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Overview
Salvador Dalí was, and remains, among the most universally recognizable artists of the twentieth century. What accounts for this popularity? His excellence as an artist? Or his genius as a self-publicist?
In this searching text, partly based on interviews with the artist and fully revised, extended and updated for this edition, Dawn Ades considers the Dalí phenomenon. From his early years, his artistic friendships and the development of his technique and style, to his relationship with the Surrealists and exploitation of Freudian ideas, and on to his post-war paintings, this essential study places Dalí in social, historical and artistic context, and casts new light on the full range of his creativity.
Reviews
'One of our foremost historians of Surrealism … has had access to her subject – a privilege available to few – and her book is particularly revealing'
The Spectator
'A sensitive art-historical study'
Times Literary Supplement
'Richly documented and illustrated'
Arts Review
Product Information
Book Details
Format: Paperback
Edition Type: Third edition
Size: 21.0 x 15.0 cm
Extent: 304 pp
Illustrations: 197
Publication date: 7 April 2022
ISBN: 9780500204764
Contents List
Preface
Chronology
1. Early years: Early influences; Madrid School of Fine Arts; Cubism and Purism; first one-man exhibitions.
2. Dalí and the Catalan avant-garde: The Catalan Anti-Artistic Manifesto and the L’Amic de les Arts group; Dalí’s early writings on painting, photography and film; Luis Buñuel and the making of Un Chien Andalou; Surrealism in Spain and its influence on Dalí.
3. Dalí, Surrealism and psycho-analysis: Dalí’s official affiliation with the Surrealist movement; the influence of Freud and psycho-analysis on his painting; collage; the legend of William Tell as obsessive theme; Dalí’s theoretical differences with Breton, and relationship with Surrealism on questions of taste and politics; Dalí, history and tradition.
4. Painting and the paranoiac–critical method: Theory and practice of paranoia–criticism; influence of Lacan; relationship with other Surrealist methods like automatism and the dream; The Tragic Myth of Millet’s Angelus as paranoiac–critical analysis.
5. Dalí and the Surrealist object: Dalí’s ‘Surrealist object functioning symbolically’; the object in relation to Surrealist theory; found or ‘involuntary’ and imaginary objects; furniture, spectacle, installations and exhibitions; Dalí’s jewels. 6. Dalí’s post-war painting: Modern science and mysticism; variety of visual experiment; use of photography, holography and stereoscopy.
7. Dalí and the cinema: Dalí and L’Age d’or; Short Critical History of the Cinema; unrealized scenarios; Hollywood collaborations and other film projects.
Select Bibliography
Chronology
1. Early years: Early influences; Madrid School of Fine Arts; Cubism and Purism; first one-man exhibitions.
2. Dalí and the Catalan avant-garde: The Catalan Anti-Artistic Manifesto and the L’Amic de les Arts group; Dalí’s early writings on painting, photography and film; Luis Buñuel and the making of Un Chien Andalou; Surrealism in Spain and its influence on Dalí.
3. Dalí, Surrealism and psycho-analysis: Dalí’s official affiliation with the Surrealist movement; the influence of Freud and psycho-analysis on his painting; collage; the legend of William Tell as obsessive theme; Dalí’s theoretical differences with Breton, and relationship with Surrealism on questions of taste and politics; Dalí, history and tradition.
4. Painting and the paranoiac–critical method: Theory and practice of paranoia–criticism; influence of Lacan; relationship with other Surrealist methods like automatism and the dream; The Tragic Myth of Millet’s Angelus as paranoiac–critical analysis.
5. Dalí and the Surrealist object: Dalí’s ‘Surrealist object functioning symbolically’; the object in relation to Surrealist theory; found or ‘involuntary’ and imaginary objects; furniture, spectacle, installations and exhibitions; Dalí’s jewels. 6. Dalí’s post-war painting: Modern science and mysticism; variety of visual experiment; use of photography, holography and stereoscopy.
7. Dalí and the cinema: Dalí and L’Age d’or; Short Critical History of the Cinema; unrealized scenarios; Hollywood collaborations and other film projects.
Select Bibliography
About the Author
Dawn Ades is Professor Emerita of the History and Theory of Art at the University of Essex. She has written extensively on Dada, Surrealism, photography and women artists, among other things. Publications include Dada and Surrealism Reviewed, Writings on Art and Anti-Art, Marcel Duchamp (with Neil Cox and David Hopkins) and Photomontage. Among the exhibitions she has organised or co-organised are ‘Art in Latin America’ (1989); ‘Fetishism: Visualising Power and Desire’ (1995); ‘Salvador Dalí: The Centenary Retrospective’ (2004); ‘Undercover Surrealism’ (2006); and ‘Dalí/Duchamp’ (2017–18).
