The Persistence of Memory: A Biography of Dali

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Summary: The memory man
Review: Surrealists said that someone who came up with something out of the ordinary must have been in love with Gala Eluard: her husband Salvador Dali's unforgettable imagery, from early autobiographical works through Surrealist dream symbols to metaphysical and religious themes, drew into the art world people who had been uninterested in painting. Perhaps he revealed the secret of his appeal when he said that he drew just one picture, mixing what happened to him and in the world with eternal themes from his childhood, such as the threatening father in "The old age of William Tell." Some childhood memories found expression in Hieronymus Bosch-styled decaying soft objects, as in "The persistence of memory." With "Cenicitas" and "La miel es mas dulce que la sangre," he launched his psychoanalytically symbolic art by following the Surrealist ideal of uncensored and uncontrolled imagery, knowing what to apply from Sigmund Freud's "The interpretation of dreams," and using sleepwalking shadows, Joaquin Sorolla-type light, and jewel-like clear colors. One of his hallmarks became pictures with multiple images: "The endless enigma" double, triple and quadruple imaging into such disturbing visions as a fish skeleton balanced on top of a stick and Gala's eyes staring cruelly out at viewers; "The image disappears" double imaging a Jan Vermeer-styled girl into a bearded man; "The metamorphosis of Narcissus" double imaging Narcissus into a petrified hand holding an egg cracking into a narcissus, with Sandro Botticelli-type dancing figures and Umbrian school-like golden glowing background; his metaphysical "Dali a six ans soulevant avec precaution la peau de l'eau pour observer un chien dormir a l'ombre de la mer" covering a dog with atomic reactor-type, mirrorlike heavy water and reflecting granite cliffs, in a Piero di Cosimo-styled seascape; one of his nuclear fission series, "The three sphinxes of Bikini," double imaging the atomic explosion into three heads, with one turning into two trees. Later, one of the high points in his religious paintings was floating a foreshortened "Christ of St John of the cross" over an early evening sky and above the rocks of the painter's homeland. From his fascination with three-dimensional art and as an exercise in the stereoscopy that he saw in Gerard Dou's art, he painted "Dali from the back painting Gala from the back externalized by six virtual corneas, provisionally reflected by six mirrors." And his final masterpiece Teatro museo Gala-Dali was a three-dimensional autobiography of all his ideas and images. Author Meredith Etherington-Smith reads magnificently with DALI'S OPTICAL ILLUSIONS edited by Dawn Ades and Robert Radford's DALI. Readers might want to look into Ruth Brandon's SURREAL LIVES, Sharon Fermor's PIERO DI COSIMO, Carl Linfert's BOSCH, Bruno Santi's BOTTICELLI, and Arthur K. Wheelock's JAN VERMEER.