{"id":2726,"date":"2008-01-09T02:28:56","date_gmt":"2008-01-09T01:28:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=2726"},"modified":"2021-05-17T16:13:04","modified_gmt":"2021-05-17T15:13:04","slug":"dirty-dali","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2008\/01\/09\/dirty-dali\/","title":{"rendered":"Dirty Dal\u00ed"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

The paranoiac-critical gaze: Dirty Dal\u00ed. <\/em><\/p>\n

I finally managed to see this fascinating documentary this week. Since my TV broke down some time ago I refused to waste money buying another, partly for the reason that films such as this are increasingly rare and most of them have been shunted to minority channel BBC 4 which I can’t receive. Thanks to BitTorrent you can still find the worthwhile stuff, of course, but this often requires patience.<\/p>\n

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

The Wines of Gala and of God (1977).<\/em><\/p>\n

Dirty Dal\u00ed: A Private View<\/em> was a reminiscence by art critic Brian Sewell<\/a> about his encounters with Dal\u00ed and wife Gala at their home in Port Lligat in the late 60s and early 70s. What’s interesting about it is the first-hand light it throws on Dal\u00ed’s complicated sexuality, a subject which has been the source of speculation in biographies (notably Ian Gibson’s The Shameful Life of Salvador Dal\u00ed<\/em><\/a>) but which is confused by the artist’s simultaneous revealing of his obsessions in his art and the veiling of his interests in public statements, not least the frequent declarations of impotence. Sewell confirms that Dal\u00ed was interested in both men and women although purely as a voyeur, and relates how his first encounter with the artist led to his having to lie naked in the armpit of a giant Christ sculpture in Dal\u00ed’s garden, masturbating while Dal\u00ed took photographs. Sewell also examines Dal\u00ed’s affair with Federico Garc\u00eda Lorca, the closest the artist came to a gay romance, and his subsequent relationship with Gala, which became one where the pair used the artist’s celebrity to attract delectable people of both sexes, like a pair of art world super-swingers. According to Sewell, Dal\u00ed’s physical ideal was the hermaphrodite which would possibly explain his attraction to (alleged) transsexual Amanda Lear during this time.<\/p>\n

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

The Great Masturbator (1929). <\/em><\/p>\n

As a piece of television the film struggles to fill out its running time by resorting to animating photographs, a persistent hazard for documentaries that lack the relevant raw material. All the footage of Dal\u00ed is lifted from previous documentary films including a large chunk of Russell Harty’s Aquarius<\/em> interview, Hello Dali!<\/em> (that camp double-entendre now seems very apt), from 1973. The overall effect of Sewell’s narrative is to add to Dal\u00ed’s already considerable feet of clay but that’s the inevitable outcome of nearly any biography; real lives are always messy. Sewell nonetheless ends by reaffirming Dal\u00ed’s principal importance as one of the great painters of the 20th century and, in an interesting side note, declares him to be the last great painter of a religious work with his Christ of St John of the Cross<\/em><\/a>. A great religious artist and also one who produced hundreds of pornographic drawings, some of which are seen in the film. In art, as in the life, the contradictions are everywhere.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Dirty Dal\u00ed at Grey Lodge<\/a>
\n\u2022 Homage to Catalonia: Robert Hughes on Dal\u00ed<\/a><\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 Impressions de la Haute Mongolie revisited<\/a>
\n\u2022 Dal\u00ed and Film<\/a>
\n\u2022 Ballard on Dal\u00ed<\/a>
\n\u2022 Fantastic art from Pan Books<\/a>
\n\u2022 Penguin Surrealism<\/a>
\n\u2022 The Surrealist Revolution<\/a>
\n\u2022 The persistence of DNA<\/a>
\n\u2022 Salvador Dal\u00ed\u2019s apocalyptic happening<\/a>
\n\u2022 The music of Igor Wakh\u00e9vitch<\/a>
\n\u2022 Dal\u00ed Atomicus<\/a>
\n\u2022 Las Pozas and Edward James<\/a>
\n\u2022 Impressions de la Haute Mongolie<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The paranoiac-critical gaze: Dirty Dal\u00ed. I finally managed to see this fascinating documentary this week. Since my TV broke down some time ago I refused to waste money buying another, partly for the reason that films such as this are increasingly rare and most of them have been shunted to minority channel BBC 4 which … Continue reading “Dirty 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":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,5,44,18,19],"tags":[643,1511,1478,278,233,2713,87],"class_list":["post-2726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-gay","category-painting","category-surrealism","category-television","tag-androgyny","tag-edward-james","tag-igor-wakhevitch","tag-lorca","tag-robert-hughes","tag-russell-harty","tag-salvador-dali"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-HY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2726","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=2726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2726\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}