Dalí. All of the poetic suggestions and all of the plastic possibilities. From April 27 to September 2, 2013
- Audio: Richard Wagner. "Höchsten Heiles Wunder" in Parsifal (1882), Deutsche Grammophon (1992)
- Audio: "BMW, 980CC, 2 Cylinder, 1982 Model. Start Up, Constant Run, Stop. Motorcycle" en BBC sound FX Library, BBC (1978)
On the 5th of april of 1988, Santiago Amon presented the installation Parzival, at the Vostell Museum, in Malpartida, Cáceres, based on an idea of Salvador Dalí’s from 1929 which had been carried out by the very Wolf Vostell following a conversation between the two artists in 1978. Santiago Amon notes:
When Breton and his clan were busying themselves theorizing about surrealism, Dali said: “what we should do is bring it to life” […] “For example making a good curtain for the final act of Richard Wagner’s Parsifal” And what would it be like? “Well the way the music and text demand it to be. A huge bicycle curtain! The very Wagner didn’t even think of this idea. Listen to the end of Parsifal with a falling cascade of bicycles, those very ones that futurism ended up appropriating. However, Dali realized that as of 1929, the bicycle had been turned into a desk object, into a paperweight. The rumbling motorcycles of today are what make Dali tingle and that’s why he said to Vostell, could they be motorcycles like the ones guys ride today?”
The presence of sound in Dalí’s work is almost arbitrary, minimal, almost always guided by a series of audiovisual transmissions.
However he maintains certain unmistakable constants like the self-representation of the genius, the analysis of the artist from within and a megalomania that is thought of nearly as a commercial tool.
After his exile to the United States due to the Second World War, and at a moment in which European artists were enjoying certain amounts of recognition before the arrival of Abstract Expressionism, Salvador Dalí began to appear on television promoting his unclassifiable image.
In this case, and not for his words but rather for his silence and monosyllables, in 1952 Dalí appeared on the program What's my line, a program on which a series of blindfolded contestants must guess the identity of the guest by asking them yes or no questions.
- Audio: Franklin Heller. Salvador Dalí on What's My Line?, CBS (1952)
During his stay in the United States, Dalí had worked openly with the mass media. Whilst other artists from his generation were opposed to spectacular cinema or were experimenting with it, Dali approached animation tycoon Walt Disney for the project Destino.
- Audio: Armando Domínguez. Destino, (1945)
In 1945 Dali and Walt Disney would initiate Destino, which was finished posthumously in 2003. The short film was based on the song Destino composed by Armando Domínguez and interpreted by Dora Luz in 1943 on whom the female protagonist of the short might’ve been based.
Thanks to this recording of Destino in 1943, Dora Luz was asked to record Solamente una vez, possibly that very same year, for the film The three knights. The singer protagonized a daliesque moment in which Donald Duck suffers a hallucination after being kissed by the singer.
The movie was awarded two Oscars for best music and sound. It is at once a masterpiece and a true manual of political incorrectness in which three friends travel around Latin America’s most touristy destinations wildly chasing girls.
This moment was also inspired by a bolero, on this occasion one composed by Agustín Lara, with music by Xavier Cugat and sung by Dora Luz. You Belong to My Heart,Solamente una vez
- Audio: Agustín Lara.You Belong to My Heart (1944)
“You belong to my heart
Now and forever
And our love had its start
Not long ago
We were gathering stars while a million guitars played our love song
When I said I love you, every beat of my heart said it, too
'twas a moment like this
Do you remember?
And your eyes threw a kiss
When they met mine
Now we own all the stars and a million guitars are still playing
Darling, you are the song and you'll always belong to my heart “
In an almost opposite vein, Dali starred in Jean-Christophe Averty’s 1967 film A Soft Self Portrait. The great voice and radio but also film star Orson Welles, narrates the film and maintains, although mediated by the script, short conversations with a histrionic artist.
- Audio: Jean-Christophe Averty. A Soft Self Portrait (1967)
At the beginning of A Soft Self Portrait, we can see Dalí interpreting an excessive piece on a peculiar instrument, nothing other than a Cat Piano.
- Audio: Jean-Christophe Averty. A Soft Self Portrait (1967)
It’s hard to think that this image and sound are the beginning of the film out of sheer chance. Apparently this Cat Piano, was shown by Charles I of Spain to his son Phillip the II in 1549, and this is possibly why it was described by Athanasius Kircher, and reproduced in the print La Nature, in 1883, which Dali would have surely seen.
Dali couldn’t be any old musician; he had to play one of the strangest instruments in western history, one with a monarchic origin. Monarchic, like in this Ricardo Arias interview for National Spanish Television from 1977.
- Audio: Ricardo Arias. A fondo (1977)
Two fundamental characteristics describe Dali’s different interventions. One is the onanistic obsession with the use of his voice speaking about himself. The other is the expressive use of different languages. A good example, is this Polla Xica, a catalán tongue twister that Dali interpreted on more than one occasion.
- “Una polla xica, pica, pellarica, camatorta i becarica
va tenir sis polls xics, pics, pellarics, camatorts i becarics.
Si la polla no hagués sigut xica, pica, pellarica, camatorta i becarica,
els sis polls no haguessin sigut xics, pics, pellarics, camatorts i becarics”.
“A teeny-tiny mommy lousie, itchy, screechy, bowlegged and beachy,
had six teeny-tiny baby lousies, itchy, screechy, bowlegged and beachy.
If the mommy lousie hadn’t been teeny-tiny, itchy, screechy,
bowlegged and beachy,
the six little lousies wouldn’t have been teeny-tiny, itchy, screechy,
bowlegged and beachy.”
During the years in which he resided in North America, he also made an expressive use of English. The most renowned was the discourse A lingüistic presentations, in which he shows English speakers how to speak English. This was published in 1960 by the sonic magazine ECHO MAGAZINE which boasted the peculiarity of having flexidiscs for pages and which sounded like this:
- Audio: Salvador Dalí. A lingüistic presentations, ECHO Magazine (1960)
Aside from this flexidsc, in 1975 Dali edited another disc with his voice titled je suis fou de dalí!. It included interviews to François Deguelt, Jean-Pierre Mottier and Simon Wajntrob. The 1975 disc in itself doesn’t represent any novelty with regards to his habitual appearances on television.
- Audio: Salvador Dalí. "Methode paranoiaque" in Salvador Dalí je suis fou de dalí!, Sonopresse (1975)
Perhaps his musical collaboration most worthy of mention is Being God: a Cathar Audiovisual Opera-Poem in Six Parts. With a script by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán and music by Igor Wakhévitch.
However this piece doesn’t have much of a Dali touch to it, as it was almost entirely composed posthumously. Recorded in 1974 it was published between 1985 and 1989 as an LP and as a CD in 1992 by the German record label Eurostar. It was represented for the first time in Figueras on the 23rd of September 2003.
According to Oriol Regás:
“With Bocaccio Records we tried to record an opera titled Être Dieu, written and interpreted by Salvador Dali. We met the man in Cadaques, we had agreed that he would give us a script and he didn’t give us anything. So then Alain Milhaud, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán and I went to Paris to see him with the idea that he’d oversee a script written by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán himself.
Finally, we went in to the Pathé Marconi studios to record the disc, but Dalí never showed up. Some time later, the work was finished at the Gema Studios in Barcelona and Dalí surprised us all again by saying “Dalí never repeats himself” and he started to sing and recite as he pleased. "
Salvador Domínguez. El Rock Progresivo en España: 1969-1973 http://salvadordominguez.blogspot.com.es/
- Audio: Salvador Dalí. "Cuarta entrada o la profesión de fe" in Être Dieu: opéra-poème, audiovisuel et cathare en six parties, Eurostar (1992)
Especially this Progressive Rock bit might come off strangely in the opera, if it weren’t for the fact that as Alice Cooper said, the artist “was a rock and roller”. Around 1973, Salvador Dali went to an Alice Cooper concert during his Billion Dollar Babies tour. Fascinated by Cooper’s stage set, Dalí asked to meet him and ended up spending millions of dollars making a hologram of the musician.
According to Alice Cooper, “he’d pronounce one word in French, one in Portuguese, one in Spanish, one in English and one in “whatever.” So you only picked up every fifth word.”
- Audio: Alice Cooper. "Billon Dolar Babies" (1973) in Billon Dolar Babies, Warner Bross (1990)
The fact that the artist was so openly spectacular inspired not hundreds but thousands of re-interpretations of the work, turning it into a historic, artistic and aesthetic cliché of popular culture. Not by chance has the artist ended up inspiring a certain kitsch aesthetic that theorists such as Clement Greenberg or Theodor Adorno define as what’s opposed to the avant-garde. And by the very same thin line that divides what’s kitsch from other peripheral tastes, Dali ends up on a Spanish Bizarro compilation with this track by Santi Sans.
- Audio: Santi Sans. Oh! Genio, Olymplo (1976)
