Lesson 5 - Dali - Dali

With Orson Welles narrating, this documentary was a detailed account of Salvador Dali's emergence as an artist in the 1920's and his important contribution to surrealism in the 1930's all the way up until the present day of the film in the 1960's. It was filmed at his home in the seaside village of Port Lligat, just outside of Cadaqués, Spain which Welles narrates to be the source of his inspiration.

Salvador Dali 

To me, just from this video, Dali seemed to be the ultimate avant-garde of avant-gardes. He lived up to every sense of the term. "Dali painted things that were behind things...double image, guessing game image, multiple image, visual puns."(Welles). But I like that because he chose to be himself, he chose to be his own type of artist, and he accentuated his weirdness so much that it almost seemed normal.

However, I didn't care so much for the film. I am not a huge fan of documentaries as it is and the fact that this one was filmed in the 60's and had poor quality didn't help either. I also couldn't understand what was being said all that well, especially when Dali was speaking, which made it hard to pay attention to what was being shown.

I did some extra research on Dali and he states something in his autobiography that I found very interesting because it almost explains his personality in a way. "All my eccentricities I habitually perpetrate, are the tragic constant of my life. I want to prove I am not the dead brother but the living brother. By killing my brother I immortalize myself." Dali's older brother died during infancy and by fighting the memory of him, he felt the need to be a show-off, not for the money but for himself. Which is completely misunderstood by other Surrealists during the time because they saw him as a "grubby money grabber" rather than looking at him for his talents.