Salvador Dali: a classical or baroque painter? A revolutionary painter or an academic painter, a firefighter? In this third part of a series of ten “Magnetic Nights” broadcast in 1978 on France Culture, Salvador Dali evokes his admiration for classicism, a relationship to academic painting highlighted by the art critic Robert Lebel. The painter Jacques Hérold remembers the young surrealist Dali and his relationship with money. The painter Ljuba compares Pablo Picasso to Salvador Dali: on the one hand a painting led to an impasse, on the other an opening, a hope.
Baroque or classical, academic or revolutionary?
“I’m a very bad painter, I’m good because others are worse than me, that’s all”. Salvador Dali recognizes a certain dexterity learned at the School of Fine Arts in Madrid. He starts painting while reading his book 50 Magical Secrets written at the request of a publisher. Admiring classicism for its cult of imagination, Salvador Dali nevertheless says he is closer to the Baroque painter, “ Diego Velazquez is the greatest genius of all“. On the question of tradition, it is constrained, but beneficial, essential: what does not fall within tradition is plagiarism. As for revolutionary art: “Those who revolutionize everything are slaves to memories and cannot create new things.”
According to Robert Lebel, art critic who participated in the surrealist movement : “Dali was always a firefighter, he always remained one and still is. He never left firefighting even when it was surrealist at its most inspired moments. Against a background of academicism, he added flourishes which blur the picture and give it a ghostly, delirious appearance.”
“Picasso buried painting, Dali gave him a chance”
Ljuba, a Yugoslav painter living in France, highlights Salvador Dali’s precision work, a rare, almost invisible quality. It also compares the contributions of the artist with those of Pablo Picasso in the history of painting. “Pablo Picasso put painting in a dead end, Salvador Dali gave hope, he touched our imagination, he put human beings in a position saying that everything was possible”. A future of painting which will be found, according to him, between Salvador Dali and Francis Bacon.
“Avida Dollars”, a damning anagram?
Jacques Hérold, painter of Romanian origin linked to the surrealist movement, talks about “Avida Dollars”, the anagram of Salvador Dali’s name created by André Breton. For Salvador Dali who loved gold, wealth, worldliness, this could not offend him, on the contrary the artist took full responsibility for it.
- Produced by: Daniel Le Comte
- Director: Jacqueline Archambault
- With Salvador Dali (painter, sculptor, engraver, screenwriter, writer), Ljuba (painter), Robert Lebel (art critic) and Jacques Hérold (painter linked to the surrealist movement)
- Magnetic Nights – Dali, keys to a Theater-Museum 3/10: Persistence of memory (1st broadcast: 08/11/1978 France Culture)
- Web edition: Amélie Potier, Radio France Documentation
- Archive Ina-Radio France
