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Begin by painting like the Renaissance masters. After that, do as you wish. You will always be respected.
–Salvador Dali
Who was Salvador Dali, and what is the secret of his enduring popularity today? That is the question that inspired this book. Why does Dali still rank as one of the most celebrated artists of the twentieth century, even though for much of his lifetime he was both beloved and reviled for his uncompromising genius, overt eroticism, and flirtations with megalomania? Indeed, his controversial writings and outrageous behavior alienated not only his critics but also many of his fellow Surrealists. So then, who was this man who every morning experienced “an exquisite joy—the joy of being Salvador Dali”?
This question is even more striking when we remember that Dali rapidly rose to prominence during the roaring twenties of the artistic demimonde of Paris, when all sorts of new and daring Modernist movements were tearing at the fabric of traditional European art. With his prodigious talent, Dali was soon recognized as the public face, the universal brand of Surrealism. However, as his fame grew, so did his pursuit of celebrity and wealth, which, in the minds of many twentieth-century critics, overshadowed his reputation as an artist. Even as late as the 1960s, his provocative art continued to invite bewilderment, anger, and adoration, thus shifting the landscape of the art world and the nature of celebrity itself.
It is only in recent years that historians have begun to re-appraise Dali as one of the most influential artists of the modern age. Part of the reason, perhaps, is that his oeuvre includes not only paintings but also sculptures, films, theater sets, costumes, jewelry, clothing, and literary works, as well as a large number of drawings and graphics. Dali expert Frank Hunter believes this output rose to as many as two thousand graphic works and fifteen hundred paintings—an incredible body of work for a twentieth-century artist.
Today, Dali’s popularity is greater than ever. In addition to the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, and the Dali Theatre-Museum in Figueres, Spain, new Dali exhibitions and ad hoc “museums” continue to pop up all over the world, including recent exhibits in St. Petersburg, London, Dubai, Madrid, and Dallas. His whimsical, even outrageous approach to subject matter, his fondness for nudes, and his consistent adherence to the canon of traditional figurative art continue to exert a magical appeal.
What is less understood, in both popular and scholarly literature, is the root of Dali’s enduring popularity. Is it his choice of mystical motifs? His unique ability to capture the sensuousness of the nude? Or his dogged devotion to the Western canon of realism, even as modern art continued to plumb the uncertain depths of abstraction? And if that last is true, which styles of the past exerted the greatest influence on his work? Which Old Masters of the Renaissance and the Baroque served as his primary models? And to what extent was Dalí influenced by the exceptional realism of nineteenth-century artists—a movement usually referred to as “academic art,” given that this style was taught at art academies throughout Europe?
This is a major gap in the study of twentieth-century art history. We know a great deal about Dali's involvement with the Modernist currents of his time, but much less is known about his engagement with the Old Masters. This grows in part from a certain prejudice that historians of modern art have long harbored against the oeuvre of Salvador Dali. As long as Dali stayed in the mainstream of interbellum modern movements, he remained a respectable and legitimate subject of research, but as soon as he ventured out on his own, using the discredited paradigms of realism, he lost legitimacy as a twentieth-century artist—at least in the eyes of these authors.
A factor that heavily influenced Dali's reception in these critical circles of the 1950s and 1960s is that realism was the sole form of artistic expression tolerated in Nazi Germany, as well as Fascist Italy and Communist Russia. Those ideologies put an abrupt end to Modernist movements in their countries. So repulsive was the socialist realism of Nazi-era artists such as Arno Breker, Fritz Klimsch, Josef Thorak, and Adolf Wissel that for much of the twentieth-century postwar period, any form of representative art in Western Europe was considered ethically and aesthetically out of bounds.
Yet another reason why art historians have not grappled with the secret of Dali’s exceptional realism is more fundamental. Unlike most artists, Dali did not pass through neatly articulated phases of influence. The impact of Old Masters such as Hieronymus Bosch, Johannes Vermeer, and Diego Velázquez came and went with the ebb and flow of Dali's mind, prompted to some extent by his intermittent exposure to these artists.
But what does that mean, the “influence” of one artist or style on another? Many of us may identify the idea of artistic influence with pure imitation of a particular style or technique. But there are many ways in which an artist can draw inspiration from a work of the past. In the medieval period, for example, a pupil was required to imitate the master in obeying key conventions for the depiction of sacred scenes, because most of the faithful during the Middle Ages were illiterate. It was therefore important to understand the established tradition of how these sacred scenes were painted, so that worshippers could recognize the tableaux and understand what was going on.
The Italian Renaissance completely upended that situation when the role of artistic influence became exactly the opposite, as a factor of change, rather than conformity. Artists were now eager to learn from one another how far one could go in the pursuit of new solutions. Thus, the young Florentine artist Masaccio was among the first to depict human beings as fully realized, three-dimensional bodies rather than as the stylized figures of Gothic art. Linear perspective, first documented by the sculptor and architect Brunelleschi, allowed painters to create a convincing optical illusion of space by placing objects on a geometric grid. Similarly, artists like Botticelli broke new ground with the choice of daring motifs, such as the female nude in the Birth of Venus—a theme that a generation earlier would have been denounced as pagan and possibly heretical.
The artist Leonardo da Vinci introduced another set of revolutionary ideas that would launch the art of the High Renaissance, including the dramatic contrast of light and dark known as chiaroscuro; a more monumental treatment of the human figure; and the use of subtle atmospheric effects to suggest space and depth. These changes involved not only style and technique but also a radical rethinking of the relationship between a figure and the space it inhabits. Many of these innovations would cascade through the ages and inspire altogether new solutions, such as the theatrical light effects of Caravaggio, the tactile realism of Spanish Baroque painters, or the incredible virtuosity of seventeenth-century Dutch artists in the treatment of surface and texture. The late nineteenth century would usher in another set of radical new ideas, this time focused on the role of color, light, and framing, often inspired by the development of photography.
Throughout his life, Salvador Dali was a keen student of these movements—not only in terms of style but also motif, composition, and technique—even if that influence is not always readily apparent at first glance. As we will see in this book, Dali’s use of Old Master material could take many forms. He could copy a particular element outright, or he could use it as a model for his own works—Raphael’s elongated neck for a self-portrait, for example. He could also analyze a painting by, say Leonardo da Vinci, and then develop its principal motif to a point where the precedent was only dimly present—as in, for example, Leda Atomica or The Sacrament of the Last Supper. What’s more, Dali was a genuine Renaissance man in the truest sense of the word. He expressed his ideas not only in his drawings, graphics, and paintings but also in film, sculpture (including so-called “readymades”), stage designs, jewelry, and his voluminous literary output.
Our story will take us through all the main episodes of Dalí’s remarkable life, not only to trace the seeds of his inspiration but also to uncover the secret of his enduring legacy.
