Triple anniversary for another Year of Dalí

His entry into the world was un­char­ac­ter­is­ti­cally dis­creet, born in the fam­ily flat in Figueres to par­ents mourn­ing the loss of their first­born son nine months ear­lier. Some 84 years later, his bur­ial in the mu­seum that bears his name could not have been more pub­lic. This year is the 120th an­niver­sary of the birth of Sal­vador Dalí (May 11, 1904), 35 years since his death (Jan­u­ary 23, 1989), and a half cen­tury since the in­au­gu­ra­tion, in his home­town, of the Dalí The­atre and Mu­seum. All of this would nor­mally be enough to de­clare 2024 the Year of Dalí if it was not for the fact that the artist’s cen­te­nary was held two decades ago. The op­por­tu­nity that this year pro­vides is the chance to take stock of the progress made in de­vel­op­ing and dis­sem­i­nat­ing Dalí’s legacy since 2004.

“This will be a year of con­sol­i­da­tion,” says Montse Aguer, di­rec­tor of Dalí Mu­se­ums, who points to the knowl­edge at­tained from re­cent stud­ies, the ac­qui­si­tion of art­works and the com­pi­la­tion of his writ­ings.

The Gala-Sal­vador Dalí Foun­da­tion, cre­ated by the artist him­self in De­cem­ber 1983 and in­volv­ing the Span­ish State, the Cata­lan gov­ern­ment and the Figueres and Cadaqués coun­cils, was al­ready con­sol­i­dated as an in­sti­tu­tion at the time of the Dalí cen­te­nary. Since the com­mem­o­ra­tions in 2004, the foun­da­tion’s Cen­tre for Dalin­ian Stud­ies, set up with Barcelona’s Au­tonomous Uni­ver­sity in 1991 by the art his­to­rian Fèlix Fanés, has taken the lead in re­search into the artist. It began with such mem­o­rable ex­hi­bi­tions as ’Dalí, afini­tats elec­tives’, in con­junc­tion with the Cata­lan gov­ern­ment, and ’Dalí. Cul­tura de masses’, or­gan­ised with “la Caixa” Foun­da­tion, as well as the pub­li­ca­tion of all of Dalí’s writ­ings, which are so im­por­tant for un­der­stand­ing the ori­gin of his imag­i­na­tion and his ob­ses­sions.

In the years that fol­lowed, under the di­rec­tion of Aguer, the cen­tre has cat­a­logued the artist’s works on­line, it has put on ret­ro­spec­tive ex­hi­bi­tions of his work around the world, in­clud­ing pro­mot­ing the use of new tech­nol­ogy in art – which Dalí would have ap­plauded – with im­mer­sive ex­pe­ri­ences in Provence, Paris, Madrid, Bor­deaux and Barcelona. The cen­tre has also vin­di­cated the role of Dalí’s wife, Gala Dyakonova, as an es­sen­tial col­lab­o­ra­tor and a fully-fledged cre­ator in her own right, be­yond the stereo­type of in­spi­ra­tional muse for artis­tic ge­nius.

Thus, what is pro­posed in this triple an­niver­sary year is not the un­cov­er­ing of hid­den facets of Dalí but the re-read­ing of what is known about the artist and his work in order to “re­think his con­tri­bu­tions, his in­flu­ence in today’s world and his fu­ture pro­jec­tion,” as Aguer puts it. This goal is stated in the very title of the lec­ture se­ries ’Re­for­mu­lant Dalí. Pen­sa­ment, ciència i creació’ (Re­for­mu­lat­ing Dalí. Thought, sci­ence and cre­ation), which the Dalí Foun­da­tion or­gan­ised with the Barcelona Hu­man­i­ties In­sti­tute. Al­though six lec­tures al­ready took place be­tween Jan­u­ary and March at the Barcelona Cen­ter for Con­tem­po­rary Cul­ture (CCCB), it is just the first of the ac­tiv­i­ties planned as part of a com­mem­o­ra­tion that Aguer says “will con­tinue be­yond the 2024” to ex­plore the in­flu­ence of sci­ence and tech­nol­ogy on the artist’s work.

Dalí’s re­la­tion­ship with sci­ence is one sub­ject the Cen­tre for Dalin­ian Stud­ies aims to re­assess: “His in­ter­est in sci­ence, per­haps be­cause it most clearly ma­te­ri­alised in the lat­ter years of his life has not yet been thor­oughly touched upon,” notes Aguer, who sees an under-ex­plored vein in “his ap­proach be­tween the late six­ties and early eight­ies to cer­tain sci­en­tific ad­vances, for ex­am­ple, the struc­ture of DNA, which led him to re­flect on im­mor­tal­ity.” In fact, Aguer says that if she had to point out par­tic­u­larly de­ci­sive stages in Dalí’s artis­tic ca­reer – be­yond his meet­ing Gala and his con­tact with the sur­re­al­ist core from 1929 – she would opt for the atomic era in the fifties, or his fas­ci­na­tion with sci­ence in the six­ties and sev­en­ties.

So often a fore­run­ner, Dalí did not leave a last­ing mark on the gen­er­a­tion of painters that fol­lowed, un­like Pi­casso or Miró, whose style, tech­nique and sym­bol­ism have been ap­pro­pri­ated by so many sub­se­quent artists. “It’s very dif­fi­cult to do Dalí,” says Aguer to ex­plain why so few have tried to fol­low in his foot­steps. Yet the orig­i­nal­ity of his thought and above all his per­for­ma­tive side have been enor­mously in­flu­en­tial on con­tem­po­rary art. Ex­am­ples are his de­signs used by the fash­ion world by the likes of Elsa Schi­a­par­elli or Chris­t­ian Dior, or his flir­ta­tion with gen­der am­bi­gu­ity, adds the di­rec­tor.

An­other high­light this year was the dis­play in his the­atre mu­seum for the first time of his 1951 paint­ing ’Christ of St John of The Cross’. A six-month loan from the Kelv­in­grove Art Gallery in Glas­gow, the paint­ing of the cru­ci­fix­ion, in­spired by a draw­ing by the 16th-cen­tury Span­ish friar John of the Cross, re­turned to Scot­land on April 30 be­fore it be­gins a new loan pe­riod in the Vat­i­can in May. A view of the cru­ci­fix­ion from above, the paint­ing shows an ide­alised Christ hang­ing from the cross above a land­scape in­spired by Cat­alo­nia’s Em­pordà re­gion, “this priv­i­leged place where the real and the sub­lime al­most touch”, as Dalí de­scribed it. Dur­ing its stay in Figueres, the paint­ing was dis­played as Dalí him­self wished: against a back­ground of red vel­vet and along­side his still-life, ’Bas­ket of bread’, “the most enig­matic oil I have ever painted”, as he con­fessed to An­toni Pitxot. Hav­ing seen the two paint­ings side by side, Aguer tes­ti­fies to how they share the same tone and sculp­tural form, so that “Christ’s left shoul­der could be mis­taken for a crust”.

Dalí’s re­li­gious side, in a man who ad­mit­ted to hav­ing no faith, is a facet that arouses the most doubt among some crit­ics, who in­ter­pret it as a flir­ta­tion with Franco’s na­tional Catholi­cism. The truth is that Dalí’s mys­ti­cal stage co­in­cided with his fas­ci­na­tion with sci­ence, whose ad­vances, rather than con­tra­dict­ing the ex­is­tence of God, pushed him to con­sider, as he said, how im­prob­a­ble it would be for a su­pe­rior being not to exist. That this spir­i­tual phase co­in­cided with an in­ter­est in the Franco dic­ta­tor­ship might be bet­ter in­ter­preted as Dalí using the sit­u­a­tion for his own pur­poses, as a shock­ing form of spec­ta­cle, al­beit with sin­is­ter un­der­tones.

What can­not be de­nied is the shock caused by this paint­ing that Dalí con­sid­ered one of his mas­ter­pieces. “It’s a les­son in paint­ing,” says Aguer: “It’s im­pres­sive how silent the room falls when peo­ple ap­proach it, a rev­er­en­tial si­lence full of emo­tion.”

fea­ture Dalí an­niver­sary

fea­ture Dalí an­niver­sary