Salvador Dalí 1904-1989 [antikvár]

How to Become a Genius "Every morning when I awake," wrote the painter of the soft watches and burning giraffes, "the greatest of joys is mine: that of being Salvador Dalí " Dalí, a Catalan who was addicted to fame and gold, painted a lot and talked a lot. His favourite topic of conversation was how to become a genius. His recipe: "Oh Salvador, now you know the truth; that if you act the genius, you will be one!" At the age of six he wanted to become a cook, insisting on using the word in the feminine gender; at the age of seven, Napoleon. "Since then," he later said, "my ambition has steadily grown, and my megalomania with it. Now I want only to be Salvador Dalí, I have no greater wish." During these same early years he painted his first picture. Then, at ten, he discovered the Impressionists, and at fourteen the "pompiers", the academic genre painters of the 19th century. In 1927, at the age of twenty-four, he was already Dalí, and his childhood friend Federico Garcia Lorca dedicated a "didactic ode" to him. Years later he would relate how Lorca, very much smitten, had tried to sodomize him, but did not quite succeed. Ever that Dalinian taste for scandal! His parents had named him Salvador (Span, "el salvador" = the saviour) because - as the artist himself declared - he was destined to be the saviour of painting, which was "in mortal danger from abstract art, academic Surrealism, Dadaism in general, and all anarchic 'isms"'. Had he lived during the age of the Renaissance, his genius might have been more acceptable, even normal. But in our own times, which he himself called "cretinous", Dalí is a permanent provocation. Even though he is now recognized as one of the truly great figures of modern art, ranking alongside Picasso, Matisse and Duchamp, and even though he has managed to seduce the general public and win their favour, his works continue to shock. Many viewers are still tempted to cry "madness", yet Dalí himself insisted: "The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad!" It is also true, as he repeatedly said, that: "The only difference between the Surrealists and me is that I am a Surrealist." Just as Monet is the only Impressionist to remain so from start to finish - his fellows would later all branch off towards Cubism, pointillism or Fauvism - so Dalí remains the most faithful, the only true Surrealist. Even though he also said of himself: "The mills ofhis mind grind continuously, and he possesses the universal curiosity of Renaissance man." In his foreword to Dali's Diary of la Genius (Journal d'un genie) Michel Déon writes: "One thinks one knows Dalí because, with extreme courage, he has decided to be a public person. Journalists greedily devour everything he offers them, but finally the most surprising thing about him is his peasant good sense - as in the scene where the young man who wants to know the secret of success Nude in a Landscape, 1922-23 A highly "edible" nude, in the spirit of Catalan culinary atavism, but rendered here in the pointillist manner. OPPOSITE: Self-Portrait, c. 1920 "Senor Patillas" (Dali's nickname was inspired by his striking sideburns) is portrayed against an Impressionist Cadaqués landscape, a motif which reappears time and time again throughout his work.