All the paper being used up, I decided to use a dismantled door, which I laid on the backs of two chairs. I had planned to paint a handful of cherries from the basketful that I had emptied on the table. For each cherry, I planned to use only two colors: vermilion for the sunlit red and carmine for the shadow, with white creating the reflections. In rhythm with the old mill, I applied my colors with a relentless rigor that made my joy all the more intense. Mr. Pichot’s complimentary remarks added even more to my pleasure and pride.
Friends and neighbors were soon streaming in to see it, and brimmed over with encouraging words. But, since they pointed out that I had failed to paint stems on the cherries, I began to eat the fruit, sticking each stem left in my hand on to one of the painted cherries. These collages gave the whole thing a most striking feeling of reality. I even made use of the worms that were eating through the door, digging them out with a pin, to give a further quality to the representation of the painted cherries. Pepito Pichot watched this operation raptly, and commented, “That’s pure genius.” I was sure of it.
It took him a little time to convince my father that I ought to have drawing lessons, but I didn’t care about that. I just kept saying, “I’m an Impressionist painter.” At twelve, I was enrolled in the drawing class of Professor Don Juan Nuñez, at the municipal school. A former Prix de Rome winner in engraving, he was a remarkable pedagogue, to whom I owe a great deal. I well remember the precious hours he put in commenting to me about an original Rembrandt engraving that he owned, showing me the subtleties of the chiaroscuro.
He was able to impart to me his mystical faith in art, convince me of the high value of the painting profession, and reconfirm the conviction I had of my own genius. He tried also to get this across to my father. But since my marks in school were far below my artistic talents, and the possible painting career before me frightened my father, he was deaf to Nuñez’s urgings about my direction. “Later, later,” he would say. “First, let’s see how you do on your baccalauréat.” But he did buy me the art books I asked for.
Each day, I watched Mr. Nuñez, dressed in black, going to the cemetery where his beloved daughter was buried. This three-hour pilgrimage impressed me greatly through its constancy and fervor, but not for anything in the world would I have gone with him to that place where my elder brother Salvador slept, buried with half my soul, while I continued to be marked by him as indelibly as by a wound. Yet, in my eyes, Mr. Nuñez returned all the greater for this frequentation of the dead. But my self-assurance was such that I never hesitated to contradict my teacher on the artistic level, on which he was the master. I did it, in fact, systematically.
Here, I would like to retrace an “experiment” which perfectly illustrates the efficacy of that sense of logical contradiction that ceaselessly drives me on to new heights, all the greater as each challenge I set for myself is more impossible. The class was supposed to draw a beggar with a curly white beard. After looking at my first sketches, Nuñez warned me that I had too many lines and that they were too heavy to allow me to render the downy quality of the beard. He suggested I start again, leaving more white space, and just barely pressing down on the paper. But I resolved to persevere and, without heeding his advice, literally chopped up my drawing with strong black lines. I was working in a kind of rage, and quickly attracted the attention of the whole class. Soon, my drawing was nothing but one dark shapeless mass. Nuñez came over and expressed his desolation at my stubbornness. Then I smeared the whole thing with India ink.
And, as soon as that was dry, with a penknife I scratched at it in spots, tearing away a layer of paper so as to obtain perfect whiteness. Where I spread saliva on it, the white became gray. I succeeded in creating a feeling of both lightness and depth, which I accentuated by composing a perspective of oblique light. On my own, I had rediscovered the engraving methods of that magician of painting named Mariano Fortuny, one of the most famous of Spanish colorists. My teacher was stunned. I will always remember how he said, “Look how great that Dalí is!” These compliments were not enough for me. I wanted more, ever increasingly, warranted by the ceaselessly more brilliant affirmation of my genius. I worked with unbelievable ardor.
From the moment I awoke, until night fell, I was devoted to comprehending the laws and relationships of light and colors. My research led me to making canvases covered with a thick layer of matter that caught the light, creating relief and presence. That was when I decided to stick stones into my picture, then painting over them. Among others, I did a dazzling sunset in which the clouds were made up of stones of every size. My father was happy to hang that one in the dining room. Unfortunately, the paste was not strong enough to hold the weight of my materials, and our evenings were often disturbed by the sound of falling objects, which my father satirically described as “nothing but stones falling from our child’s sky.” Yet, he was being slowly won over to the idea that, like Nuñez, I might become a drawing teacher – in a word, have a respectable job.
How Dalí Became Informed Of The International Art Movement
I continued to go my way stubbornly, discovering Cubism and delighting in Juan Gris through articles in the magazine L’Esprit Nouveau (The New Spirit), to which I subscribed. I read voraciously. After the Christian Brothers’, I went to school at the Marxists’ to get ready for my higher studies.
But, outside the curriculum, I was devouring Nietzsche, Voltaire’s Philosophical Dictionary, and especially Kant, whose categorical imperative seemed beyond my comprehension, and who threw me into depths of reflection. I ruminated for a long time over the ideas of Spinoza and Descartes, thus accumulating much speculative material and sowing seeds of deep thought that one day would bring forth the basis of my philosophical methodology. I was still short on ideas, though long now of hair and sidewhiskers. To contrast with my thin swarthy face, I wore a huge ascot tie.
My jacket was complemented by plus fours and gaiters that came up to my knees. A Meerschaum pipe the bowl of which was the head of an Arab grinning broadly and a tiepin made of a Greek coin were my usual vestimentary accessories. My get-up created a sensation, and attracted attention to my talent. Some thirty artists from Gerona and Barcelona, who were having a show that year, 1918, at Figueras, invited me to take part in it. (Half a century later, this was the very place where Spain built me a museum.) I was highly noted by two of the most important critics, Carlos Compte and Puig Pujades, who predicted I would have a great future.
I had a huge desire to shed my adolescence as quickly as possible and complete my metamorphosis. I worked without let-up, reading all the available magazines, L’Amour de l’Art, L’Art Vivant, L’Art d’Aujourd’hui, La Gaceta de las Artes, L’Amic de les Arts, Variétés, and Der Querschnitt, as well as all the art books that came out. I also wrote for an art magazine, Studium, printed on wrapping paper, in which I was in charge of the department devoted to the great masters of painting. I wrote about Velázquez, Goya, El Greco, Michelangelo, Dürer, and Da Vinci, with special emphasis on their plastic techniques, but keeping to myself what I learned of their methods. I also started to write an essay, The Tower Of Babel, and covered several hundred pages on the theme of death. I came out against the compromise by which men pretend to have become reconciled to and forgotten death. On the contrary, I celebrated that event, which to me was the basis of all artistic creation and the very quality of imagination.
Most human beings seemed like wretched wood lice to me, crawling about in terror, unable to live their lives with courage enough to assert themselves. I deliberately decided to emphasize all aspects of my personality, and exaggerate all the contradictions that set me that much more apart from common mortals. Especially, to have no dealings with the dwarfs, the runts that were all around me, to change no whit of my personality, but on the contrary to impose my view of things, my behavior, the whole of my individuality on everyone else. I have never deviated from this line of conduct. So I became more and more of an oppositionist by design. I spit on everything wit
h voluptuous delight. Tears of rage came to my eyes at the mere idea that I might not at every single moment be radically different from all others. My aim was to have absolutely nothing in common with anyone. Oh, had I only been able to be one of a kind! Alone! Just me!
I carried my taste for mystification to the extreme, in dress, in attitudes, and in the slightest events of my life. I claimed the woman’s profile on the Greek coin of my tiepin was Helen of Troy. I was always waving a cane – I had a weird and amazing collection of them. I let my hair grow to phenomenal length. I darkened my eyebrows. Each of my dandified gestures was histrionic. I even tried to pretend I was a madman. One of my tricks was to buy a one-peseta coin for two pesetas from one of my classmates, and then openly gloat over how I had made a killing, according to a secret mathematical system that I claimed to have in a notebook. They thought I was crazy, and I delighted in my loneliness and the lack of understanding by which I was surrounded.
What Dalí’s Philosophical Position Was At The Time
I was an anarchist, and privately composed hymns to my own will to power. One morning, coming to school, I saw a group of students yelling as they burned a Spanish flag in the name of Catalan separatism. I was just getting into their group, when they suddenly began to disperse. I proudly thought my arrival was what had turned them away, but a troop of soldiers rushing up on the double surrounded me as I was picking up the charred remains of the flag. I was arrested, despite my protests, and indicted. But the court acquitted me, because of my age. My legend, however, grew as a result, and in my contemporaries’ eyes I was a hero. Yet, if I increasingly impressed them, I did nothing to win their affection. I took delight in picking on boys smaller and weaker than I. Pretending to have my nose in a book, I would choose my victim. I remember one boy, especially ugly, who was busy eating a chocolate bar, alternating each mouthful with a bite of bread. His placidity and the bovine regularity of his mastication drove me crazy. When I got near him, I slapped him as hard as I could, sending his snack rolling in the dust, and then ran away, leaving him speechless.
Sometimes, things went less well for me. One day I went over to a sickly-looking kid with a violin. I patiently waited for him to put the instrument down to tie his shoelace, then suddenly kicked his behind as hard as I could, and trampled on his fiddle. Unfortunately, the boy had long legs, and his wild fury endowed him with a strength I never would have suspected. He caught up with me. A picture of cowardice, I threw myself at his knees and begged him to spare me, offering him twenty-five pesetas not to hit me. In his fury, he did not even hear me and beat me up good and proper, knocking me to the ground and tearing out a handful of my hair. I began to scream, out of pain – and design. My hysteria had the desired results. My adversary was taken aback, and stopped, as a teacher who heard it all came over to us. He asked what had started the fight.
With complete assurance, I stated that in smashing the violin I had wanted to establish the supremacy of painting over music. They all broke out laughing.
“How did you think you’d do that?” the teacher asked.
“With my shoes.”
More laughter from all concerned.
“That’s perfectly senseless,” the teacher now replied.
“To you and the fellows, it may be,” I countered, “but my shoes don’t see it that way.”
And I was right, as I have since proved in my paintings by showing the realistic virtues of the shoe – which I even immortalized by putting it on women’s heads when Elsa Schiaparelli executed my hat – while I reproduced musical instruments limp, soft, or broken, thus making a monument out of every detail of my existence, even the worst of them.
The teacher, floored by my answers, did not punish me, and I was the subject of even greater admiration. The efficacy of my eccentricities began to be intriguing and my alleged madness appeared as proof of my extraordinary temperament. I realized that my de lirium could convince people and subjugate them. It was easy to fool everyone about the origin and meaning of my actions, and thus create a beneficient confusion all about me.
I worked a great deal, except at those subjects needed for the baccalauréat. My artistic work went on apace. I began doing tempera paintings, my favorite subject being Gypsies, who happily filled my studio on Calle Monturiol, and willingly served as my models. Two or three works a day went up on the walls, but I was perpetually unsatisfied with the results, which to me always failed to come up to the idea I had inside myself.
What Hold Did Dalí Have Over His Schoolmates?
My legend preceded me. The armistice ending World War I was the occasion for great rejoicing in Catalonia. A public celebra tion was decreed for Figueras, with parades and flags.
And to the great delight of my father, who loved to do the sardana, there was to be dancing on the ramblas. The students, however, decided to debate whether or not to take part in these festivities. I was asked to make the opening remarks. My first public speech. I studiously figured out before the mirror what attitudes would make me appear to best ad vantage, and polished my words with fine Dalínian emphasis, which was to floor the audience by its originality.
I learned it by heart, but at the mere idea of speaking to an audience I got a mental block, and could not control myself. I was trembling with rage.
When the day came, I was more out of control than ever. I made a copy of my speech, and rolled it up carefully, then went to the Republican Hall an hour ahead of time to get used to the setting and the intimidating platform all decorated with flags. At the appointed time, I took my seat between the president and the secre tary, who got up to explain the aim of the meeting. He was heckled by a few spoilsports who did not think we were serious about demonstrating. Before turning the floor over to me, he mentioned what he called my “heroism”, in the incident of the incinerated flag. I got up.
Silence in the hall. I had not known how pleasing it would be to have this sensation of acceptance and total anticipation – intimidating though it was – presented to me by the group of men and women waiting just to hear me. What pleasure there was in that desire of which I could sense the fervor! But not the first word of my speech came back to me. I just eyed the crowd with the utmost authority. Blank. And then my genius pointed the way out. I yelled at the top of my lungs:
“Long live Germany! Long live Russia!” and at the same time overturned the table on the platform and knocked it down into the audience. But, strangely, my gesture brought no adverse reaction toward me. The audience immediately broke into two groups, who started to insult and hit each other. The tumult was deafening. I bolted out.
Martin Villanova, one of the leaders of the movement, gave a very convincing explanation of what I had done: Dalí wanted to say there were neither winners nor losers, that the Russian revolution, now spreading to Germany, was the real result of this war. And he shoved the table down into the hall, because he felt we were too slow in catching on. That very evening, we had a parade through Figueras, behind German and Soviet flags. I was carrying the German banner. I had turned the situation to my advantage.
That year, I began growing a beard and my sidewhiskers took on respectable size. I lost my mother, and a world of sorrow broke around my head. She adored me and I venerated her. Only the immortal glory I had now decided to earn was able to console me for this loss.
The great day for the departure to Madrid arrived, and I left, with my father and sister. I was to compete for admission to the Fine Arts School. The competition involved making a drawing in six days of a casting of Iacopo Sansovino’s Bacchus. On the third day, making small talk with the concierge, my father found out that my drawing was not the prescribed size. He was terribly worried. As soon as I came out, he rushed over, and questioned me, worrying me, too.
The next day. I erased the whole thing in half an hour, but now my handicap was too great, and I was unable to get anything on paper for the new drawing. That day I took evil delight in tor turing my father, who was fit to be tied and beginning to be sorry he
had said anything to me at all. He did not sleep a wink that night. The next day, I did my very best, only to discover finally that my drawing was too big and would not fit entirely on the sheet. I erased it. My father wept when he heard this. He could already see us returning shame-faced to Figueras. I took further unfair advantage of the situation by adding to his despair with defeatist talk, trying to put the whole responsibility for my failure on his shoulders.
My father was of course crushed by this situation, and the weaker he became the more my own strength battened on his anguish. The last day, I set to work with extraordinary skill and determination. I finished my entry with amazing speed, and still had an hour left over to admire my handiwork. I took careful note, and now saw with surprise that its size was even smaller than that of my initial effort. I informed my father of this when I came out, and was elated at his utter breakdown. I was accepted to the school, with the mention, “Although the drawing was not done in the prescribed dimensions, it is so perfect that the jury has accepted it.”
My father entrusted me to the charge of his friend, the poet Eduardo Marquina, who gave me a recommendation to the head of the University Residence, Gimenez Fraud. This was the start of a monkl-ike period for me, devoted entirely to solitary work: visits to the Prado, where, pencil in hand, I analyzed all of the great masterpieces, studio work, models, research. I painted under the inspiration of Cubist theories, particularly reproductions of the work of Juan Gris. I also altered my palette, eliminating violent colors in favor of sienna, olive green, black, and white. I assiduously went to class, drunk with learning the secrets of technique – the painter’s métier – and I was greatly disappointed to find that the teachers, turning their backs on all the lessons of academicism, in order to suit the taste of the day essentially encouraged freedom and self-expression. I had no need of them to give me that kind of genius.
Maniac Eyeball Page 5