23, 1989, six years after completing his last work, "Swallowtail", a simple calligraphic composition on a white sheet of paper. The simplicity of the picture is reminiscent of the work of Paul Klee and is touching, like violin music.

While working on his last painting, Dali once admitted to a rare guest that he was going to paint a series of paintings based not on pure imagination, mood or dreams, but on the reality of his illness, existence and important memories. At the same time, one sometimes cannot help but think that Dali imagined his life as some kind of catastrophe. Blessed with titanic energy and a lively creative mind, he was simultaneously cursed with a natural talent for ringleader and joker, which cast a shadow on his reputation as an artist. Like most artists, including such modern masters as Paul Cezanne and Claude Monet, Dali most likely felt that he did not express everything he saw that burned his soul. But the undeniable skill he developed and the power of his most expressive images touched the heartstrings of many people from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds. His evocative images stand among the symbols of art's spiritual pantheon and are likely to remain enduring landmarks of twentieth-century art.

His body was embalmed as he had requested, and for a week he lay in state in his museum in Figueres. Thousands of people came to say goodbye to the great genius.

Salvador Dali, with the strangeness characteristic of him during his lifetime, lies unburied, as he bequeathed, in a crypt in his Dali Theater-Museum in Figueres. He left his fortune and his works to Spain.

gave creativity surrealism art

Being a big fan of abstract art and surrealism in general and the work of Salvador Dali in particular, I dreamed of visiting this museum for many years. And then it happened.
A little about the museum itself:
In 1960, the mayor of Figueres, R.G. Rovira turned to Dali with a request to donate his painting to the museum of his hometown. The artist, without hesitation, exclaimed: “Not a painting, but a whole museum!” The idea of ​​creating a theater-museum, as well as the basic concept of its content, belongs entirely to Dali himself. The museum complex consists of the old municipal theater building, as well as parts of the medieval city walls and the Galatea tower (the artist's last residence, named after his wife Gala), which are decorated with giant "Humpty Dumpty". The Museum took 14 years to build. All the necessary work required most of Dali’s fortune, considerable by that time, as well as subsidies allocated by the Spanish government and donations from many of his friends. Since reporting was compiled only on expenditures of public money, the total amount spent remained unknown. The opening of the museum took place on September 28, 1974.
Here is how the artist himself spoke about this place:
"...My whole life has been a theater, so I couldn't find a better place for a museum..."
"...Where else, if not in my city, should the most extravagant and fundamental of my works be preserved and live on for centuries? What remains of the Municipal Theater seems to me very suitable for three reasons: firstly, because I am, first of all, a theater artist; secondly, because the Theater is located opposite the church in which I was baptized; and thirdly, it was in this theater, in its foyer, in 1918, at the age of 14, that I first exhibited my paintings..."
"...I want my museum to be a monolith, a labyrinth, a huge surreal object. It will be an absolutely theatrical museum. Those who come here will leave with the feeling that they have had a theatrical dream..."

Above the stage of the theater-museum rises a geodesic dome, which over time has become a symbol of both Figueres and the museum. Its construction was entrusted to Emilio Perez Pinheiro in January 1973. To achieve this, the architect used a glass and steel structure, inspired by the work of American designer Richard Fuller. By the way, Dali’s body is walled up in the floor right under the dome, not far from the entrance to the women’s toilet, as he bequeathed. The artist wanted people to be able to walk around the grave after his death.

During 1984, the walls of the building were gradually covered by Dali with loaves of peasant bread.

And not by chance. Bread was often used by the artist in his works. Dali himself said this:
"...Bread has become one of the long-standing objects of fetishism and obsession in my works, it is the number one to which I have been most faithful..."

Iron sign near the entrance to the museum.

The entrance to the museum is located in Piazza Gala and Salvador Dali.

Opposite the main facade there is a monument to the genius of Catalan thought Francesc Pujols, a friend of the Dali family; the artist had a special interest in his philosophy. On the pedestal of the monument is inscribed the philosopher’s statement: “Catalan thought is always born anew and lives in its simple-minded gravediggers.” The composition of the monument is also interesting: the rhizome of a century-old olive tree, in it there is a figure in a white Roman toga, crowned with a golden egg-head, resting on his hand, in a pose similar to Rodin’s “The Thinker”. Above the figure is a hydrogen atom. The sculptural group also includes a marble bust of a Roman patrician with a small bronze head of Francesc Pujols himself, reminiscent of another family friend, Pepito Pichot.

Warriors with (again) bread loaves under the roof of the building.

A female figure with a loaf of bread and a crutch (another frequently used and significant object in the artist’s figurative world). The holes in the solar plexus illustrate Dali's idea that information is contained in empty space.

The “diver symbolizing a dive into the subconscious” above the entrance is a reference to the outfit Dali wore at the opening of the World Exhibition of Surrealism in London in June 1936 and nearly suffocated.

Immediately after entering we enter the courtyard with its main composition - “Rainy Taxi”.

As the legend describes, the composition owes its appearance to chance. Dali was walking through the city one day. It was cold and rainy. Soaked to the skin. And happy people drove by in warm, dry taxis. And then he had the idea to restore justice and change this world, change it so that it would rain on those who were in the taxi, and it would be warm and cozy around. This is how the idea for the masterpiece of the great Catalan - “rainy taxi” arose. If you throw a coin into the slot, the umbrella closes, and it starts to rain inside the car, which pours on a couple of mannequins in the back seat, the driver and the grape snails crawling on them. When the second coin is thrown, the umbrella opens and the rain stops.

On the hood of the Cadillac, Dali placed a sculpture of the mythological Queen Esther (a symbol of justice and revenge) by the Austrian sculptor Ernst Fuchs.

"Esther" pulls Trajan's Column with chains from car tires - a reference to the famous Roman Trajan's Column and a tribute to the Roman emperor from the Antonine dynasty (Latin: Marcus Ulpius Nerva Traianus), in whom the artist had a strong interest.

The whole time I was looking at the sculpture, a verse from Laertsky’s song “Chemical Faculty of Moscow State University” was spinning in my head, namely: “Hefty women are playing hockey on the grass...”
Yes, Dali’s work evokes interesting associations. That's why I love him.

The entire structure is crowned with a boat that belonged to Gala and a black umbrella.

Under the boat you can see Michelangelo's "Slave" painted black, Dalianized with a car tire.

Drops of water under the bottom of the boat - condoms filled with paint - are not a random detail. According to Dali, on this boat Gala hunted young men hiding from the artist’s already middle-aged muse.

On both sides of the entrance are the lanterns of the Parisian metro in the Art Nouveau style designed by Hector Guimard.

In the recesses of the window openings of the stalls there are mannequins stylized as priests of Ancient Egypt, alternating with charred beams remaining from the burnt building of the old theater.

Grotesque (as the artist himself called them) monsters between the central windows of the courtyard, created by Dali with the assistance of Antoni Pichot from animal skeletons, washbasins, snails, stones from Cape Creus, felled branches of plane trees from the Rambla in Figueres, fragments of gargoyles from the burnt neighboring church of St. Peter , an old dish found in a municipal park and drawers of old furniture from the Figueres City Hall, which, according to Dali, always store information.

"Venus Velata" by Olivier Brice.

Architectural mystifications begin already on the first floor of the museum: upon entering a building that appears to be three stories from the outside, the visitor finds himself in a five-story building. This effect was created by making the first floor of the museum multi-level.

Set design for the ballet "Labyrinth".

Hands from "The Creation" are part of an installation dedicated to Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel.

ABOUT bottom of the greatest illusions of El Salvador - "Nude Gala looking at the sea." When creating this painting, the digital method was used for the first time in fine art.

Let's move a little away from the picture...

and more... What do we see? At a distance of 20 meters, the painting “transforms” into a portrait of Abraham Lincoln.

Amadeu Torres and Teresa Marek - "El Pol y La Pusa" (Louse and Flea). The sculpture is dedicated to two street musicians from the artist’s childhood playing the organ. Dali turned their harmonium into such a surreal object.

I don’t know what this composition is called, but the octopus comes to mind.

Old electric pole.

"Galarina." This painting, like many of the artist’s other works, depicts Dali’s wife, muse and model - Russian emigrant Elena Ivanovna Dyakonova, known throughout the world as Gala (with emphasis on the second A).

A crocodile with a lantern and a one-legged mannequin with a crutch.

The previous installation with a crocodile evoked such an association in me :-)

Sculpture "Stool-mane ken".

A mask invented by Dali with a hat with drawers built into the crown. In this outfit he appeared at the Rothschild family masquerade ball. The mask has four faces: two are variations of the Mona Lisa portrait, one with a mustache, the other with a goatee, the third face with a portrait of Helen Rothschild, and the fourth is an empty space intended for the face of the owner of the mask.

“Otorhinological head of Venus” is either a monster or a deity, with an ear instead of a nose and a nose instead of an ear.

Portrait of the scandalous Hollywood star Mae West. To see it, you need to climb up the ladder and look at the sofa-lips, fireplace-nostrils and picture-eyes standing separately from each other in a special lens with a wig at the edges, suspended between the camel’s legs.

"Retrospective female bust against a background of pheasant carcasses." A loaf on your head, ants on your face and ears of corn like a necklace.

An anthropomorphic face with baby doll pupils, a headless doll instead of a nose, hair made from corn cobs and a heavy picturesque stone on the top of the head.

I don’t like taking pictures of paintings, but here, perhaps, an exception to the rule can and should be made. A little-known side of Dali's work, the theme of Jews and Israel is presented on the second floor of the museum in a series of 25 lithographs entitled "Alia" (1968), "Song of Songs" (1971), "The Twelve Tribes of Israel" (1973), and "Our Prophets" ( 1975).

“Aliyah” - Drawing of a young man with his curly head thrown back, his torso entwined with the banner of Israel with the blue Star of David.

"Scenes of the Holocaust" - a swastika over the dead and the Star of David as a symbol of hope in the skies.

Apparently something connected with 40 years in the desert...

A ship flying a six-pointed star flag arrives at the Palestinian coast.

Proclamation of the declaration of the creation of Israel in 1948.

"Ben Gurion Proclaims Declaration of Independence."

"Menorah".

"Circumcision"

A distinctive lamp in a modernist style with the head of the blindfolded goddess Fortune rising on a spiral of teaspoons suspended from the ceiling.

Installation with two cases of a gift edition of Dali's book "Ten Recipes for Immortality". Immortality, as the artist believed, is the ultimate goal of any alchemical search.

Looking at the shadow on the wall from "Newton with a Hole in the Head", I remembered the movie "District No. 9"

“The Persistence of Memory” or “The Fluidity of Time,” as it is sometimes called, is one of my favorite works by Dali. A reproduction of this painting has hung in my home for many years. A tapestry of the world-famous flowing clock is on display in Figueres, while the original is in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. By the way, the idea to paint a soft, flowing clock came to Dali one day when, while at home, he put a piece of Camembert cheese under the lamp and after a while he saw how the cheese melted and spread...

A gilded gorilla skeleton in the bedroom instead of a bedside table.

The bed was brought from France, or rather from the legendary Parisian brothel "Le Chabanet" and may have belonged to Castiglioni, one of the favorites of Napoleon III.

A figure with the head of Christ and a printed circuit mounted in the middle.

Dali's Venus de Milo. What distinguishes it from the original is the “collection” of boxes installed by the artist into the body of the statue.

Ceiling panel "Palace of the Wind".

We leave the museum building and immediately see one of the three monuments to the French painter Jean-Louis Ernest Meyssonnier (an artist whom Dali admired) rising on tires. The sculptures were created by Antonin Mercier in 1895 and “tweaked” by Dali.

The theme of eggs is revealed not only on the walls and tower of the museum. Here is such an interesting composition in one of the windows. A gift from artist Rafael Duran - a “cardboard giant’s head” with doll heads instead of pupils, teeth made from toys and a TV set mounted in the forehead stands on supports made of eggs.

"Television Obelisk" by Wolf Vostel, one of the largest German sculptors of the second half of the 20th century. This sculpture is a kind of monolith of fourteen televisions, completed with a female head. In 1978, Dali and Vostel signed an agreement on the exchange of works between their museums.

And finally - one more "Newton with a hole in his head and an apple-ball hanging from a pendulum", seeing off visitors to this wonderful theater-museum of Salvador Dali in Figueres.