Salvador Dali: Magic and Energy
Salvador Dali: Magic and Energy
By Cesare A.X. Syjuco
Published in: The Manila Times, February 05, 1989
THE last of an outstanding generation of Spanish painters who included Picasso and Miro, the flamboyant Salvador Dali died last week at the age of 84. Born in Figueras, Spain, the son of a notary, he came to Paris as a young man and joined the controversial Surrealist movement of Andre Breton in 1929. His ability to shock, coupled with his technical virtuosity, eventually made of him Surrealism's most outrageous and best-known exponent.
But Dali's sheer energy was as legendary as his talent for theatricality: apart from his "countless" paintings, sculptural objects, prints and drawings, he designed jewelry and glass, devised window displays, collaborated in film and stage productions, and authored several books including his autobiography Diary of a Genius. Had he been less talented, the very bulk of Dali's produce would probably have made him one of the most significant figures in twentieth century art.
The following passages, excerpted from Dali's published writings, clearly show the late master's great regard for hard work as a deciding factor in his own success:
"Sooner or later everyone is bound to come to me! Some, untouched by my painting, concede that I draw like Leonardo. Others, who quarrel with my aesthetics, agree in considering my autobiography one of the 'human documents' of the period. Still others, questioning the 'authenticity' of my Secret Life, have discovered in me literary gifts superior to the skill which I reveal in my pictures, and to what they call the mystification of my confessions. Also, those who detest my painting, my drawings, my literature, my jewels, my surrealist objects, etc., etc., proclaim that I do have a unique gift for . the theater and that my last setting was one of the most exciting that had ever been seen on the Metropolitan stage... Thus it is difficult to avoid coming under my sway in one way or another.
"Yet, all this has much less merit than it seems to have, for one of the chief reasons for my success is even simpler than that of my multiform magic: namely, that I am probably the most hardworking artist of our day. After having spent four months in retirement in the mountains of New Hampshire near the Canadian border, writing 14 implacable hours a day and thus completing Hidden Faces (the novel) according to plan - but without ever retreating! - I came back to New York and again met some friends at El Morocco. Their lives had remained exactly at that same point, as though I had left them but the day before. The following morning I visited studios where artists had for four months been patiently waiting for the moment of their inspiration... How many things had happened in my brain during that time! How many characters, images, architectural projects and realizations of desires had been born, lived, died and been resuscitated, architectonized!
"In 1927, sitting one day in the spring sunshine on the terrace of the cafe-bar Regina in Madrid, the greatly-lamented poet Federico Garcia Lorca and I planned a highly original opera together. The day when I received news in London of the death of Lorca, who had been a victim of blind history, I said to myself that I would have to do our opera alone. I shall therefore make 'our' opera ... But not immediately, for as soon as I have finished my novel, I shall retire again for a whole consecutive year to California, where I want to devote myself exclusively to painting and put my latest aesthetic ideas into execution with a technical fervor unprecedented in my profession. After which I shall immediately begin patiently to take music lessons. To master harmony thoroughly, two years is all I shall need - have I not felt it flowing through my veins for two thousand years? In this opera, I plan to do everything - libretto, music, settings, costumes, - and moreover I shall direct it.
"I cannot guarantee that each fragment of my dream will be well received. But let him who has done 'as much' cast the first stone."
Well said, Maestro. Case closed.
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Cesare A.X. Syjuco, “Salvador Dali: Magic and energy” (page 1 of 1), The Manila Times, February 05, 1989
