{"id":20593,"date":"2021-05-17T16:35:29","date_gmt":"2021-05-17T15:35:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=20593"},"modified":"2025-09-20T18:52:34","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T17:52:34","slug":"the-fame-and-shame-of-salvador-dali","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2021\/05\/17\/the-fame-and-shame-of-salvador-dali\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fame and Shame of Salvador Dal\u00ed"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"fasosd1.jpg\"<\/p>\n

\u2026one ought to be able to hold in one’s head simultaneously the two facts that Dal\u00ed is a good draughtsman and a disgusting human being.<\/p>\n

George Orwell<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This two-part, two-hour TV documentary from 1997 has a title that makes it sound like more of an exercise in audience pandering than was typical for the BBC’s Omnibus<\/em> arts strand, fame and shame being qualities that might be considered of greater interest for the general viewer than art history. But Michael Dibb’s film is more insightful than those made 20 years earlier when access to the Dal\u00ed circle, and to Dal\u00ed himself, required flattery and capitulation to the artist’s whims and attention-grabbing antics. In place of the impersonal approach taken by the BBC’s Arena<\/em> documentary from 1986<\/a> we have writer Ian Gibson serving as a guide to Dal\u00ed’s life while conducting research into a major biography, La vida desaforada de Salvador Dal\u00ed<\/em> (The Shameful Life of Salvador Dal\u00ed<\/em>), which was published a year later. “Shame” here refers more to Dal\u00ed’s numerous fears and phobias, especially those of the sexual variety, rather than to scandal and public opprobrium, while “Shameful Life” echoes the “Secret Life” title of the artist’s autobiography. Dal\u00ed’s sexual neuroses were always to the fore in his art but they remained concealed in his personal life, although the evasions\u2014his frequent declarations of impotence, for example\u2014don’t prevent Gibson from speculating. I saw this documentary when it was first broadcast but had forgotten the discussions of a possible homosexual relationship with Dal\u00ed’s adoring friend, Federico Garc\u00eda Lorca, as well as the mention of the artist’s voyeurism, all of which was explored in more detail (and with some personal experience) by Brian Sewell a decade later in the TV documentary with the most prurient title of them all, Dirty Dal\u00ed: A Private View<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"fasosd2.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Gibson is a guide with the advantage of being a fluent Spanish speaker able to engage in conversation with those who knew or worked for the artist. Several of the interviewees are familiar faces in Dal\u00ed films: Amanda Lear, art collectors Reynolds and Ellen Morse, Dal\u00ed’s first secretary and business manager, Captain Peter Moore, and painter Antoni Pitxot. 1997 was about the last time it was possible to make a documentary about Dal\u00ed that might feature interviews with people who knew the artist in his younger days, although Jos\u00e9 “P\u00e9pin” Bello, born the same year as Dal\u00ed in 1904, lived on until 2008. Bello was the sole surviving member of a Madrid student group in the 1920s whose other members were Dal\u00ed, Luis Bu\u00f1uel and Federico Garc\u00eda Lorca. He also turns up in The Life and Times of Don Luis Bu\u00f1uel<\/em> (1984), another BBC film which really ought to be on YouTube, where he makes unsubstantiated claims about having contributed ideas to Un Chien Andalou<\/em>. It’s easy to be sceptical about the assertions of an uncreative man whose youth had been spent in the company of three great talents but according to this obituary<\/a> both Dal\u00ed and Bu\u00f1uel confirmed the claims. (The image of a rotting donkey, however, had appeared in Dal\u00ed’s paintings before the film was made.)<\/p>\n

\"fasosd3.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Among the other people talking to Gibson are Surrealist poet David Gascoyne, and also George Melly, a man who for a long time was a ubiquitous presence whenever Surrealism was being discussed on British TV. The interviews are separated by clips from other films, two of which have featured in earlier posts: Hello Dal\u00ed!<\/em><\/a> (which I keep hoping someone will upload to YouTube in better quality), and Jack Bond’s film of Dal\u00ed in New York in 1965<\/a>. I watched both these again last year when I followed my viewing of the \u0160vankmajer oeuvre with a number of Surrealist documentaries. Jack Bond’s film is especially good for its verit\u00e9<\/em> qualities, and for Jane Arden’s attempts to persuade Dal\u00ed to talk seriously for once about his art.<\/p>\n

\u2022 The Fame and Shame of Salvador Dal\u00ed<\/em>: Part One<\/a> | Part Two<\/a><\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 Figures of Mortality: Lawrence versus Dal\u00ed<\/a>
\n\u2022 \u00catre Dieu: Dal\u00ed versus Wakh\u00e9vitch<\/a>
\n\u2022 Chance encounters on the dissecting table<\/a>
\n\u2022 Salvador Dal\u00ed\u2019s Maze<\/a>
\n\u2022 Dal\u00ed in New York<\/a>
\n\u2022 Dal\u00ed\u2019s discography<\/a>
\n\u2022 Soft Self-Portrait of Salvador Dal\u00ed<\/a>
\n\u2022 Mongolian impressions<\/a>
\n\u2022 Hello Dal\u00ed!<\/a>
\n\u2022 Dirty Dal\u00ed<\/a>
\n\u2022 Impressions de la Haute Mongolie revisited<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2026one ought to be able to hold in one’s head simultaneously the two facts that Dal\u00ed is a good draughtsman and a disgusting human being. George Orwell This two-part, two-hour TV documentary from 1997 has a title that makes it sound like more of an exercise in audience pandering than was typical for the BBC’s … Continue reading “The Fame and Shame of Salvador Dal\u00ed”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"New blog post: The Fame and Shame of Salvador Dal\u00ed","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,42,7,5,44,18,19],"tags":[11497,11500,11496,3565,11499,11495,1263,395,11494,3821,3820,11501,3639,11493,9038,11498,87],"class_list":["post-20593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-books","category-film","category-gay","category-painting","category-surrealism","category-television","tag-amanda-lear","tag-antoni-pitxot","tag-brian-sewell","tag-david-gascoyne","tag-ellen-morse","tag-federico-garcia-lorca","tag-george-melly","tag-george-orwell","tag-ian-gibson","tag-jack-bond","tag-jane-arden","tag-jose-bello","tag-luis-bunuel","tag-michael-dibb","tag-peter-moore","tag-reynolds-morse","tag-salvador-dali"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-5m9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20593"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20593\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}