At the age of six, Salvador Dali (1904-1989) wanted to be a cook.
At the age of seven, he wanted to be Napoleon. "Since then," he
later said, "my ambition has steadily grown, and my megalomania
with it. Now I want only to be Salvador Dali, I have no greater
wish." Throughout his life, Dali was out to become Dali: that is,
one of the most significant artists and eccentrics of the 20th
century. This weighty volume is the most complete study of Dali's
painted works ever published. After years of research, Robert
Descharnes and Gilles Neret located painted works by the master
that had been inaccessible for years-so many, in fact, that almost
half the featured illustrations appear in public for the first time
in this book. More than a catalogue raisonne, this book
contextualizes Dali's oeuvre and its meanings by examining
contemporary documents, from writings and drawings to material from
other facets of his work, including ballet, cinema, fashion,
advertising, and objets d'art. Without these crutches to support
analysis, the paintings would simply be a series of many images.
The study is divided into two parts: the first examines Dali's
beginnings as an unknown artist. We witness how the young Dali
deployed all the isms-Impressionism, Pointillism, Cubism, Fauvism,
Purism and Futurism-with playful mastery, and how he would borrow
from prevailing trends before ridiculing and abandoning them. The
second part unveils the conclusions of Dali's lifelong inquiries,
as well as the great legacy he left in works such as Tuna Fishing
(1966/67) or Hallucinogenic Toreador (1970). It includes previously
unpublished homages to Velazquez or Michelangelo, painted to the
same end as the variations on past masters done by his
contemporary, Picasso. We discover how, motivated by the desire to
tease out the secrets of great works and become a Velazquez of the
mid-20th century, Dali became Dali.
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