I recently discovered a film made in 1986 about Salvador Dali, and am quite captivated by it. I'm used to learning about artists through other people's interpretations of their work. This film, though, has lots of interviews with Dali himself, as well as footage of him painting and narrated readings from his writing. There's an odd earnestness about him as he explains what he thinks he's contributed to art...
"To art, nothing, absolutely nothing. Because as I've always said I'm a very bad painter. Because I'm too intelligent to be a good painter. To be a good painter you've got to be a bit stupid. With the exception of Velazquez who is a genius..."
...and a troubling belief in what he considers to be Surrealist acts, as he proudly tells of having kicked a blind man because "for me there's nothing worse than those blind men who walk like this down the street." (He mockingly imitates using a cane.)
The film traces Dali's life from his beginning to paint through to his living, old and extremely feeble, as a recluse. Along the way I learned much that I didn't know, like that Dali was formally expelled from the Surrealist movement in 1934 (after an actual trial) because of his "deviant political views," and that he had a studio assistant, Isidoro Bea, who painted the backgrounds of Dali's large religious paintings. And that neither he nor his agents kept track of his work, leading to questions about the authenticity of a number of pictures (let alone the sheets of paper that have his signature on them but are blank). Plus, there's nothing quite like this commercial, where Dali explains the workings of Alka-Seltzer.
And in other Dali news... while I was writing this post, Midori told me of Disney's plans to release a six-minute Dali cartoon. Evidently, according to this NPR article, in 1946 Walt Disney and Dali planned a cartoon called Destino. But the plug was pulled after it was concluded that the cartoon probably wouldn't make any money. And now Walt Disney's nephew (who heads the animation division) has revived the cartoon. Here's the description:
"Destino is a six-minute film set to a Spanish song, devoid of dialogue and without a clear story line. It follows a dark-eyed ballerina on a journey among strange objects through a desert landscape in a dreamlike atmosphere."
Look for it at festivals around the world before Oscar-nomination time, or on DVD next year (along with a documentary that tells the inside story). Or go here for a preview.