Re: virus: Re: Dali

Wade T.Smith (wade_smith@harvard.edu)
Thu, 10 Jul 97 23:38:37 -0400


>I find it strange that you don't read Dali's dialogue with mysticism,
>his quotation of Raphaelite styles and the inclusion religious/political
>texts in his works.

Yes, I truly enjoy his raptures. But they surely transcend the sources?
And he quotes many styles, and includes many texts. Like I said,
brevity.... My main fascination with Dali, and with surrealism, is its
concrete irrationality. Dali himself always said he painted exactly what
he was thinking.

>What about his "Our Lady of the Santa Maria" (I may have got the title
>wrong. With the virgin Mary and Columbus's ships??

>And what about his nearly religious infatuation with that actress-- I am
>not doing well in quoting specifics on the fly... but you must know what
>I'm talking about. Dali almost always described their relationship in,
>well, transindental terms.

Are you speaking of his wife? Gala?

I have read both of his autobiographies, and his novel and short works as
well, and the only woman he was ineradicably infatuated with was Gala,
and yes, religiously is appropriate. She is the only female presence in
his paintings, well, almost only.

He has mentioned other women, Anita Ekberg for one. His was an elaborate
and constant parade of a life when he was on view. But Gala, he basically
lived and died for her.

Incidentally, what do _you_ think of Dali's Four-Buttock continuum as a
cosmology?

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Wade T. Smith
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wade_smith@harvard.edu | shouldn't do to a god."
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