Final Delirium

The Audiovisual Dalí

Friday August 30th and Saturday August 31st - Sessions starting at 11 a.m.
Babaouo is a surrealist film, 1932. Collage for the film's poster. © Salvador Dalí. Fundació Gala – Salvador Dalí, VEGAP, Madrid, 2013
Babaouo is a surrealist film, 1932. Collage for the film's poster. © Salvador Dalí. Fundació Gala – Salvador Dalí, VEGAP, Madrid, 2013

This audiovisual series looks at Salvador Dalí's film, video and television production, as a culmination of the exhibition Dalí. All of the poetic suggestions and all of the plastic possibilities. Almost five hours in length, this collection of works, with repeat screenings over two days, argues that the relationship between Dalí and mass culture is key to understanding the artist's work, but also to developing a different idea of modernity, one that conveys the spectacular and tumultuous nature of 1930s modernity.   

The connection between mass media and modern art was understood, during most of that decade, through a complex body of theories. These modes of thinking, which ranged from formalist critique to the most orthodox surrealism, reveal the presence of an inevitable dialectical tension. So, it is no surprise that Clement Greenberg would situate the survival of the avant-garde in its direct confrontation with the kitsch of film and illustration. Similarly, André Breton would conceive of the manifestations of popular culture in surrealism as a simple means by which to transcend everyday life and once again enchant the world with the marvellous. The definitions proposed by the theorists of the time, such as Siegfried Kracauer, present cinema as an entertainment factory, in which the seriality and division of labour, typical of the industrial assembly line, are put to the service of merchandise transformed into spectacle.

Unlike theses such as these, which in one way or another protagonized the decade, Dalí's achievement was to formulate his own conception of the mass media, and his ideas took concrete form in the series of audiovisual productions presented in this series. In contrast with the mechanical and standardised work described by Kracauer, Dalí conceived of the film industry as a machine for the collective production of desire, in which the spectacle is the sequenced version of the paranoiac-critical method and its delirious associations. The public and the masses urgently demand the illogical and tumultuous images of their own desires and their own dreams (…), in Hollywood I hear the word Surrealism from every mouth, he wrote in 1937. Therefore it is not strange at all that Dalí would comment to Buñuel that, after all, L'Age d'Or is nothing but another American movie.

After two collaborations with his friend at the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid (Un Chien Andalou and L'Àge d'Or), Dalí's attraction to the subversive potential of Hollywood and mass culture, so liberating and spontaneous, prompted him to take part in film projects with Walt Disney (a genuine surrealist, along with Harpo Marx and Cecil B. DeMille, Dalí said of Disney) and Alfred Hitchcock. Dalí's originality lies in the fact that, unlike André Breton, he does not idealize or transcend this subculture, but rather promotes, somewhat like the surrealist dissident Georges Bataille, its low and degrading, anti-artistic nature. The artist conceived of himself as a Gargantua that executes and celebrates this collective manifestation of delirium.

So, although this new relationship between artist and spectacle led Breton to expel Dalí from the Surrealist movement - and rename him Avida Dollars - , the creator of The Great Masturbator did become the protagonist of numerous advertisements, documentaries, happenings and various actions undertaken by a generation of younger artists. In doing so, he not only revealed his ability to put forward a specific role of the artist within the mediatic world of post-war art, he also offered a solution, questionable or not, to another endless enigma, that of the relationship between modernity and the mass media.     

Programa

Actividad pasada 30-31 August
Session 1. Film

Luis Buñuel. Un Chien Andalou ( An Andalusian Dog ) 1929. B/W, in French, with Spanish subtitles.
Courtesy of Filmoteca Española, Madrid.

Luis Buñuel. L’Âge d'Or ( The Golden Age) 1930. B/W, in French, with Spanish subtitles.
Courtesy of Centre Pompidou, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris . Donation made in 1989. Original negative restored in 1993 by the Centre Pompidou, Musée National d’Art Moderne, with help from the GAN Foundation for Cinema. 35 mm film courtesy of Filmoteca Española , Madrid . Screenings in 35 mm on Friday at 4:30 p.m. and Saturday at 12 noon.

Salvador Dalí with Walt Disney. Destino, 1946-2003. Colour, sound, no dialogue, 6’31’’.
Courtesy of Walt Disney Animation Studios. Film screened only on Friday at 4:30 p.m. and Saturday at 12 noon.

Alfred Hitchcock. Spellbound , 1945. B/W, in English, with Spanish subtitles, 2’45’’. Fragment with sets designed by Dalí.
Courtesy of Walt Disney / ABC Domestic Television.

Duration of the session: 1h 37 min

* Image rights of Salvador Dalí reserved. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, 2013

Actividad pasada 30-31 August
Session 2. Television. Advertisements. Happenings

A fondo . Joaquín Soler Serrano interviews Salvador Dalí, 1977. B/N, 46’ 
In collaboration with RTVE.*

Advertisement for Chocolat Lanvin, 1969. Colour, in French, with Spanish subtitles. 25’’
Courtesy of La Maison de la Publicité *

Salvador Dalí working on the two pieces Pastor de Ampurdán and La sirena alada de la Costa Brava to decorate Iberia airlines DC-10 aircraft, 1972. Colour, 1’ 21’’
Courtesy of the Iberia Documentation Centre. *

Advertisement for Alka-Seltzer, 1974. Colour, in English, with Spanish subtitles. 44’’ Archives of the Bayer Corporation.
Courtesy of  Bayer HealthCare LLC. *

Happenings and actions Salvador Dalí happening in Park Güell. Tribute to Gaudí, 1956. B/W NO-DO Archives. Courtesy of Filmoteca Española. *

Dalinian Variations , Dalí on the beach and at his Port Lligat house presenting an invention that enables a sea urchin to paint a picture, 1957. B/W NO-DO Archives. Courtesy of Filmoteca Española. *

Salvador Dalí happening held in Park Güell for Harkness Ballet , 1966. B/W NO-DO Archives. Courtesy of Filmoteca Española. *

Fragment of the Salvador Dalí happening in Granollers. Dalí and his new invention. Rain Painting , 1974. B/W NO-DO Archives. Courtesy of Filmoteca Española. *

Salvador Dalí the baker, 1958. B/W, in French, with Spanish subtitles.

Courtesy of Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (INA), France . *

Ovociped , 1959. B/W, in French, with Spanish subtitles.
Courtesy of Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (INA), France . *

Lecture by Dalí at the École Polytechnique, Paris , 1961. B/W, in French, with Spanish subtitles.
Courtesy of Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (INA), France . *

Salvador Dalí, Journal de Paris. Dalí presents his collection of swimsuits. Dalí-kinis , 1964. B/W, in French, with Spanish subtitles.
Courtesy of Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (INA), France . *

Salvador Dalí. Lorca, poetry phenomenon . Fragment in which Paco Ibáñez sings to Lorca and Dalí talks about him, 1965. B/W, in French, with Spanish subtitles.
Courtesy of Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (INA), France . *

Salvador Dalí with Philippe Halsman, Chaos and Creation , 1960. B/W, in English, with Spanish subtitles, 18’26’’. 
Courtesy of Philippe Halsman Archive , New York .

Dizzy Dali Dinner , 1941. B/W, no sound,  52’’
Courtesy of Grinberg Asset Holdings.*

Le Veston aphrodisiaque ( The Aphrodisiac Jacket ), 1964. B/W, in French, with Spanish subtitles, 45’’ Courtesy of Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (INA), France . *

Duration of the session: 1 h 34 min

* Image rights of Salvador Dalí reserved. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, 2013

Actividad pasada 30-31 agosto
Session 3. Documentary film

Jean-Christophe Averty.Soft Self-Portrait of Salvador Dalí (Autoportrait mou de Salvador Dalí), 1966. Colour, in French with Spanish subtitles, 70’
Courtesy of Jean-Christophe Averty and Institut National de l’Audiovisuel, INA, France *

Duration of the session: 1 h 10 min

* Image rights of Salvador Dalí reserved. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, 2013

Actividad pasada 30-31 August
Schedule

Friday, August 30th

11:00 a.m. Session 1. Cinema
1:00 p.m Session 2. Advertisements. Television. Happenings.
3:00 p.m. Session 3. Documentary film
4:30 p.m. Session 1. Cinema
** Screening of L' Âge d'Or and Destino in 35 mm

Saturday, August 31st 

11:00 a.m. Session 2. Advertisements. Television. Happenings.
1:00 p.m Session 1. Cinema 
** Screening of L' Âge d'Or and Destino in 35 mm
3:00 p.m. Session 3. Documentary film.
4:30 p.m. Session 2. Advertisements. Television. Happenings.
6:30 p.m. Session 3. Documentary film. 
8:00 p.m. Session 1. Cinema 
10:00 p.m. Session 2. Advertisements. Television. Happenings.