Salvador Dali: Over-the-Top? Out of His Mind? Or Something Else?

Earlier this summer I was reading a book of George Orwell essays titled Dickens, Dali and Others. Most American readers know Orwell for his last two books, Animal Farm and 1984, but he was also a prolific essayist. This particular volume is a collection of essays on people such as Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling H.G. Wells, Arthur Koestler and others. 

Dali mural in Miami.
Photo credit: Gary Firstenberg

I was especially interested in his views on Salvador Dali, not only because of my own fascination with his paintings but also because I was certain that as a contemporary, Orwell might offer a fresh perspective. In this, I was not disappointed. 

The essay on Dali was written in response to Dali's autobiography, titled Life. Orwell begins by sharing that the episodes Dali shares are a cross between implausible, outlandish and romanticized or perverse. Orwell then cites passages to illustrate what he means. "Dead faces, skulls, corpses of animals, occur fairly frequently in his pictures, and the ants which devoured the dying bat make countless reappearances."

This last reference is to an incident in which he found a dead bat covered with ants which he purportedly stuck in his mouth and chewed. "What Dali has done and what he has imagined is debatable, but in is his outlook, his character, the bedrock decency of a human being does not exist... Clearly such people are undesirable, and a society in which they can flourish has something wrong with it."

A little further, Orwell goes on to address an issue which I've obliquely made reference to in the past. "The defenders of Dali are claiming... [that] the artist is to be exempt from the moral laws that are binding on ordinary people. Just pronounce the word "Art," and everything is O.K. Rotting corpses with snails crawling over them are O.K.; kicking little girls in the head is O.K." This latter reference is to a story in which Dali gleefully kicked his little sister in the head when he was a boy.

Orwell does not deny that Dali is an exceptional talent as a draughtsman, but it has to be simultaneously acknowledged that "he is a disgusting human being."

A little further Orwell continues to expound on this theme. "He is a symptom of the world's illness. The important thing is not to denounce him as a cad who ought to be horsewhipped, or defend him as a genius who ought to be questioned, but to find out why he exhibits this particular set of aberrations."

* * * 

The above essay came to mind during a recent conversation with Tony Belmont, president/founder of the National Comedy Hall of Fame. For a decade Belmont managed the great entertainer/ventriloquist Señor Wences. As it turns out, Wences grew up in Spain and the two, he and Dali, went to art school together. The two became best friends.

I asked Mr. Belmont if he'd met Dali at that time and he made this comment initially. "I went on a seven-day cruise off of Spain with the two of them. Dali was like an explosion in a gumball factory. He gave me an etching as a gift after the cruise. Actually, I would have been happy with aspirin after a week with Dali!"

When I asked if he could elaborate, he shared the following story.

I met Dali in the spring of 1976. His best friend was Señor Wences the great ventriloquist. I was the manager for Señor Wences and his primary booking agent for over 10 years. So in the spring of 1976 Señor Wences asked me to go on a 10-day cruise with him through the Mediterranean. We would leave Barcelona, Spain, and travel around Malta and other wonderful islands in the Mediterranean. He told me we would be traveling with his close friend Salvatore Dali and he wanted me to meet Dali. 

"I thought as a promoter this may work out well, as I could possibly promote Dali at special events. I had no idea what Dali was like other than a few articles and his paintings. As a world-renowned artist I  expected a very dignified and well-mannered Spanish gentleman. Boy! Was I surprised!

The first night on the cruise was Captain's night. Like most people that have taken a cruise know, it's a special night to get dressed up. Being that I was traveling with The guest of honor (Dali) I was sitting at the Captain's Table and opposite the Captain, which is reserved for VIPs and the guest of honor. The Captain was a German who had been in the German Navy during the war and wanted everything to be precise and on the minute. At 6:55 P.M the Captain leaned forward and asked me in a low voice where was Dali? He was concerned as he needed to make the opening toast and that would be at exactly 7:00 P.M.

I replied that I didn't know because at the time I had not met Dali myself. I could tell the Captain was not pleased with this situation. But just as the Captain was about to start the toast at 7:00 P.M. the two large french doors that open into the banquet room that everyone could see suddenly flew open. The Captain sat back down and everyone in the room was silent, and maybe even in shock. Standing at the top of the short staircase was Dali surrounded by two young men. They were all dressed in tuxedoes, although Dali was wearing a top hat and his tux had tails. He had a bright red ascot ruffled white shirt, held a silver walking stick and ~~~~~ no pants! Instead, he had pretty red silk boxer shorts with the word Dali on them. 

The Captain gasped, turned to me and said, "He has no pants!" 

Dali calmly walked to the table and said, "Let's eat!" 

From that point on it was all downhill~~~!

The evening got crazier after he sat down but I ran out of time. I liked him but thought he wasn't carrying all his groceries in one bag. I believe after being with him closely for over a week that it was 50% acting for attention, to promote his image, and the other 50% really him!

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Related Links

Dali: Madman or Genius?

Dali Steps Out

The Dali Museum: More Striking Than Ever

Dali's St. John of the Cross Is On the Move

Tech Tuesday: Dali Is Back

A Visit with Tony Belmont of the National Comedy Hall of Fame

Videos of Señor Wences on YouTube

Florida Condo Collapse Has Lessons for Us All: Don't Ignore the Signs

When the 136-unit  Champlain Towers South collapses on June 24, the news media announced the incident as a death with an unknown, but large, number of people unaccounted for. A few days later the Washington Post and other media reported that there were now 4 dead and 159 unaccounted for. Today that confirmed death toll is 12 with 149 missing, and most people are already fearing the worst.

A major part of this unfolding story has revolved around the question, "How did this happen?" along with the corollary, "How many other seaside properties are at risk?"

Many news outlets have been noting that there were all kinds of warning signals being flashed these past few years. The condo owners, when informed, were not made to feel endangered. As we often do, we put things off and distract ourselves with "more urgent" concerns.

Today's Wall Street Journal has a story titled, "Miami-Area Condo Failure: Years of Warnings, but Mixed Signals." It notes how that an engineer's report states that "the building's design was flawed from the start." This is probably something not readily observable from a layperson's perspective.

The title of the piece notes that the signals were there but unclear. When leads me to the thought I had after reading about this tragic event during the past week. 

My first thought had to do with a publisher who suddenly found himself in the hospital for nine days and recovering for weeks from a health issue. I saw him at a writer's workshop shortly after he was recovered and asked what he learned from his experience. He said, "Don't ignore the signs."

Those words have rattled through my head for two years now. The applications are many. In my case, I think of my health. And most interestingly, the WSJ article compared this building collapse exactly to that. Or rather, someone they interviewed did. 

Jiann-Wen Ju, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles who specializes in construction defects, likened it to someone who has a slow-moving, underlying chronic condition, that then suddenly manifests as something serious, such as a heart attack.

“That person at some point just collapses,” he said.*

I believe the event has still broader applications. Marriages, cars, businesses and even nations flash signals for years before the singular moment that makes the doom permanent. Collapse doesn't happen overnight.

How's your health? Have you been ignoring signs that you might need to look into? 

How about the health of our nation? Solzhenitsyn's massive multi-volume series The Red Wheel details the decline and fall of the Russian empire from which the Soviet Union emerged. The two decades preceding WWI revealed a foundation with plenty of cracks. 

Events in recent years have been flashing warning signs about the health of our own nation today. How alarmed ought we to be? 

Such were my thoughts this past week. And so it goes. 

* Miami-Area Condo Failure: Years of Warnings, but Mixed Signals, Jon Kamp, Scott Calvert and Deborah Acosta, Wall Street Journal, June 30, 2021.

Frost Museum in Miami Hosts "Deconstruction: A Reordering of Life, Politics and Art"

Varla TV (Pepe Mar. 2018) courtesy of the artist
and David Castillo Galler

For centuries art was produced in the service of the Church, with a capital C. At a certain point in time artists were liberated from this function and freed to explore other themes. Some became fascinated with light. Others with nature. (O.K. same thing usually.) In the twentieth century the winds of change were a-blowin' and artists began creating work in completely original languages, freed from the need to replicate what cameras and other new technologies were reproducing. Artist served their own inner visions.

Simultaneously, there were other streams to which many artists were drawn. One of these was the powerful reaction against the Capitalism which had been the ascendency for two centuries, creating  higher living standards wherever it spread, with its dark side that included social dysfunction and colonialism.

When I was in college (19970-74) I had a friend who used to say to me, "Eddie, the artist is the vanguard of the revolution." In other words, the proper use of my art would be for political purposes. Though I personally leaned away from making my art political, adopting the stance expressed in H.R. Rookemaaker's Art Needs No Justification, producing work that challenges is sometimes required. (e.g. my painting addressing domestic violence and abuse, "Mommy, Please Make It Stop.")

In point of fact, Marxist ideology was a binding force as a European movement in the first half of the century. Dadaism and the Surrealists were not politically benign. (Salvador Dali was shunned for not buying into the political views as presented in Andre Breton's Surrealist Manifesto.

The Happy Hour (Gonzalo Fuenmeyer, 2018) 20' wide charcoal drawing.
Courtesy the artist and Dot Fiftyone Gallery

Detail from Cross-Cultural Trap, by Christopher Carter, 2018.
Courtesy of the artist.

In 1967 The Society of the Spectacle (French: La société du spectacle) Guy Debord  published a book that built on some of the ideas of Marxist critical theory in which the author develops and presents the concept of Spectacle. The book is considered a seminal text for the Situationist movement which was an outgrowth of avante-gard, anti-authoritarian Marxism. Many of the ideas conveyed by Debord were seeds that produced the art that will soon be on display at The Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum in Miami.

The exhibition is titled "Deconstruction: A Reordering of Life, Politics and Art." More than fifty years ago, this book foreshadowed our reliance on isolating hand-held technology and the twenty-four-hour news cycle that dominates our times. The author Guy Debord warned about "a future world where social interactions become too influenced by images that would prevent us from direct personal contact." (If you are sitting with a friend at lunch while reading this on your iPhone, raise your hand and shout "Guilty!")

"Deconstruction" features 12 Miami artists whose work is designed to confront contemporary issues and current events in the frenetic social media stream. The featured artists include Eddie Arroyo, Zachary Balber, Frida Baranek, Christopher Carter, Leyden Rodriguez-Casanova, Yanira Collado, Gonzalo Fuenmayor, Pepe Mar, Glexis Novoa, Sandra Ramos, Jamilah Sabur and Frances Trombly.

Apocalyptic Cartographies. Vano dello ínfero (Sandra Ramos, 2017)

Timba (Glexis Novoa, 2017), Courtesy of the artist
and David Castillo Gallery

In remarks about the show museum director Dr. Jordana Pomeroy drew attention to the fact that this is the 10th anniversary of the Frost Art Museum's spectacular building. For this reason that wanted to produce a special show of equally exceptional work.

“When this beautiful building was constructed on campus ten years ago, few could have imagined the cultural beacon the Frost Art Museum FIU would become for our community. Now, as the museum enters its next decade we continue elevating our mission to new heights: helping to define Miami's arts and culture evolution through a global perspective that celebrates the vision of Florida International University," she added.

The artists, working in a variety of media, aim to have us "take a long, hard look at our world today." Sometimes it makes us uncomfortable to look too deeply. Other times it's surprisingly rewarding and unexpected. Occasionally an exhibition can create both sensations simultaneously.

* * * *

Opening Celebration with the Artists: 

Saturday, July 14 (4:00-7:00 p.m.) 

On view through September 30
at 10975 SW 17 Street, Miami.

ABOUT THE MUSEUM

One of the largest free-standing art museums in Florida, the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University was founded in 1977 and is the Smithsonian Affiliate in Miami. The museum’s new lakeside building debuted in 2008, designed by Yann Weymouth (the chief of design on the I.M. Pei Grand Louvre Project), and this year celebrates its 10th anniversary. With 46,000 square feet of energy efficient exhibition, storage, and programming space, the museum was honored with LEED silver certification.