Exhibition shows 70-year evolution of eclectic Surrealist master, Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali's "Napoleon's Nose, Transformed into a Pregnant Woman, Strolling His Shadow with Melancholia amongst Original Ruins" (1945) / Courtesy of Salvador Dali, Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali, SACK, 2021

By Park Han-sol

Artist Salvador Dali / Courtesy of Robert Whitaker, Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali, Figueres, 2021

A string of memorable modifiers always seems to follow Salvador Dali (1904-89). Known as a Surrealist icon who defined the 20th century, he was the eccentric genius behind his dreamlike, often downright nonsensical, landscapes, featuring optical illusions, melting clocks and elephants with spindly legs.

But while Dali's Surrealist works from the 1920s and '30s conjured up some of his most imaginative explorations into the subconscious, in the end, they shed light on just a single chapter of his life.

This is where "Salvador Dali: Imagination & Reality" ― the largest retrospective of the artist to date in Korea ― comes in.

Hosted at Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) in central Seoul in partnership with the Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation, a cultural institution founded by Dali himself to promote his oeuvre, the show brings in over 140 pieces ― from oil paintings and illustrations to installations ― spanning seven decades of his versatile artistic career.

The collection itself comes from the two museums dedicated to the artist ― the Dali Theatre-Museum in Spain and Salvador Dali Museum in the United States ― as well as the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid.

From early on, Dali, who was born into an elite family in the town of Figueres, Spain, was able to develop a tremendous level of intellectual self-confidence and creative talent, according to Juan Manuel Sevillano Campalans, the managing director of the Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation.

"He felt safe enough to explore classicism, philosophy, science, different styles of painting ― which creates a tremendously eclectic creator," he told The Korea Times.

"He's exploring all the time. While he's exploring ideologies, he's also exploring the power of mass media. That cooks a personality that becomes probably one of the most powerful driving forces of 20th century art."

Carme Ruiz Gonzalez, the foundation's senior curator, added that the exhibition shows "this evolution of an artist … a mixture of his knowledge in each field."

The show accordingly begins with Dali's early forays into Impressionism, the Renaissance masters and Cubism, until his fateful encounter with Sigmund Freud's "The Interpretation of Dreams" (1899).

Finding dreams and the subconscious to be the key to his visual language, he joined the Surrealist Group in 1929. His recurring motifs from this period ― including ants, crutches, melting clocks, Cypress trees and two peasants from Jean-Francois Millet's "The Angelus" ― gave birth to notable works like the 1933 painting, "Sugar Sphinx," and the 1929 short film, "Un Chien Andalou," co-directed with Luis Bunuel.

His fascination with the two farmers from Millet's painting is quite noteworthy. This representative work of religious devotion and spiritual peace, in fact, haunted the artist for years. Beneath surface serenity, it hid messages of distress and sexual repression, he insisted.

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"This painting produced in me an obscure anguish, so poignant that the memory of those two motionless silhouettes pursued me for several years with the constant uneasiness provoked by their continual and ambiguous presence," he later wrote in his autobiography, "The Secret Life of Salvador Dali."

Dali's "Bust of Voltaire" (1941) / Courtesy of Salvador Dali, Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali, SACK, 2021

Beyond the popular automatist practice adopted by the Surrealists ― or the performance of actions free from conscious thought ― he began developing his own techniques to portray dreamlike and delirious states through what he called, "the paranoiac-critical method."

Adopting optical illusions like the double image, he painted multiple layers of images that are perceived differently depending on the viewer's relative position to the canvas. "Bust of Voltaire" (1941), which simultaneously depicts a slave market and the face of French writer Voltaire, is one example.

While his Surrealist achievements and techniques are the most widely studied parts of Dali's work, the exhibition goes on to show his continuous artistic search for different styles, media, genres and subjects to further visualize his fascination with the modern world.

After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, in 1945, his interest in science and technological developments grew, with him eventually combining the field of physics and science with classical and religious mysticism, hence his "Nuclear Mysticism."

Dali's "The Warrior or 'Los Embozados'" (1982) / Courtesy of Salvador Dali, Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali, SACK, 2021

One of the lesser known aspects of the artist's life was his later return to classicism, influenced by Renaissance masters such as Velazquez, Raphael and Michelangelo. On view is his 1982 painting of "The Warrior or 'Los Embozados,'" in homage to the Tomb of Lorenzo de' Medici, borne from the hands of Michelangelo.

But at the same time, he wasn't afraid to "assess" the skills of these masters himself, daringly grading them in his own chart in terms of composition, originality and expression. He awarded excellent points to himself, along with Leonardo da Vinci, Velazquez and Raphael ― a reflection of his flamboyant personality ― while giving failing grades to figures like Manet and Mondrian.

The artist also dabbled freely in commercial fields like film, theater and fashion, erasing the strict boundary between art and commerce to build himself as a brand ― a territory that still hadn't been traversed well at the time.

He collaborated with film director Alfred Hitchcock for the peculiar dream sequence in the 1945 psychological thriller, "Spellbound," as well as with Walt Disney for the posthumously released short animated film, "Destino" (2003).

"He not only used mass media as a canvas to create, but he understood that it is a tool he needs to master to build his brand and his public image," Sevillano said. "'Dali' is a brand. He's a name that fills up museums 30 years after his death ― that people want to own, possess and investigate. He built that. And he knew he was doing that until the day he died."

Recreation of Dali's "Mae West Room" / Courtesy of Salvador Dali, Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali, SACK, 2021

One of the highlights of the exhibition, curator Ruiz noted, is not a painting but a large-scale recreation of Dali's installation called, "Mae West Room."

The face of Mae West, a popular stage and film actor during the 1920s and '30s, has been transformed into a three-dimensional living room, with each facial features made up of ornamental furniture ― hanging photographs of her eyes, a nose-shaped furnace and a lips-shaped sofa.

"It's a mixture of what Dali is. It comes from Surrealism and it's what he's very famous for ― the double image," she said. "But what he also does with [its three-dimensionality] is to change it to something that people can go and participate in," reflecting his interest in extending his presence out to the public.

The exhibition, "Salvador Dali: Imagination & Reality," runs through March 20, 2022, at DDP.