Salvador Dalí's Art and Writing, 1927–1942: The Metamorphosis of Narcissus

by Haim Finkelstein

• ISBN13: 9780521639255
• ISBN10: 0521639255
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-02-28
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book examines the evolution of Dalì's art during the 1920s and 1930s when he was associated first with the Catalan avant-garde and then with the Surrealist group in Paris. During this period, Dalì's painting style changed radically, a phenomenon which has never been fully accounted for in the extensive literature on this subject. Haim Finkelstein demonstrates that Dalì's writing, in which he explicated theoretical systems such as Paranoia-Criticism and other ideas adopted from Freud, were important for the active and critical role that they played in his development as an artist and often controversial figure. His study is the first to examine these writings in detail as the foundation for the evolution of Dalì's unique artistic vision.

Table of Contents

Part I. Under the Sign of Saint Sebastian: 1. Lorcaean aesthetics, Cubism, and metaphysical painting stylistic developments until 1926

2. Saint Sebastià

and the proto-surrealist paintings of 1927

3. Words and images - freedom and the perception of limits

4. Fear and desire - the initial phase of Dalí

's Aesthetics of Repugnance

Part II. Under the Sign of the Great Masturbator: 5. From anti-art to surrealism

6. Dalí

, Buñ

uel and Un Chien andalou

7. From Un Chien andalou to The Great Masturbator

8. Le Grand Masturbateur and the paintings of 1929-1930

Part III. Under the Sign of William Tell: 9. Revolt, defiance, and scatological provocation

10. The omnipotence of love - Gala vs. William Tell

11. The morphological aesthetics of the soft and hard and the search for form

12. From symbolic functioning to 'Beings-Objects' - Dalí

and the surrealist object

Part IV. Under the Sign of the Angelus: 13. Paranoia-criticism - concept and theory

14. From paranoiac intuition to conceptualization - double and multiple images

15. Paranoiac mechanisms in The Tragic Myth of Millet's Angelus and in Dalí

's shorter writings

Part V. Under the Sign of Narcissus: 16. The metamorphosis of Narcissus and the dialectics of fragmentation and wholeness

17. To become Classic - rejection of earlier surrealist attitudes and the abandonment of Freudian theory

18. I Renounce Nothing: I Continue - observations on Dali's art and writing in the 1940s and after

Notes

Select bibliography

Index.