Type of work

There is a paranoiac picture aptly called, in travesty, ‘The Last Scandal of Salvador Dalí’ (painted under the pseudonym Felipe Jacinto). It has Dalí himself sitting at the Barclay restaurant on the Champs-Elysées, nursing a glass of Armagnac, while Gala listens

‘fanatically to the remarks made by Dali, who was in one of his brilliant moods, when ideas, one following the other, exploded like a shower of firecrackers’.¹We know, from Dalí, how proud he is in 1960 of his looks: black hair, no corns on his feet, and a stomach that has, after his appendicitis operation, regained its slim appear-ance. He has become doubly a hero, because he has revolted against the authority of his father, who didn’t know how to love him.²Just like Picasso, says Dalí, always eager to come up against his only rival, or at least to compare himself with him. And after Éluard’s death, he is able to marry Gala, again a tribute to his own genius: Éluard, the best poet in France, Dalí the best painter. Of course the latter would acquire the wife of the former!

As usual, John Richardson is delightfully bitchy on the topic of Gala, with whom he had to deal as the vice-president of Knoedler’s Gallery in the early 1970s. Most of those who had anything to do with her, he says, ‘would agree that to know her was to loathe her’.³ His picture of her is colourful to say the least: ‘In a jet-black wig held in place by a Minnie Mouse bow, this ancient harridan would drive home her wheedling demands for money with jabs of ancient elbows and blows of mottled knuckles’.⁴Not that Richardson’s

view of Dalí himself is dreadfully flattering: ‘the Wizard of Was’, he calls him.

All the irreverencies of Journal of a Genius can be inscribed under the rubric of poetic licence with a vengeance: there are pages and pages on the art of farting, even an appendix with an extract from a nineteenth-century volume called L’Art de Péter or Manual by the aptly named ‘Count of the Trumpet, the Doctor of the Bronze Horse, for the use of the constipated’.⁵

Dalí is now making his decision ‘to become classic’. The new American collectors have an awareness that certain things once elegant and impassioning have turned their backs on the previous period, which is ‘finished, finished, a thousand times finished’.

Over and done with are his former aesthetics, in the epoch of experiments. Former Surrealist practices are out of tune and feel with the demands of the present moment.⁶Something else has to be found to enliven situation and purse. Dalí laments: ‘My surreal-ist glory was worthless. I must incorporate surrealism in tradition.

My imagination must become classic again . . . to render the expe-rience of my life “classic”, to endow it with a form, a cosmogony, a synthesis, an architecture of eternity. Something lasting has to be found, and the stage set of this “Last Scandal” may help. Provided it has enough juice in it . . . ’.⁷

But the juiciest of the scandals, apart from the visual and verbal ones, had to do with the attachments of Gala and Dalí. Gala was always ready for sexual encounters, with men from all walks of life:

sailors, collectors, and especially young men of dubious trades.

She preferred them very young, very handsome, and very keen for sexual adventure. One, Eric Samon, managed to have her car stolen while he was supping with her. There were many others. The prin-cipal one was William Rotlein, addicted to drugs, and who looked like the young Dalí. By 1964, the painter seemed to think she was actually going to leave him, not just for a while, but permanently:

‘I need you badly’, he would write. But luckily the Albarettos, an

Italian family close to the Dalís, managed to wean her away from Rotlein by brilliant means. They asked Fellini to give the young man a screen test, which of course he failed – causing Gala to lose interest in him. They bought off the photographers and journalists.

Finally, Rotlein took an overdose and died.

Among a series of additional lovers, there was Jean-Claude Du Barry, the owner of a modelling agency, who was able to supply many ‘Saint Sebastians’ for Dalí and lovers for Gala, including Michel Pastore (‘the shepherd’). A grand ‘purveyor of ass’, as Dalí so delicately put it. There was, most importantly, Jeff Fenholt, star of Jesus Christ Superstar, on whom much was spent, before he began to blackmail Gala; Dalí found out, and was alarmed. In a fitting, if ironic, end to the story, Fenholt turned to preaching on tv in California, a far cry from his involvement with Gala. But Dalí had been worried Gala would leave him for Christ. So she fed him Valium and other such drugs to calm him, including an assortment of amphetamines, wreaking neural damage on his already

enfevered brain . . .

As for Dalí the Great Masturbator, Dalí the Spaniard but specifically Dalí the Catalan, he remained enchanted with himself and his landscape, literal and visual. ‘My geniuses are Catalan, my own genius comes from Catalunya, country of gold and ascesis’, he says in The Passions According to Dalí, conversations with Louis Pauwels that took place near Dalí’s landscape, which appeared in March 1968.⁸It is clear that some of the most authentic visions of the Catalan come out in his interchanges with others. To the French poet Alain Bosquet, he had declared: ‘A picture’s nothing compared with the magic which constantly irradiates from my person’.⁹

Given Dalí’s fascination with what we might think of as the kinky, it is not startling to learn that he was smitten by a dancer he wanted to paint as ‘Hermaphroditos’. The dancer was George Jamieson, who had been April Ashley when in drag at Le Carrousel,

Paris, and who then, after Dalí had come to see her dance for six weeks, introduced him in 1965 to the large and beautiful Franco-Oriental fashion model Alain Tapp, known as Peki d’Oslo. Both April and Alain had sex-change operations, and made their way to a certain success. Alain, that is Peki, married a twenty-year-old Scot called Morgan Paul Lear, who acquired £50 for the ceremony and never had to see his twenty-six-year-old wife again. As Mrs Amanda Lear, Peki d’Oslo (né Alain Tapp), went on to model for Ozzie Clark, to become pals with Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones, and to have affairs with Bryan Ferry and David Bowie, becoming ‘The Disco Queen of Europe’. Then she took up with Dalí, and pleased him not just through her beauty but her intelligence, her passion for art and languages, and her need for a father. She put about the story that she and Dalí had been united in a ‘spiritual marriage’

on a deserted mountain-top. ‘My new love’, the painter called her.

His previous muse, Ultra Violet (Isabelle-Collin Dufresne), had left him to join Andy Warhol in his Factory. Amanda (‘L’Amant Dalí’) was perfect in the role. Her own account of Dalí in Paris, Le Dalí d’Amanda (1984) is useful, as is her knowledge of various sets of mores. She wrote herself about this in My Life With Dalí (1986).

Even Gala, obsessed by her own affairs, was eventually to put up with the lovely Amanda. Getting Dalí off her case was no small thing.

Dalí’s own case remained somewhat the same: monarchist, right-wing-ist, he issued a proclamation in 1968, during the May events of the student uprising, called My Cultural Revolution (18 May 1968). Back to tradition, and so on. His court now contained – as well as Ninita Kalaschnikoff, Amanda and assorted others – a young Colombian actor, Carlos Lozano, aged twenty, slim and dark, with a bare midriff, who was happy to participate in the mutual masturbation sessions Dalí enjoyed putting on. It also contained Enric Sabater Bonay, athletic, handsome, and good at making money – he was to edge out Peter Moore the captain. By

this time, Dalí was enjoying coloured spectacles (one lens red, one blue) to yield a 3-d impression, and this led to a fascination with stereoscopic imagery, for which Amanda can take some credit, since she had noticed a painting by the seventeenth-century Dutchman Gérard Dou, in which an object seemed to stand out in relief. Thence, the whole fascination with the stereoscopic, the holograms, and the rest followed.

The Spaniard in Dalí led him to create the Hallucinogenic Toreador, in which there is a dog that Dalí referred to as an Andalusian Dog; in short, Lorca was and is present, along with his great poem ‘Lament for the Death of the Bullfighter’, with its

Dalí and Gala, c. 1960s.

heart-rending refrain A las cinco de la tarde (‘At Five in the Afternoon’). Also the moon is remembering the lament, for most of Dalí’s canvases are sunlit.

Back to landscape: Sabater found a mansion called Púbol, and bought it for Gala to retreat to with her various lovers. It was isolated and inviolate behind its high walls, and even Dalí was allowed there only by written invitation. His museum, the Teatre-Museu in

Hallucinogenic Toreador, 1968–70, oil on canvas.

Figueres, was slowly getting into shape, and his relation to Lorca was eternalized in the painting Still Life by Moonlight (1926), which he now explained as the fusion of Lorca’s and Dalí’s heads, with their shadows corresponding, like ‘the shadow of a self-portrait’.

Lorca, never to be forgotten.

One more scandal: that of the blank sheets. Dalí signed some blank paper for Pierre Argillet, a French publisher, to be able to put some Dalí prints on sale. Moore writes: ‘Dalí signed 10,000 sheets and this gave us 100,000’.¹⁰To pay expenses, of course, especially in America, at the St Regis, where he always stayed and ate. He loved signing anything. Gala watched, in amusement, caring only for the cash, which she enjoyed immensely. They both loved

Dalí speaking at the Académie des Beaux-Arts, Paris, in 1979.

scandal: witness Dalí’s enthusiasm for André Parinaud’s book The Unspeakable Confessions of Salvador Dalí (from the French: Comment on Devient Dalí).

The rest is a sad case. Dalí continued to show his right-wing opinions, to say he was on the side of the Holy Inquisition and on that of Franco, and to quote Lenin, saying: ‘Freedom is no use for anything.’¹¹Michael Stout took over from the Dalís’ previous attor-ney, and managed the affairs of Sabater and Dalí, called Dalart Ltd, specializing in production rights to his work. Dalí began to rely on anti-depressants, and by the time he was seventy-two, showed definite signs of weakening. He was elected, just before his seventy-fifth birthday, to the Académie des Beaux-Arts of the Institut de

Dalí with Gala, Paris, 1979.

France, and wore a uniform of Napoleonic sort, carrying a gold sword with a swan of Leda atop Gala’s head on its own head.

At this point, his focus was on classical art, on the fourth dimension, and on stereoscopy. A retrospective was held at the Centre Pompidou from December to April, and then moved on to London’s Tate Gallery. Most of the works were from the Surrealist period. A ‘Committee of Friends to save Dalí’ was formed, with Descharnes and Morse in charge, but the plethora of drugs given to the painter were taking their toll on his brain, as was his arte-riosclerosis on his body. His friends put him in the Incosol clinic, a health farm in Spain, where he was shaking, shrunken, and panicked that Gala was going to leave him for Fenholt. She didn’t, of course, but the payments and blackmail extortions were enormous.

16

Endings, 1980–89

Time for another startling public appearance. On 24 October 1980, Dalí held a press conference in his Teatre-Museu in Figueres. As Tristan und Isolde played, he came into the room where a hundred journalists awaited him, looking much older, and exhausted in his leopard-skin overcoat. But he declared: ‘Here I am!’, banging three times on the table, exactly as in the French theatre before the curtain rises, and kissing Gala, who was made up brightly, with her habitual velvet bow on her head. He had, he said, discovered that God was very tiny. And having made this announcement, he unveiled The Happy Horse (‘you can certainly see it is rotten’, said he). Then they were driven away in their blue Cadillac.¹Great entrance, great exit. Theatrical appearances have to be kept up, and were.

In Paris, they stayed as always in a suite at the Hôtel Meurice, but Dalí’s condition was terrible, both mental and physical.

Sabater resigned as their secretary and dealer on 31 December, saying Dalí was a great masochist. Shady business had been going on and was continuing to do so – chaos on all fronts, to say nothing of Dalí signing blank sheets for the market. Then all appeared to be put in order by Robert Descharnes, who had now taken over as Dalí’s secretary, putting the precarious situation of Dalí’s decline and problematic moral and business dealings in order. A Foundation was created on 23 December 1983: the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, with a Committee of Honour including, among others,

Edward James, Raymond Barre, Julien Green and Descharnes.

The latter subsequently created an agency called Demart pro Arte bv in Amsterdam, with himself as managing director. But finally the copyright was transferred to the Foundation. The Dalís returned to Spain, and were surrounded by caretakers. The Catalan Prime Minister came to visit, then King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia. Richardson points out that for this visit, Dalí displayed his forehead dented by a kick from Gala, and had to tidy his mous-tache.

Gala was operated on for gall-bladder problems, in March 1982, and things went from bad to worse. Cécile, the daughter of Gala and Paul Éluard, went to Port Lligat in June to see her mother, but Dalí and Gala refused to see her, as if rejecting all things in the past. Gala died on 10 June 1982. She had wanted to die in Púbol, and so the corpse was moved secretly, upright and wrapped tightly in a red dress, in her Cadillac, like La Reine Morte of Henri de Montherlant.

Dalí was made Marquis of Dalí and Púbol, it was announced on 20 July 1982. An immense exhibition of his works was placed on show in Madrid, then moved to Barcelona. Dalí stopped eating, and remained in Púbol, fed by a tube down his throat to his stomach. All of his possessions that had been left in Port Lligat – drawings and documents – were taken somehow by someone.

There was no proof but much suspicion. The house was not guarded, and many things made their way into the black market.

Now Dalí made a new will, leaving his entire estate to the Spanish nation. He also contacted Buñuel about making a film together, but the latter stated that he now never went out, and had given up the cinema. Buñuel died in July 1989.

Dalí’s right hand continued to tremble, which, says Richardson, invalidates Robert Descharnes’ claim that Dalí did 100 master-pieces between 1982 and 1983. They look like no others he had done before, and Gibson thinks they were done by Isidor Bea,

Dalí at the Hôtel Meurice.

his assistant. Dalí had hallucinations, thinking himself several ani-mals, including a snail. From among his animal noises, his speech was impossible to understand, and he only said one comprehen-sible phrase: ‘My friend Lorca.’ The power of that memory of the beloved poet-friend overcame the weakness of the mind and body.

It reminds me of Picasso at his end, conversing with his poet-friend Guillaume Apollinaire, who had been dead long since.

Looking after Dalí was more than difficult, given his screams and spitting and lunges at his caretakers’ face with his long finger-nails. On 30 August 1984 Dalí’s bed caught fire; no one came when he called, and he was seriously injured. He was taken to the Pilar Clinic in Barcelona, but on the way he had to visit his museum in Figueres. ‘Martyr-martyr’ he repeated on entering the clinic. He left it on 17 October 1984, for the Torre Galatea in Figueres, which he was never to leave. Secrecy surrounded him, and his continual reminiscence about Lorca continued.

He never stopped believing in his destiny, and in his Journal of a Genius, for the entry of 1 May 1952, he spells it out grandly:

Yes, I believe I am the savior of modern art, the only one capable of sublimating, integrating, and rationalizing, imperially and beautifully, all the revolutionary experiences of modern times, in the great classic tradition of realism and mysticism which are the supreme and glorious mission of Spain.²

He died on 23 January 1989, and was buried under the cupola of his Teatre-Museu in a beige silk tunic embroidered with a large gold crown and a d for Dalí. Given his request that his face be covered in death, his fantastic novel Hidden Faces serves as a confirmation of life imitating art, in death at least. He himself had believed that he was a better writer than painter. I share that belief.

As testimony to the power of his writing, among all the other passages quoted here, I will end on the reflection in the Vie secrète

Dalí in 1989.

about his death, and the way it echoes the epilogue, in the Diary of a Genius, on 30 July 1941. There he is reflecting, aged thirty-seven, looking at himself in the mirror, with his hair black as ebony, no corns on his feet, having just finished the long book of his life.

But in the middle of this reflection, he says: ‘Ge suis tu nu et seul’

(‘I am completely naked and alone’).

And in his Vie secrète he takes up that reflection again, so that his private manuscript of that secret life ends with this re-reflection, in his own orthography, of course:

And the morphological architecture of the scientific temple has all its windows open to heaven – Heaven! – here is what I have been looking for all along, and through all the demoniacal flesh of my life, heaven! / cursed be he who still hasn’t understood that! . . . when I kiss Gala’s mouth I am looking for heaven, and what is heaven, where is it? Heaven isn’t found up or down, not to the right or left, heaven is found exactly in the center of the chest of the man who has faith!

end

Salvador Dalí Amton Mano Exactly noon

Until this very moment I haven’t yet had faith, and I fear dying

Until this very moment I haven’t yet had faith, and I fear dying