May-Jun 2016 - The Salvador Dali Gallery

Vol. 26 No. 3 May-Jun 2016
THE
COLLECTORS BI-MONTHLY JOURNAL ©
FOR THE DALI AFICIONADO AND SERIOUS COLLECTOR
* * * N o w I n O u r 2 6 t h Ye a r * * *
The Unpublished Diary of Dalí is Sold
Estimated at $45k-$56k, Dalí sketch journal fetches $104k-USD at Sotheby’s Paris auction.
Excerpted from CNN Style, 4/25/16 by Thomas Page
A
previously unpublished 42-page diary which Salvador Dali kept from 1930-35 has sold
at auction. It was during this period that Dali created his most famous painting, The
Persistence of Memory, became acquainted with the works of Freud, married his lover
Gala (previously the wife of poet Paul Eluard), and was put on trial by his fellow Surrealists and
expelled from their meetings.
INSIDE
Dali Illusions Help
Decode Our Brains
PAGE 2
Penned in black, blue
and red ink, Dali’s
miniscule
handwriting
details thoughts both
lofty and mundane, from
impressions on art to
lists of expenses. Barely
legible, his notes wrap
around nudes, horses and
other obscure sketches.
Salvador Dali Gets
a Baby Elephant
PAGE 3
Along with original drawings,
notes and art reviews, Dali’s
doodles feature horses, rearing
and anatomically correct. They
mark a divergence from the way
Events & Exhibitions
PAGE 4
Dali Sighting
PAGE 5
Dali Sculptures a
Big Hit in New York
PAGE 6
All web links in this PDF issue
are clickable and will open the
sites in a browser window.
he pictures them in many of his works.
Among what’s been deciphered is a page
devoted to “cadavres exquis,” the address
of filmmaker and friend of Surrealists Rene
Clair and the name of Corti, a depository
of the Surrealists’ publications.
Dalí’s Illusions Helping Decode Our Brains
Excerpted from The Daily Mail, 4/22/2016 by Richard Gray
S
ome people see a pair of nuns, others see the bust of
French philosopher Voltaire. And there are those who
simply can’t decide. A group of researchers is using the
tricks played on the brain by Dali’s famous Slave Market with
Disappearing Bust of Voltaire to better understand how the
brain works. In particular, the experts are using brain scanners
to look at what happens inside the heads of observers when
they look at the painting and see one of the two images.
Slave Market with Disappearing
Bust of Voltaire (1940).
Do YOU see a pair of nuns or
the face of Voltaire?
The painting is a notorious optical illusion, causing the scene to
flicker between a pair of women – dressed as nuns – standing
at the centre of the painting, or the head of Voltaire. Observers
can rarely see both at once, and the scene seems to switch as
the brain tries to sort out what it is looking at. Prof. Philippe
Schyns, head of Glasgow University’s school of psychology,
and his team said this effect is allowing them to decode how the
brain processes information.
“People use different visual information from the same Dali painting to perceive the nuns, or Voltaire,”
Prof. Schyns said. “The architecture of early vision in the brain is split in two, with the left hemisphere
analysing the right visual field and vice versa for the right hemisphere. At some point though, our brain
forges a full visual field representation and so information coded early, for example in the left hemisphere,
must be later transferred to the right hemisphere.”
Speaking to the BBC, he added the work was allowing them to decipher the ‘Enigma Code’ of the brain,
referring to the Nazi communication code used during World War II. “Prior to this research people would
know that two brain regions communicate – as the allies knew the Germans were doing in World War II.
But prior to the enigma of Turing people did not know what they were communicating about.”
“Give me two hours
a day of activity,
and I’ll take the
other twenty-two
in dreams.”
In their study, the researchers conducted 750 trials each with five observers who were asked to look at
a cropped image of Dali’s painting that focused on the bust and the two nuns. Their brain activity was
measured as they looked at the cropped painting and they were asked to identify whether they saw the nuns,
Voltaire or did not know. Using ‘bubble masks’ on the images, they found observers tended to see the nuns
when they focused on the face of one of the figures. If they looked at the whole face of Voltaire, they saw
the bust. They were then able to build up a picture of how the brain processed the visual information when
viewing one of these.
Within 110ms to 200ms of looking at the painting, the researchers were able to see decisions being made
in the brain over whether it was perceiving nuns or Voltaire. The right side of the painting appeared to be
handled by neural nodes in the left hemisphere of the brain and vice versa for the left side of the painting.
However, following the initial coding they saw in the first few milliseconds, they found the messages from
both hemispheres converged onto a common hub in the right occipito-temporal region. Here, somewhere
between 140-300ms after looking at the painting, the features are converged to provide an overall three
dimensional image. Depending on the strength of the signals from each region, the image the person sees
will be either the nuns or Voltaire.
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Writing in the journal Scientific Reports, the researchers added: “We reconstructed examples of possible
algorithmic brain networks that code and communicate the specific features underlying two distinct
perceptions of the same ambiguous picture. In each observer, we identified a network architecture comprising
one occipito-temporal hub where the features underlying both perceptual decisions dynamically converge.
Our focus on detailed information flow represents an important step towards a new brain algorithmics to
model the mechanisms of perception and cognition.
Although the findings are helping to shed light on the way the brain works, it appears Voltaire has another
trick up his sleeve. Some people think one of the nuns has a beard - which would mean they could also be
merchants.
Dalí Unpacked: La Verità
Excerpted from The New Yorker, 5/2/2016 by Joan Acocella
D
uring World War II, when Surrealism and its progenitor,
psychoanalysis, were in full, disquieting bloom, the
choreographer Léonide Massine collaborated with Salvador
Dali on several ballets, including one, Mad Tristan (1944), set to
excerpts from Wagner’s great opera. At the beginning of the piece,
according to Edwin Denby’s review, there was “a horribly confused
acrobatic pas de deux with Spirits of the Dead like shivering maniacs
and Spirits of Love like enormous dandelions in seed milling
about.” The evening ended with “Tristan dying for love as
upstage his own repulsive mummy is lowered into a vault
caressed by white wormlike dismembered living arms.”
For Act I, Dali painted a vast backdrop on which Tristan
(presumably) appears with a dandelion head. Isolde holds out
huge, flayed-looking, horror-movie hands to her beloved.
Dali’s backdrop for the
ballet Mad Tristan (1944)
Those were the days! Not just of Surrealism but of the fashion, descending from Diaghilev’s Ballets
Russes, for getting “name” painters to provide backdrops and front curtains for ballets. (Picasso’s beautiful
front curtain for the Ballets Russes’ Three Cornered Hat, once housed at the Four Seasons, now hangs at
the New-York Historical Society.) With the triumph of abstraction and, relatedly, the collapse of balletcompany design budgets, shows such as Mad Tristan became a matter for the history books.
Nevertheless, décors like Dali’s are appreciated in some settings—arts festivals, for example. BAM’s Next
Wave Festival, the Lincoln Center Festival, the Avignon and Edinburgh and Sydney festivals: people who
pay to travel to those jamborees like a splashy décor to look at. There are also certain genres, such as
nouveau cirque, à la Cirque de Soleil, and physical theatre, à la Pina Bausch, that favor wild-looking sets.
It is therefore no surprise that when, in 2009, Dali’s Act I backdrop for Mad Tristan was found in a box at
the Metropolitan Opera and offered on loan to Daniele Finzi Pasca, the director of a Swiss physical-theatre
troupe, the deal was accepted. The Compagnia Finzi Pasca [was] at BAM May 4-7 with a show called La
Verità, or The Truth, taking place against Dali’s backdrop. The curtain is a replica (the original is being
restored), and it’s enormous: 27 x 45 feet. And though the show [did] not include Tristan and Isolde there
[were] piano-playing rhinoceri, acrobats swinging on helical ladders, and also, in honor of the Massine
original, people with dandelions for heads. Denby said there wasn’t much ballet in Mad Tristan but that it
was “a first-class mental carnival.” That, clearly, is what La Verità aspired to as well.
When Air India Presented
Salvador Dalí an Elephant
“You have to
systematically
create confusion,
it sets creativity free.
Everything that
is contradictory
creates life.”
Excerpted from Hindustan Times, 4/22/2016
I
n 1967, Air India
commissioned
Dalí to create a
limited edition ashtray
to be given to an elite
group of the airline’s
first-class passengers. Dali
produced a small, unglazed
porcelain ashtray, composed
of a shell-shaped centre with a
serpent around its perimeter.
Rumor has it that in exchange for his remarkable design, Dali asked
for an elephant as his fee. So Air India flew a baby elephant to Geneva
from Bangalore, then trucked it to Dali’s house in Spain. As can be seen
from these vintage snapshots, it was quite a hit with the local folks who
gathered to welcome the little pachyderm.
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EVENTS & EXHIBITIONS
The Salvador Dali Museum
One Dali Blvd., St. Petersburg, Florida 33701
Disney & Dali: Architects of the Imagination -- Through June 12, 2016
Co-sponsored by the Walt Disney Family Museum, this exhibit displays paintings, sketches, film
and photos. Admission includes the museum’s new Dreams of Dali: A Virtual Reality Experience.
Telephone 727-823-3767 or details online http://thedali.org/exhibit/disney-dali-architects-imagination
Liège-Guillemins Railway Station, First Floor Exhibition Space
Place de Guillemins 2, Liège 4000, Belgium
From Salvador to Dali -- Through August 31, 2016
Dalí painting, sculpture, fashion, theater, literature, photography, design, jewelry. All on view in
first floor exhibition space. Telephone +33 (0)1 42 64 40 10 or for complete information online
http://www.thedaliuniverse.com/en/exhibitions/de-salvador-dali-liege
The Menil Collection
1533 Sul Ross St., Houston, Texas 77006
Secret of the Hanging Egg: Dali at the Menil -- Through June 19, 2016
On loan from the Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Dali’s Eggs on the Plate without the Plate (1932)
anchors this exhibit of 30 Surrealist works. Telephone 713-525-9400 or for complete info online visit
https://www.menil.org/exhibitions/241-the-secret-of-the-hanging-egg-salvador-dal-at-the-menil
Meadows Museum, at Southern Methodist University
5900 Bishop Blvd., Dallas, Texas 75205
Salvador Dali: An Early Surrealist Masterpiece -- Through June 19 , 2016
Meadows Museum has one of the foremost collections of Spanish art in the world. See recently
acquired Dali painting L’Homme Poisson, centerpiece of this exhibit. Telephone 214-768-2516 or online
http://www.meadowsmuseumdallas.org/about_Dali.htm
New Britain Museum of American Art
56 Lexington St., New Britain, Connecticut 06052
Cycle of Life in Print: Salvador Dali -- Through June 26 , 2016
An exhibition of prints from the last three decades of the artist’s life. Includes Memories of
Surrealism (1971), Alice in Wonderland (1975), Hommage to Leonardo da Vinci (1975) and more. From
the Dali collection of the late Frederick C. Ulbrich Jr. Telephone 860-229-0257 or for info online visit
http://www.nbmaa.org/exhibition/salvador-dal-cycle-of-life-in-print
International Museum of Art & Science
Cardenas Gallery, 1900 Nolana Ave. W., McAllen, TX
Les Diners de Gala by Salvador Dalí -- Through June 30 , 2016
In conjunction with the release of his 1973 Les Diners de Gala cookbook, dedicated to his wife,
Dalí produced the 12 lithograph suite that is on display, which illustrated each of the book’s 12 chapters.
Telephone 956-682-0123 or for info online visit http://www.imasonline.org
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Zanabazar Fine Arts Museum
Chingeltei District, Juulchid Streed, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí -- Through May 28, 2016
A large private collection of more than 200 original paintings, sculptures and
ceramic artworks by Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali on exhibit. Telephone 976-11-326060 or for info
online visit http://www.zanabazarfam.mn
DALI SIGHTING: “Now it is time to swim.”
Excerpted from The Telegraph, 3/29/16 by Edwin Mullins
In 1964, former Sunday Telegraph critic Edwin Mullins was invited to Salvador Dalí’s home
on the Costa Brava for what turned out to be a suitably surreal interview with the artist.
T
he door opened, and Dalí’s wife, Gala, introduced herself coolly. I was led through
the house past a large stuffed bear, draped in jewellery; beyond that a larger room
whose walls were lined with birds of prey with wings outstretched like a huntsman’s
trophy store.
I expected any moment to be confronted by the celebrated pink sofa made from the image of
Mae West’s lips. I was told to wait. “Dalí is expecting you,” she said. Suddenly a door was
flung open and a figure advanced towards me, the unmistakable moustache striking upwards
in the direction of two ferociously staring eyes.
He was wearing a sky-blue jacket embroidered with sequins, a conical red hat and a blue
blob was planted on his nose. “Dalí!” he announced, coming to a halt and staring straight at
me. Then he added more solemnly – “In summer I am Hermes as Harlequin. Let me show
you round.”
A rough track through the olive grove led to a curious arrangement of
debris laid out on the ground, made out of splinters of wood, broken oars,
fragments of a bench-seat, all evidently the remains of a small boat but
reassembled in a roughly human form with motor tyres as appendages.
Dalí broke his silence. “My fisherman-Christ,” he announced with a toss
of the head. Before I had time to register surprise he added in a loud voice,
“Now it is time to swim.” Without a glance in my direction he made his
way very precisely across the rocks and into the water. I decided that since
I was the required audience the only course of action was to strip down to
my underpants and follow him into the sea.
Dalí began to utter, as though he was in a trance. As he did so he gave me
my own surrealist moment, as his head appeared to be floating disembodied
on the water, his eyes huge and staring past me towards the open sea, with
the moustachios raised a little above the surface like twin periscopes.
Suddenly, he began to talk about his childhood and his youth. He explained how he had always needed to
prove he was not his dead brother after whom he was named; how at 17 he had wanted to be Napoleon,
and how his ambitions had grown ever since. Roused by the thought, his head still bobbing above the water
and the twin periscopes still proudly raised, he launched into a declaration: “Every morning upon waking
I experience the supreme pleasure of being Salvador Dalí, and I ask myself what prodigious thing will he
do today, this Salvador Dalí?”
“Surrealism is destructive,
but it destroys only what it
considers to be shackles
limiting our vision.”
2016 Salvador Dali Print Price Guide
by Bruce Hochman
$
99.95
(+ $9.95 S&H-U.S. CA residents add sales tax)
Call for S&H outside U.S.
Call 1-800-275-3254
Outside U.S. 949-373-2440
U.K. 0800-883-0585 · France 0800-914609 · Australia 1-800-223-873
All orders final - no returns. Order securely online at:
www.DaliGallery.com
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Spain Honors Dalí on EUROPA Coin Series
S
pain’s contribution to this year’s Europe-wide
EUROPA Star collector-oriented legal tender coin
series features well-known subjects of Spanish
art, commerce, and style. Avant-garde art and design,
exemplified by the works of 20-century artists like Salvador
Dali and Antoni Gaudi, often utilize futuristic and boundarypushing ideas and have become representative of modern
Spanish culture and lifestyle.
The reverse design, which is shared by both the silver
and gold coins, includes a portrait of Salvador Dalí, the
prominent Spanish surrealist painter born in Figueres,
Catalonia, and an image of the famous “White Towers”
building in Madrid. The building was the recipient of the 1974 Excellence Award for design and is
considered a landmark structure combining both wood and concrete. The color application included on the
coins’ reverse represents the sun, which is typical of the artwork of Joan Miró.
The EUROPA Star coin program was begin in 2004 and is dedicated to the issuance of legal tender coins in
precious metals to celebrate European identity. The issuing authorities of EU member countries voluntarily
contribute coins to the Europa Coin program.
“The two most
beautiful and useful
colors that exist are
white and black...
the true nobility of
the art of every
colorist depends on
the knowledge of
how to utilize these
as the basis of your
pictorial work.”
Triumphant Dalí Sculpture Visits New York
S
ome 25,000 visitors to Art New York
were delighted to view a rare museum
edition of Dali’s Triumphant Elephant
bronze sculpture, never before exhibited in
the United States.
Standing more than 8-½ feet tall and
depicting a trumpeting angel atop Dalí’s
signature iconic elephant, the sculpture has been exhibited
internationally in places like the Palazzo Medici Riccardi
in Florence and set an auction record at Bonham’s London
in 2014.
In addition to Triumphant Elephant, several other notable,
more moderately sized Dalí sculptures were on display,
depicting favorite themes and subjects from melted clocks
to Lady Godiva.
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This important collection of Dalí bronzes was brought to
New York by Toronto-based Hazelton Galleries, which has
prodided expertise in modern and contemporary art for
over 25 years. Gallery owner/director Peter Priede noted,
“Art New York was the perfect venue for the Dalí museum
edition sculpture launch in the United States.
“Dalí was inspired by New York City, and New York was
equally infatuated with him. He considered this city his
spiritual home. It is so fitting that this exclusive collection
should make its debut at Art New York.”
AUCTION NEWS
Le mausolée d’Halicarnasse (top left)
Oil on canvas, 1955
Estimated: $700,000 - $1,000,000
Sold $1,325,000 at Christie’s New York, May 13, 2016
Sans titre - scène méditerranéenne (top right)
Watercolor, brush, pen & red ink on card, 1945
Estimated: $200,000 - $300,000
Sold $185,000 at Christie’s New York, May 13, 2016
Le cavalier zèbre (2nd right)
Watercolor, ink & brush over pencil on board, 1963
Estimated: $30,000 - $50,000
Sold: $75,000 at Christie’s New York, May 13, 2016
L’oeil fleuri no. 6, décor pour Tristan fou (2nd left)
Oil with tempra on joined canvas, 1944
Estimated: $200,000 - $300,000
Sold $449,000 at Christie’s New York, May 13, 2016
Cheval avex la Montre Molle (3rd right)
Bronze sculpture, 2/8
Estimated: $300,000 - $500,000
Sold: $334,000 at Sotheby’s New York, May 10, 2016
Le Violon - Violon d’Ingres (3rd left)
Bronze sculpture, 4/6. 1966
Estimated: $20,000 - $30,000
Sold: $100,000 at Sotheby’s New York, May 10, 2016
Nu de dos sur Piedestal (4th left)
Oil on lenticular plastic, 1965
Estimated: $50,000 - $70,000
Sold: $93,750 at Sotheby’s New York, May 10, 2016
Aliyah (4th right)
Watercolor, gouache, felt-tip pen & crayon on card, 1966
Estimated: $180,000 - $250,000
Sold: $346,000 at Sotheby’s New York, May 10, 2016
Montre molle biomorphique (bottom right)
Ink & graphite on paper, 1930-33
Estimated: $79,490 - $113,550
Sold: $137,960 at Christie’s Paris, March 31, 2016
Trois sécheresses (bottom left)
Ink on paper, 1936
Estimated: $68,130 - $90,840
Sold: $110,710 at Christie’s Paris
March 31, 2016
Continued on Page 8...
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AUCTION NEWS continued from p. 7
Allégorie de l’âme (top left)
Pencil, estompe, pastel, gouache collage & ink on paper, 1951
Estimated: $340,650 - $567,750
Sold: $628,500 at Christie’s Paris, March 31, 2016
Magicien sur le doigt (2nd left)
Watercolor, gouache, oil, felt pen & India ink on paper, 1966
Estimated: $34,065 - $45,420
Sold: $72,560 at Christie’s Paris, March 31, 2016
Caméléon et narguilé (top right)
Watercolor, gouache & sanguine on paper, 1966
Estimated: $56,780 - $68,130
Sold: $97,090 at Christie’s Paris, March 31, 2016
Chameau et cavalier noir (2nd right)
Watercolor & ink on paper, 1966
Estimated: $56,780 - $79,490
Sold: $80,730 at Christie’s Paris, March 31, 2016
Figure sur fond blanc (3rd right)
Oil, gouache, watercolor, sanguine & ink on paper, 1966
Estimated: $56,780 - $79,490
Sold: $99,810 at Christie’s Paris, March 31, 2016
La Femme Visible (3rd left)
Original heliogravure book frontispiece, 1930
Estimated: $13,560 - $16,950
Sold: $122,725 at Sotheby’s Paris, April 26, 2016
Le Revolver a Cheveux Blancs (bottom right)
Heliogravure of original drawing, 1932
Estimated: $33,900 - $$45,200
Sold: $42,380 at Sotheby’s Paris, April 26, 2016
Danseuse devant le sultan (bottom left)
Watercolor, gouache, sanguine & marker on paper, 1966
Estimated: $34,065 - $45,420
Sold: $72,560 at Christie’s Paris, March 31, 2016
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The Salvador Dali Collectors bi-monthly journal
© 2016 The Salvador Dali Gallery, Inc.
Published bi-monthly (January, March, May, July, September, November) by The Salvador Dali Gallery, Inc.,
31103 Rancho Viejo Road, #2-193, San Juan Capistrano, California 92675, USA. Telephone: 949-373-2440
Fax: 949-373-2446 · TOLL FREE 800-275-3254 · U.K. 0800-883-0585 · France 0800-914609 · Australia 1-800-223-873.
The Salvador Dali Gallery, Inc. is a complete Dali resource, exclusively offering Albert Field’s Official Catalog of the
Graphic Works of Salvador Dali; Bruce Hochman’s Print Price Guide to the Graphic Works of Salvador Dali; authentic
Dali prints and originals, and this publication. Visit The Salvador Dali Gallery’s website: www.DaliGallery.com