November 19, 2009

Salvador Dalí’s own painting “Vision of Hell” scared him to death

There is something about Spanish civilization that seems especially well-suited to turning out painters of genius. I’m not just thinking about the the great roll-call of old masters (Velázquez, El Greco, Zurbarán, Goya, etc.), but also the likes of Salvador Dalí in more recent decades. He claimed that his partly Moorish and Arab remote ancestry gave him a unique flair and flamboyance, including “a love of everything that is gilded and excessive; my passion for luxury and my love of Oriental clothes…” Like many artists of the time, he flirted with anarchism and Communism, and relished rubbing shoulders with the decadent limousine left. In 1934, he deeply shocked masquerade ball-goers in New York by coming (with a companion) as Charles Lindbergh’s baby and the baby’s kidnapper. In 1936, he gave a lecture in London on surrealism wearing a deep-sea diving suit (having arrived helmeted and carrying a billiard cue, accompanied by two Russian wolfhounds). His surrealistic style of painting (augmented by his self-promotion) was a smash hit, to say the least, though even today excessive viewing of his bizarre works can create the cultural equivalent of a dizzying “sugar high.”

Like Picasso, Dalí wasn’t exactly short on self-confidence, saying “every morning upon awakening, I experience a supreme pleasure: that of being Salvador Dalí.” (A bit like Picasso’s quip that “When I was a child, my mother said to me: ‘If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope.’ Instead I was a painter and became Picasso.”)

At some point, it must have started to feel at bit shallow, even for the man who experienced such supreme daily pleasures. Dalí returned to the practice of his childhood faith, regularized his marital status, and gravitated to tradition and stability (in a societal, if not artistic, sense). According to some biographers, the early 1960s was a turning point. He was commissioned to create a painting called the “Vision of Hell,” based on the 1917 vision at Fatima. The result (shown above) was a swirling vision of horror, with eight carving forks piercing tormented flesh and blood. It apparently unnerved its creator, who increasingly turned his thoughts to more spiritual and mystical themes (though remaining staunchly Cavalier rather than Puritan, to use an English analogy). By the early 1980s, Dalí had in effect become a conservative Catholic aristocrat, and King Juan Carlos of Spain made him the Marquis of Púbol. The Vision of Hell itself is one of his least-known paintings, having been paid for by the life savings of an anonymous donor. The painting “disappeared” for some thirty-five years, before resurfacing in 1997. It deserves a further look.