Few have ignited as much controversy and intrigue as the Catalonian surrealist painter Salvador Dalí (1904 – 1989). Whether it was by walking with his giant anteater through the streets of Paris, sporting a ridiculous mustache, or publicizing his fascination with Adolf Hitler, Dalí was known to amplify his eccentricities through his theatrics – his personality an extension of his creations; complex, bizarre, and oftentimes incongruous.
Embodying the saying “there is no such thing as bad press,” Dalí propelled himself into the A-list of 20th century modern art stardom, eventually becoming synonymous with the Surrealist movement itself. His paintings, prints, writings, set designs, films, jewelry, furniture pieces are all expressions of his provocative views and evolving beliefs; together a collection of pieces shaping his identity.
However, as Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts’ exhibition Dalí: Disruption and Devotion would reveal, there is much more beyond Dalí’s outlandish and iconoclastic behavior. He was an artist deeply committed to the past. Only by deconstructing the works of Albrecht Dürer, El Greco, Diego Velázquez, Francisco y Goya, and the like, could Dalí reconstruct a future with ideas from Sigmund Freud and nuclear physics.
This intimate curation of 30 paintings and prints juxtaposing Dalí’s works next to his European predecessors offers a rare opportunity to see him synthesizing paradoxical tensions – between irrationality and reason, dreams and reality, new ideas and old ideals, science and religion – all in dialogue with the past and present.
Irrationality and Reason
In critic and poet André Breton’s 1924 Manifesto of Surrealism, the movement was defined as the following:
Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express – verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner – the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.
Growing out of the earlier Dada movement, Surrealism also rejected the “rationalism” of politics that led Europe to the horrors of World War I.
In Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire (1940), Dalí mocks those enslaved to rational thought. Using a “double-image,” or a paranoiac-critical method, he depicts two compositional ideas – a woman overlooking a slave market with 17th century merchants (i.e. slavery) and the bust of the famous 18th century French Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire (i.e. reason) in one painting.
Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire, 1940. Oil on Canvas.
He once wrote:
Voltaire possessed a peculiar kind of thought that was the most refined, most rational, most sterile, and misguided not only in France but in the entire world.
Dalí suggests that not only was Voltaire’s belief in reason and rationalism the antithesis to that of the Surrealists, but it may also not lead to the truth: after all, which image is more real, the bust or the slave market? In effect, Dalí plays on the concept of ideological slavery.
Dreams and Reality
However, unlike the nihilistic Dadaists who rejected rationalism by emphasizing negation, Surrealists achieved the same objective by focusing on positive expression: these artists preferred to unleash the subconscious mind to achieve a state of “absolute reality, a surreality” in lieu of using the conscious mind to create anti-art.
The result was works that fell into two camps: the former characterized by suggestive but amorphous shapes; the latter epitomized by realistic everyday subjects placed in impossible or illogical contexts as if in a bizarre dreamscape or fantasy.
Dalí undoubtedly fell into the latter. Influenced heavily by Freudian theories, he not only became drawn to dreams as keys to the subliminal unconscious mind, but also expressed his own interpretations of psychoanalysis. Fears, fantasies, traumas, sexual desires were all subjects deeply explored in his works. The First Days of Spring (1929) was one such example.
The First Days of Spring, 1929, Oil and Collage on Panel.
Here, Dalí depicts a dreamlike landscape that expresses his inner turmoil: stress caused by a rapidly deteriorating relationship with his father, who grew increasingly disapproving of his eccentric behavior, choice of profession, and unconventional ways. Subscribing to Freud’s belief that the root of all fears and personality deviations comes from one’s childhood, Dalí places a portrait of his younger self at the center of the painting surrounded by various Freudian motifs and symbols.
In the top left corner, a seated man, often interpreted as his father, is turned away as if to suggest his abandonment of Dalí. In the background two figures, presumably father and son, represent his longing for the relationship that they once had, now far off in the distance. Meanwhile, the other characters, embody a range of sexual fantasies and desires, through which Dalí unveils his own inner tensions – an interpretation that Freud would also attribute to the psychological imprint of one’s formative years.
New Ideas and Old Ideals
But even though Dalí chose to embrace this new reality, he did not entirely abandon the ideals of the past, in particular those established by the European masters.
He once remarked:
A foot sketched by Raphael do Urbino, a face or leaf traced by Leonardo da Vinci remain and will always remain more and more each day, the greatest and rarest miracle of the sensibility and intelligence of man.
As a student Dalí wrote a series of essays exalting Dürer, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, El Greco, Velázquez, and Goya. Later he would go on to recreate many of their older masterpieces, giving them fresh meanings and breathing into them new life.
Still, no artist inspired Dalí more than the 17th century Spanish court painter Diego Velázquez, whom he held in the highest regard.
He praised:
Vigor and energy predominate in Velázquez’s portraits; their contours of raw and diluted lines give, at first, an impression of abruptness; which is later diminished by the profound and calm expression of his countenance, although these are almost always charged with an intelligent strength.
Following the footsteps of Goya and Picasso, Dalí reimagined Velázquez’s oeuvres, infusing them with his own distinctive style and interpretation. Approximately three hundred years after Velázquez painted Maria Theresa, daughter of Spain’s King Philip IV, Dalí created Velázquez Painting the Infanta Marguerite with the Lights and Shows of His Own Glory (1958), offering a modern homage to the master’s legacy.
A close comparison of these two paintings reveals Dalí’s recasting of Velázquez’s portrait of the princess, transforming her through his unique artistic vision. Influenced by American Abstract Expressionism while living in New York, Dalí departs from his typical realistic rendering of form, eschewing it for flatter, rougher, brushstrokes. These dynamic, fragmented lines do more than reference the contemporary style; they can simultaneously be construed as atoms, given Dalí’s growing fascination with nuclear physics.
(Left) Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez and workshop, Infanta Maria Theresa, 1653, Oil on Canvas. (Right) Salvador Dalí, Velázquez Painting the Infanta Marguerite with the Lights and Shows of His Own Glory, 1958, Oil on Canvas.
Although Dalí embraced modern ideas, he remained deeply conscious of the past’s significance. By placing the Prado Museum and Velázquez on a separate plane, he underscores the past as the foundation of both the present and future. Consequently, Maria Theresa becomes the vessel through which he deconstructs and reconstructs these historical influences, merging tradition with his own creative expression.
Science and Religion
Ironically, Dalí’s obsession with new world science led him back to a renewed engagement with Catholicism. With the advent of breakthroughs such as atomic theory and the discovery of DNA, Dalí found it unimaginable that anything other than God could be responsible for creating such complexity and order. In an effort to reconcile his devotion to science with his deepening interest in religion, Dalí developed a style he called “nuclear mysticism.” This approach infused spiritual significance into the atom, suggesting that by studying its intricacies, one could draw closer to understanding God’s ultimate creation—the nature of the universe itself.
I believe I am the savior of modern art, the only one capable of of sublimating, integrating, and rationalizing … all the revolutionary experiments of modern times, in great classical traditions of realism and mysticism…
Inspired by the election of Pope John XXIII, who soon after convened the Second Vatican Council to modernize the Catholic Church, Dalí created The Ecumenical Council (1960), reflecting his hope toward this transformative moment in the Church’s history.
The Ecumenical Council, 1960, Oil on Canvas.
In this painting, Dalí portrays his wife, Gala, as St. Helena, the mother of Constantine I, the first Christian emperor of the Roman Empire, holding a cross. Above her, the Holy Trinity appears: God the Father, with his face covered by his arm, under an arch inspired by Michelangelo; Jesus to the left, his form dissolving into atomic particles; and the Holy Spirit to the right with a dove flying overhead.
Like Velázquez who painted himself in Las Meninas (1656), Dalí inserts himself at the bottom left corner with a blank canvas, bearing witness to the scene unfolding before him. He suggests that he is starting a new chapter in his life: one that is imbued in religion as well as contemporary science, one that combines a new artistic vision with classical traditions.
Life and Death
Dalí’s deep fascination with religion and his internal struggle to resolve contradictions were ultimately rooted in his fear of death and his quest for immortality. Although he understood that death is inseparable from life, he remained troubled by its inevitability, prompting him to explore the elasticity and transient nature of time in his works.
I have been living with death ever since I became aware I was breathing … This continual, stubborn, savage, terrible tension is the whole story of my quest.
The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory (1954), a recreation of The Persistence of Memory (1931) examines these tensions. Here the foreground of the original landscape is broken down as is the dead olive branch on which a melted clock hangs – a representation of the dissolution of matter into atoms. In contrast to the orderliness of atomic theory underpinning God’s beautiful design, some of the bricks morph into rhinoceros’ horns, allusions to atomic missiles that could also lead to humanity’s destruction. Yet, amid several references to death and the passage of time, the imagery of the fish serves as a symbol of new life.
(Left, not in exhibit) The Persistence of Memory, 1931, Oil on Canvas. (Right) The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory, 1954, Oil on Canvas.
While Dalí was regrettably unable to escape the inescapable reality of physical death, he found a form of immortality through his enduring creations, which continue to captivate us today. His body of work reveals a constant process of constructing, deconstructing, and reconstructing, reflecting the evolution of his shifting perspectives. With each piece, Dalí engaged in a relentless dialectic through art—building new foundations, only to dismantle and reimagine them—an artistic cycle that persisted until the end of his life.