Greed and Scandals

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 491.

Salvador Dalí has often been accused of being more interested in money than art. However, his work has never been seen as commercial and was never meant to be commercial either.

Dalí's paintings have always been politically incorrect and often depicted taboo ideas in a very unique style. As such, and in spite of Dalí's talent, nothing could have predicted the success of the artist, who preferred to take his chances and impose his style rather than giving into a safer and less shocking academic style.

André Breton, the leader of the Surrealist group in Paris, gave Dalí the nickname Avida Dollars (greedy for dollars), the anagram for Salvador Dalí - maybe out of jealousy. Dalí was often accused of being opportunist and greedy, but he never went the easy way or sold out in order to impose his style.

Many other scandals accompanied Salvador's career until his death in 1989. Promotional hoaxes, extravagances, provocations, political scandals, etc. Dalí fostered the controversy during his entire life, thus cultivating the image of an absurd, delirious artist. Dalí did not only want his work to be artistic; he wanted his entire life to become an art and transformed his own person as a work of art. However, and while the personality of Dalí cannot be dissociated from his work, it is important to go beyond this image to reach the genius and truly understand the profundity and symbolism of his work.

In the end, was Salvador Dalí a genius? Certainly so, whether one appreciates his work or not. As we celebrate this year the memory of Dalí, it is necessary to leave aside the many clichés and prejudices that have tarnished his reputation and made us forget his real talent and the genius of his work. At a time when so many mediocre contemporary pseudo-artists are praised for being simply able to cover a canvas with pretty colours, denying Dalí the title of master is definitely one of the greatest absurdities.

Critical Paranoia, or how to decisively split your vision in new directions... By James Sebor Salvador Dali developed the concept of Critical Paranoia for establishing a creative state of self-induced psychosis. Andre Breton often maligned him for its uses, a sign of its relative importance and usefulness. Consider the process akin to forcing a waking dream, a conscious transformation led by paranoid scrutiny of what presents itself in the surroundings. The simplest version, hardly critical, hardly paranoid, begins with the child's game of staring into banks of clouds, looking for the chariot riders, the giants and other fantasms of humidity. Elementary exercises can also be practiced through prolonged staring at ink blots, scribble drawings and the array of optical illusions that sell themselves in one of many new-age, self-help manuals designed to prove that you are on your way to a happier existence. Those cracks in the sidewalk, they look like an outline of the west coast of Mexico. Those cracks in the sidewalk, they are the west coast of Mexico. Those ants in the middle, they are eating the Yucutan. Someone has stepped in Panama. They have left smudges in the Pacific. More advanced practitioners will find the intricacies of television static a delight to behold. The onset of migraine headaches a resounding flourish. (James Sebor, Critical Paranoia, http://www.seaboarcreations.com/criticalparanoia.htm, September 1, 2004)

Inspiration, mediumship, surrealism: The concept of creative dissociation (excerpts) By Michael Grosso Salvador Dali developed something he called "paranoic critical activity," the main idea being to try systematically to concretize one's obsessions. Dali's were with putrefaction, masturbation, time, death, hell, and so on. Paranoiac critical activity is similar to Victor Frankl's paradoxical intention. Instead of denying or repressing the negative, we affirm and express it; we force ourselves to look at it in a concrete way. We exaggerate, make it monstrous, as Rimbaud said. We get the paranoia out of our system, so to speak, and at the same time, transform it into something artistically engaging or therapeutically helpful. This "activity" seems to me part of the healing power of art. It must have worked for Dali, who said, "The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad" (Bosquet, 1969, p. 83)... Surreality - my candidate for the advanced development of creative dissociation - was an attempt to revive the cult of the Muses... For Breton, de Chirico, Dali, and company, dissociation was the basis of a cultural revolution, a kind of post-religious eschatology that preached the necessity for disengagement from and destruction of the prevailing reality principle. (Cited from Grosso, Inspiration, mediumship, surrealism: The concept of creative dissociation, 1998, www.nidsci.org/pdf/grosso.pdf, January 7, 2005)

V. Try to find the background information on surrealism.

VI. Read a report on the ten most prominent men in the history of mankind who helped shape the second millennium. They all were in one way or another radicals, risk takers, or controversial figures. All possessed the courage of their convictions and believed, often against considerable opposition, that they were in the right. Whether influential as religious reformer, free-thinking scientist, defender of democracy, women's activist, or in another role, these ten people changed the millennium and made history because they refused to accept the limits and conventional thinking of their eras. The world today is so much the richer for it.

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