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Dali Writer & Historian
 
It’s high time we returned in this blog to Salvador Dali’s signature image – the soft, melting watch. But this time the floppy watches first seen and best known in Dali’s 1931 “Persistence of Memory” are now giving way to a new altered state in “La Montre Molle (‘The Soft Watch’).
 
It seems fitting that, in 1949 – the year this popular canvas was painted – Dali was nearing the end of his self-imposed 1940s exile in the United States. Having delved into all manner of projects in the States – including collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock and Walt Disney – in “The Soft Watch” we see Dali returning to a very familiar scene. And a very successful one!
 
At this period in his career, Dali was becoming deeply immersed in a new way of interpreting the world around him, owing to the explosion of the atomic bomb and emerging revelations in nuclear physics. “The Soft Watch” is one of the best examples of how Dali bridged the divide between the “old” Dali and the “new Dali.”
 
Capitalizing on the success and enormous popularity of his soft watches, in the present work he now reflects back on “Persistence of Memory” with a pocket watch not so much melting over a ledge but floating slightly above it, but still maintaining a similar look to its appearance in “Persistence.” Even a fly appears on the timepiece, as it did in the iconic 1931 canvas. And the rocky terrain seen in the lower right distance fairly well echoes that seen in “The Persistence of Memory.”
 
Now, however, he incorporates his new vision into an old standby, expressing his understanding of and fascination with particle physics by showing the watch “exploding into 888 pieces,” as he announced effusively to host Robert Q. Lewis when he appeared on the American TV game show, “The Name’s the Same.”
Some of those exploded pieces are in the shape of rhinoceros horns – a reference to his obsessive observation that the curve of a rhino horn is one of nature’s rare instances where one can find a perfect logarithmic spiral. That mathematical detail figured significantly in Dali’s painting, as he became increasingly interested in constructing his paintings along classic mathematical lines.
 
Take a close look, in fact, at the gold edge of the watch. There’s a sense of movement created by the swirl of rhino horns, and that is exactly what science was discovering at this time: that matter is discontinuous and, at the sub-atomic level, is actually a galaxy of fast-moving electrons and protons.
 
It comes as no surprise, then, that in 1954 Dali painted the ultimate example of his Nuclear Mystical lens through which he was now seeing the world: “The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory,” one of the super-star paintings in the permanent collection of the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.
 
Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory (’54)
 
‘Assumpta…’ by Dali has both Beauty & Shock Value!
The impossible-to-pronounce “Assumpta Corpuscularia Lapislazulina” helps tells us where the then 48-year-old Dali’s head was at when he painted this spectacular but strange Nuclear Mystical masterpiece in 1952.
Dali was deeply invested in his new atomic period at this time, proclaiming he was “becoming classical” and moving away from Surrealism toward a new vision, a new ethos in painting: the melding of science, religion and mathematics. “Assumpta Corpuscularia Lapislazulina” is a great example of this burgeoning period in Dali’s consciousness and his art.
The large work, which I had the great pleasure of seeing at the “Dali: The Late Work” exhibition in Atlanta’s High Museum of Art in 2010, synthesizes a number of Dali’s interests, beliefs and obsessions — most supremely that of his adoration of his wife and muse, Gala. She is presented here as the Virgin Mary, rising in a greatly elongated manner that recalls the works of El Greco or perhaps some of the paintings of Bartolome Murillo.
Painting by Murillo
The sphere from which Gala rises is both suggestive of the Earth from which she departs and an atom, the latter a reference to contemporary discoveries in particle physics that fascinated Dali and account for the atomic/rhino horn-like particles that explain “corpuscularia” in the work’s jaw-breaking title.
In the middle of the picture is a magnificently painted Eucharistic table over which the same image of Jesus appears as he does in Dali’s most famous religious painting, “Christ of St. John of the Cross,” which he finished a year before the present work.
Flanking the main focus of “Assumpta” is a mass of swirling rhinoceros horns, some convoluted in a heavy treatment that leading Dali patron A. Reynolds Morse, for one, opined had compromised the beauty of this painting. But no one was going to tell Salvador Dali  how or what to paint! And, in my view, this work simply wouldn’t have the same impact, the same “shock” value — the same Dalinian dynamism — had it been devoid of this maelstrom of rhino horns.
While they nod to the artist’s obsession with the logarithmic spiral found in the natural curve of a rhino horn, they also inject the painting with that “Dali difference” I often write about. That special something that lends a kind of shock factor to the experience of viewing a Salvador Dali painting.
Speaking of painting, let’s focus for a moment on the actual technique itself here. First, the portrait of Gala: it is one of Dali’s finest. It’s superbly realistic, and that tactical quality contrasts dramatically with the far more ethereal, transparent and spiritual essence Dali achieved from Gala’s upper chest downward (save for her prayerful hands, which again reveal Dali’s tight craftsmanship).
Just below Gala’s clasped hands is the oculus of the Pantheon we saw in Dali’s work, “Raphaelesque Head Exploding,” (1951) and it draws our eye down towards Gala’s feet in a kind of crystal-like form that further exudes a transparency and spirituality Dali achieved so effectively.
 
Dali Writer/Historian
 
Like what they say about a person’s eyes, Dali’s paintings were, in effect, windows to his soul. They reflected his interests, his passions, his fears, his endless curiosity as a creative colossus.
 
“Explosion of Mystical Faith in a Cathedral” is something of a mirror reflecting Dali’s focus at this time, 1957; namely an emerging affinity with the Catholic Church and what he was coming to believe was the key to unlocking the mysteries of the cosmos. “Heaven can be found exactly in the middle of the chest of the man who has faith,” Dali proclaimed.
In the middle of Rome’s St. Peter’s Cathedral, Dali depicts an ethereal, saintly vision with sinuous robes, floating high above a group of human figures. Several of them rise off the floor like souls ascending toward heaven, guided by this transparent, angelic figure.
 
Inspiration from those before him
 
Dali’s ideas came from a wide range of sources and influences. In the case of “Explosion of Mystical Faith in a Cathedral,” it appears certain he was inspired by a 19th century painter who we generally don’t often consider when we look at Dali’s more notable precursors; that is, artists like Velasquez, Vermeer, and Raphael.
But in this case, it surely was “The Apparition” by Gustave Moreau that provided the primary inspiration behind Dali’s dynamic picture. In the 1876 painting, the head of Jesus Christ appears in mid-air, from which brilliant rays of light emerge. The backdrop is the interior of a cathedral, and given that Dali held Moreau in very high regard, it is highly unlikely that this stunning painting was not behind Dali’s motivation to depict a similar religious vision.
 
A kind of ‘electric’ dynamism
 
Three key technical approaches are represented in this Dali painting – a painting I’d wager most Dali collectors and admirers are only vaguely familiar with, if at all. Impressive realism is achieved in the architectural details of the iconic cathedral. It’s believed Dali’s talented studio assistant, Isodor Bea, lent a significant hand in this part of the composition.
 
Next, the handling of the saintly apparition herself – convincingly transparent to evoke a wonderful sense of spirituality and mysticism.
And then there’s the heavy, almost blinding rays of light shooting from the core of the figure, echoing closely the manner in which Moreau symbolized the life-giving light and brilliance in his figure of Christ. Dali used a heavy impasto (a build-up of paint) to highlight this aspect of the scene. There seems to be an almost electric aura to the image, doesn’t there? You can virtually feel the energy, the penetrating, dynamic explosion of faith that brings us back to the title itself. And I believe Dali literally “flicked” his brush just so to create the kind of spontaneity and sense of movement and energy this part of the painting exudes.
 
“Explosion of Mystical Faith in a Cathedral” is, in this blogger’s view, one of Salvador Dali’s least known paintings – but truly one of his most powerful and stunning works, combining, realism, surrealism, and mysticism.
 
 
“That’s by Salvador Dali?!”
Such an expression of incredulity is not common among those who mistakenly believe Dali painted just melting clocks and giraffes on fire, then contemplate a painting like his 1945 “Basket of Bread” (Teatru-Museu Dali, Figueres, Spain).
 
I consider two main points especially important in appreciating this small but powerfully enchanting picture. One, of course, is the subject itself. Bread is a staple of most meals, and is religiously symbolic of the very body of Christ. It’s no coincidence that the outside walls of Dali’s monument to his legendary career – his museum in his birthplace of Figueres – is festooned with bread loaves.
Detail from exterior museum wall
 
In the book, Dali by Robert Descharnes and Giles Neret, the authors wrote, “Dali gave an explanation for this striking presence in a catalogue for Bignou’s Gallery in New York. Commenting on his 1945 Basket of Bread…he declares that his aim was to recover the lost technique of the old masters and establish the motionlessness of pre-explosive objects. Bread was one of his oldest obsessional fetishes in his works, and he had remained true to it; he had painted Basket of Bread a full nineteen years earlier, and, if the two paintings were compared (said Dali), they would reveal the entire history of painting, from the linear charm of primitivism to three-dimensional hyper-aestheticism.”
 
Dali himself explained that bread “is one of the oldest themes of fetishism and obsession in my work; the first, in fact, and the one to which I have been most faithful.”
 
What Dali was also being faithful to here – and this is the second of the two key observations I’ll make about “Basket of Bread” – was his unwavering respect and admiration for the great traditions of classical painting. Dali scrupulously studied the Renaissance masters and emulated their technique and dedication to the craft of painting as much as he could.
 
He certainly achieved technical mastery worthy of a Zurbaran or Ingres or Velasquez or Raphael in this remarkably precise little canvas, capturing every nook and cranny of the loaf as well as the meticulously rendered basket. I also think, incidentally, that Dali chose one of the most stunning frames I’ve seen to showcase this masterpiece.
 
It would be fitting in a study of this Dali painting to draw some comparisons to his earlier basket of bread of 1926 – an undeniable tour d’ force for the then 22-year-old artist. The earlier picture was entered into an art competition at the Carnegie Institute of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. – the first work by Dali ever publicly shown in the United States.
Basket of Bread of 1926
That work, a prized jewel in the great permanent collection of the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, demonstrated an early mastery of technique, as well as what would be Dali’s long-standing affinity for the subject at hand. In later years, many of his bread-related images took on undeniable erotic connotations, such as, for just one example, “Average French Bread with Two Eggs on the Plate without the Plate, on Horseback, Attempting to Sodomize a Crumb of Portugese Bread” (1932).
 
Dali Historian/Writer
 
“Slave Market with Disappearing Bust of Voltaire” defines Salvador Dali for me: an imaginative artist with exceptional technical gifts and an extraordinary capacity for seeing what mere mortals could not!
 
As a Dali expert and great admirer of the artist, I’ve long considered “Slave Market” emblematic of everything that was Dali – most especially when we consider that he was one of history’s best at achieving the visual illusion of “double-imagery.”
Dali used a popular bust of the French writer, Voltaire, sculpted by the French sculptor Jean-Antoine  Houdon in 1778. As a skeptical 18th century French philosopher, Voltaire’s writing were read with interest by Dali when he was a young man, and the historical figure’s thoughts appealed to Salvador.
 
But in some sense Voltaire, at least in art circles, may be best remembered for being an integral part of what was one of the most successful and remarkable examples of double-imagery – so much so that it was used by the prestigious Scientific American magazine to illustrate the perceptual switching effect, where either one image can be seen, or another, but not both simultaneously.
 
Focus on the central image, on which the bare-breasted turbaned woman at left is gazing: do you see two Dutch women in black and white robes, standing shoulder to shoulder? Or do you see the face of an old man — Voltaire? The space under the stone arch is Voltaire’s head/forehead; the women’s faces serve as his eyes; the white collar area of the woman on the left becomes Voltaire’s nose; and the lower portion of their attire become his chin and neck.
 
Do you see?
 
I’ve watched Dali Museum visitors literally exclaim with delight when – “Yes!” – they discovered the hidden women from the bust of Voltaire they first saw; or discovered Voltaire suddenly morphing out of the two women they’d noticed first! You cannot see both at the same time – and this visual phenomenon formed the basis of the Scientific American article of which Dali’s masterful work became an illustration.
 
Dali compared the perception of these double images with camouflage. In his autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dali,  published a year after this painting was finished, he wrote, “The invisible image of Voltaire may be compared in every respect to the mimesis of the leaf-insect rendered invisible by the resemblance and the confusion established between the Figure and the Background.”
 
A Second Double-Image . . .
There’s a second double-image in this 1940 canvas, albeit less important and less dramatic. But it serves to carry on Dali’s intentional “Dalinian Continuity,” where he linked in some way many of his paintings to some of his other works. At right is a pedestal-style dish in which we see two pieces of fruit. But the round fruit is also the ample backside of the woman in the background! The pear, meanwhile, becomes part of the mountain range. This same construction was found two years earlier in Dali’s “Transparent Simulacrum of the Feigned Image” (see my earlier post about this work). And Dali’s famous double-image Voltaire appeared in the middle distance in Dali’s “Resurrection of the Flesh” (1945; see below) and as a detail on the red skirt of one of the Venus de Milo’s in “The Hallucinogenic Toreador” of 1970.
“Resurrection of the Flesh”
Dali Writer/Historian
 
Dali’s artistic world was far from a tidy place. Yes, he painted many beautiful works – works that would not in the strict sense of the word even be considered surrealistic. Much of it was masterful realism, with a dash of mysticism and, of course, at least a hint of surrealism.
 
But a great deal of Salvador Dali’s work courted the disquieting, the bizarre and, at times, the downright disturbing.
 
Fitting neatly into this last category is a work I admittedly don’t know much about, but which I keep coming back to as the most frightening work Dali ever painted, in my personal view: “Cannibalism of the Praying Mantis of Lautreamont” (1934).
This haunting little canvas was inspired by the strange, relatively plotless poetic poem by Lautreamont, called “Les Chants de Maldoror.” An internet source notes that it’s difficult to summarize the poem of six cantos because it doesn’t have a specific plot in the traditional sense, “and the narrative style is non-linear and often surrealistic.”
 
The work concerns the “misanthropic character of Maldoror, a figure of absolute evil who is opposed to God and humanity, and has renounced conventional morality and decency.” The tone is macabre and violent, and it’s no huge leap to see how Dali was drawn to such a provocative and controversial theme.
 
In “Cannibalism,” we see two figures that take on a human-like form of the praying mantis – itself a most peculiar and, to human thinking, a wretchedly violent creature, given that the female literally devours her mate after copulation. That’s surrealism in nature if ever it existed!
 
The mantis-like figure at left appears to be choking the opposing figure, while a piece of bloody excrement drapes over the left figure’s thigh, such as it is. A leg of meat stands nearby, propped up by a crutch festooned with a chop and a strip of bacon. It all appears in a kind of murky washed-out palette of sickly yellows/browns/blue.
 
But the terror sets in, for me anyway (and I literally find this work haunting) in the form of a strange little girl in a dress, over whom all the aforementioned imagery towers. She has the look of a scary doll, yet still exudes a lifelike character. Why it is that creepy dolls – both male and female – make for some of the most terrifying images in horror movies, I don’t know. But here in this little-known Salvador Dali painting, that small figure of a child-doll just might send a shiver up some folks’ spines.