On Surrealism and Dali

I once spent days and days studying Surrealism, and then, at the end of it all, I was violently sick. I guess this is a sort of back-handed compliment – I hated the work so much (particularly Max Ernst's 'Celebes') I was moved enough to vomit.

Since that introduction, I have never grown to like the Surrealists. For all their intellectual brouhaha, spending a lifetime in exploring the weird, hidden portions of your psyche never struck me as particularly sane. Every time I try it, I end up feeling, not enlightened, but psychotic.

I know plenty of people who insist, "Oh, but we love surrealism!" and I even knew a chap who wanted to paint ‘just like Salvador Dali – if I can just get myself to think like him’. (He never managed it, by the way – a second-hand psychosis just never shrieks true.). And - while we are all welcome to our own inexplicable tastes - I’ve never really understood it, you know?

Not that it matters. As old Dali himself said, "When the creations of a genius collide with the mind of a layman, and produce an empty sound, there is little doubt as to which is at fault."

But surely it would offend even his cultivated bad taste to be well-loved?

I mean, what are you trying to do here? How insulting is that? The Surrealists didn't want to be loved, you know, they were trying to bring out and air all their irrational inner torments and sadistic feelings. They wanted you to be shocked if not revolted by their subconscious impulses. Entertaining you, I believe, was the last thing on their list.

But I guess it is one of those sad and true facts of life – yesterday's 'Crassest Soul to Shock' gets transformed into today's 'Newest Knight on the Block' (courtesy Queen of England) - I mean, c'mon, who's shocked by Mick Jagger anymore? - not even me.

The other day I imagined this conversation between Salvador Dali and a modern fan -

"Hey, Salvador, my man, I have to tell you, I so enjoy your work. I was particularly impressed by the so-and-so painting. That really speaks to me, I’m telling you, man. I feel a very special connection with it."

"Really?" Here Dali cocks his head and studies the person with interest. "It is, you know, from my earlier Freudian phase, when I was particularly obsessed with sex and paranoia – as you can see from the depictions of lax male organs, loads of excrement, and the feeling of palpating anguish."

"Yeah, man. Exactly. That’s so cool."

"It is? You know, I never thought I'd meet another person who'd connect with that. I must paint you. Ah, I have it! In the manner of my Lenin with the elongated buttock - but I shall, of course, immortalize you with two of them!"

"Hey, man, terrific – that would be an honor! - how about a couple of breasts on my back as well? – and…and a mustache like Hitler? – and maybe we can have this huge bucket of – yes, elephant dung, like they have in the Turner Prizes – we can have that hanging overhead, with just a suggestion that it just might, maybe, keel over and cover me in entirety – think of the intense feelings of suspense that would produce!"

"Young Lady," says Dali. "Has any one told you you’re too suggestive by far?"

Poor Dali. When he said, "Democratic societies are unfit for the publication of such thunderous revelations as I am in the habit of making", I guess he never foresaw the event that democratic societies might one day evolve and make themselves fit.

I'm kind of surprised that he never thought of painting someone enjoying one of his paintings – surely that vision alone would have been, as old Will might have put it, the unkindest cut of all? - it might have even satisfied all his Freudian longings for ever.

Probably not.

Incidentally though, he's the only tolerable person in the whole group. That they kicked him out gives him high stature in my eyes.

I fervently admire people who milk every possible pleasure from the process of making a complete fool of themselves. I never ever believed the myth about his being an off-kilter madman, you know. His bizarre paintings always seemed particularly well-thought-out to me, and it takes brains to be a long-running, well-publicized success.

I finally knew for sure he was full of bull when I read his 'Diary of a Genius'. It is obviously the work of someone hamming it up to the hilt for the gullible gallery.

Recorded here for posterity is information like -

'As usual, a quarter of an hour after breakfast, I slip a jasmine flower behind my ear and go to the toilet. I have hardly sat down before I have a bowel movement that is almost odourless. So much so that the perfumed toilet paper and my jasmine completely dominate the situation. This event might have been predicted by the blissful and extremely pleasant dreams of the night before, which in my case heralded a smooth and odourless defecation. Today's movement is the purest of all, if that adjective is at all appropriate under the circumstances.' (3rd July 1943)

'She (his aunt) staked her honour on the fact that she had never farted in her life. Today I consider her achievement less impressive than I used to. It is a fact that in my periods of asceticism and intensive spiritual life, I cannot help noticing that I hardly fart at all.' (3rd July 1943)

'Because of a very long fart, really a very long and, let us be frank, melodious fart, that I produced when I woke up, I was reminded of Michel de Montaigne. This author reports that Saint Augustine was a famous farter who succeeded in playing entire scores.' (29th July 1952)

'At daybreak I dreamt that I was the author of several white turds, very clean and extremely agreeable to produce. When I woke up I said to Gala, "Today there is going to be gold."' (1st September 1958)

An entertaining read. Recommended for all those that want to get an inside track on the scatological mind of a Surrealist painter. And for all those that, like me, never outgrew the toilet humor stage.