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March 10 - 17, 2000

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Hello, Dali

Wadsworth reveals the Surrealist

by Leon Nigrosh

SALVADOR DALI'S OPTICAL ILLUSIONS
At the Wadsworth Atheneum, 600 Main Street, Hartford, Connecticut, through March 26.

During a lecture he gave at the Wadsworth Atheneum on December 18,1934, Salvador Dali (1904-1989) coined his now famous motto: "The only difference between myself and a madman is that I am not mad." Yet over the years, through his public persona, he did little to dissuade the public from believing there may have been something a little off about him. At the Wadsworth 66 years later, we have the opportunity to decide for ourselves.

Spanning from the mid-1920s to the early 1980s, more than 70 drawings, paintings, and objects culled from Dali's prolific production are arranged thematically in this elegant exhibition. Not only do we get to see some of his most famous works, but also guest curator and leading Dali specialist Dawn Ades has assembled some of Dali's preliminary sketches and notebooks.

Often pigeonholed as a Surrealist painter, Dali was much more. Though it is true that in 1929 Dali joined the group of self-proclaimed Surrealists, which included André Breton, Max Ernst, and Joan Miró, his scientific, religious, and artistic interests went far beyond theirs -- and Dali was soon ousted from the group. Whether his stealing of Surrealist poet Paul Eluard's wife, Gala, had anything to do with this decision remains unclear.

In 1932, the Wadsworth became the first museum to ever purchase a Dali painting, his 1931 oil-on-canvas La Solitude. Outwardly appearing as a sparse representation of sky, sea, and a boy next to some rocks, this small work is laden with metaphor. We see the boy's hair is really a mass of seashells, which acts as exterior armor protecting the child's brain. Dali has also infused the sheer rocks with a sense of exclusion, something he felt not long after his father had banished him from his home. Continuing with his early theme of displacement, Dali's tiny Paranoiac-astral Image features a man walking, a woman and a young boy in a rowboat, an ethereal woman, and a broken amphora -- all on a flat, secluded beach. Is it just a simple statement of the human situation or could this measured circle of images include his father, Gala (whom he later married), and himself as the boy, populating a bleak expanse of space -- yet locked together forever in time?

Dali is perhaps best know for his extraordinary "double image" paintings -- subjects made up of disparate objects. In his 1938 Apparition of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach, the face, which blends in and out of the "dish," is thought to be that of Dali's friend, the recently assassinated poet Federico Garcia Lorca. Equally fantastic is his 1940 Disappearing Bust of Voltaire. Here, Dali arranges a slave-market scene populated with 17th-century buyers and sellers in such a manner they metamorphose into the ghostly visage of the French writer, Voltaire, based on a marble sculpture carved by the 18th-century sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon. Dali's works of this nature, and others like his greatly foreshortened Ascension, are much more than visual games. Exactingly executed, they are meticulously composed of objects fraught with Freudian allusions, scientific theory, and with metaphysical and religious references. Dali also studied and took notes about modes of perception, both visual and mental -- including exhaustive studies about the human eye (an image that prominently recurs throughout his career).

Several examples of Dali's "dot paintings" are also on view. His Portrait of My Dead Brother is an image of his brother (also named Salvador) who died nine months before Dali was born. To see the full portrait, painted in 1963, you must stand at a good distance. Up close, we see only clusters of cherries, vague figures marching in step, and a sepia rendition of Jean-François Millet's 19th-century painting Angelus.

Never satisfied with panel painting, he dabbled in photography and even investigated holography during the early '70s, when it was still in its infancy. Two examples of Dali's revolving holograms are included. His Dali Painting Gala shows the aging couple as artist and model. The most surprising hologram is the revolving image of Alice Cooper eating a "shish-kabobed" sculpture of Venus de Milo. It may be hard to believe, but Dali and the heavy-metal rocker were friends.

Although holography satisfied his long-sought-after illusion of three dimensions passing through the fourth dimension of time, Dali was disappointed by the color limitations. So he reverted to, and updated, a 19th-century device, the stereopticon. For his 1978 Gala's Christ, Dali painted two almost-identical versions of a crucified Jesus suspended in mid-air and placed the panels on either side of an angled, double mirror. When the mirrors are viewed at their apex, the image appears to float in space.

The size of many of Dali's paintings and the great number on view can make a thoughtful visit to the Wadsworth an exhausting one. But the scope of his endeavors and the magnificent rendition within each work are evidence that he was no madman. In fact, he was just the opposite, as he himself noted at the often forgotten end to the famous quote noted above: "I am able to distinguish between the dream and the real world."

The Wadsworth Atheneum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Call (860) 278-2670.

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