Spanish master wins Chinese admirers

Eleven years after his death, Salvador Dali (1904-89) is exhibiting the undying power of his art to audiences in the world's most populous country.

Containing 20 oil paintings and 38 illustrations created from 1920 to 1983, Dali's first solo show in China is greeted by local art lovers with great enthusiasm and admiration.

On the first day of the showing at the China National Art Museum in downtown Beijing, 5,000 people saw the show. And more visitors are swarming in each day to catch the exhibit, which runs until June 27.

People wait in long queues at the museum entrance eager for tickets, in defiance of the 15 yuan (US$1.80) admission that is higher than the regular 4 yuan (US$0.48) fee and the summer heat that deters many Beijingers from stepping out of their air-conditioned homes.

Wang Sheng, an art student from the neighbouring city of Tianjin, was one of the overly-anxious Dali fans who experienced "hurry up and wait" on the opening day.

"I was told that the show opened in the morning. So I took a train to Beijing yesterday and got up early this morning. But, when I got here, I was dumbfounded to find the billboard said the opening time is 3 o'clock in the afternoon. So I waited here for six hours," the young man said with apparent fatigue.

A genius and one of the most significant artists in the 20th century, besides Picasso and Matisse, the surrealist master Dali is widely acknowledged in China, both among art professionals and other people.

Many Chinese artists admit they are inspired and influenced by the brilliant style of Dali, which builds up a boundless virtual world based on fantastic imaginations and pensive concern for social problems and human instincts.

"A real master, Dali is a milestone in art history," remarked Liu Dawei, vice-chairman of the Chinese Artists' Association. "The enthusiasm of the Chinese admirers, as a result, is understandable."

He praised the exhibition as a "rare opportunity for Chinese artists to observe Dali up close."

"It gives us a thorough review of Dali in different periods: from the realistic early period, to the period with explorative concepts and to the mature late period," said Liu, also a famous Chinese ink painter.

According to the Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation, a Spanish organization that is sponsoring the exhibition, all the works are originals selected from the Dali Theatre Museum in Figueras, Spain.

Dali's early works at the exhibit are primarily about his family members and scenes from his hometown in Figueras, including "Self-Portrait with the Neck of Raphael (1922)," "Portrait of a Girl in a Landscape (1925)" and "Still Life (1924-25)."

The works reflect the early, unknown Dali whose skill and command were astounding, with influence from almost all the prevailing trends of his time - Impressionism, Cubism, Fauvism, Purism and Futurism.

In the late 1920s and 1930s, Dali made a name as founder and most important artist in the influential movement of Surrealism, which is characterized by a fascination with the bizarre, incongruous and irrational. This assisted the development of his famous paranoiac-critical me-thod developed from Freudian theory.

His paintings became increasingly fantastic, possessed and insane. Then he exhibited and lived in New York for many years as a surrealist and was triumphantly received by Americans.

Unfortunately, few of the important works of this most important period on his artistic road were included in his solo show in Beijing.

When the first atomic bomb was dropped on August 6, 1945, Dali, then in the United States, was devastated. From then on, atomic theory became central to his thought and his art entered the period of nuclear mysticism.

An example was "Dematerialization Near the Nose of Nero (1947)," which is in show. The heavenly tranquility in the picture is in strong contrast with the implied killing power of the atomic bomb, revealing the artist's worry over the fate of human beings and the global threat of atomic power.

The 1960s and 1970s saw Dali examining the scientific discoveries of his age and translating them into his art.

The oil painting "Dali From the Back Painting Gala From the Back Eternalized by Six Virtual Corneas Provisionally Reflected in Six Real Mirrors (1972-73)," which is on display at the show, is acclaimed by experts as a representative work of Dali in this period and among his best works, although arguments on how to interpret the long, mysterious title have never met an end.

During the 1980s, Dali's inspirations mainly came from Michelangelo and Velasquez. "Warrior (1982)" at the exhibition, for example, was inspired by Michelangelo's head of Lorenzo di Medici and bears the characteristics of all major periods of Dali.

Besides being an outstanding painter, the versatile Dali was also an excellent sculptor, designer, illustrator, film-maker, performer and writer, according to Xing Xiaosheng, a Beijing art historian.

As a special attempt to represent a tiny corner of his enormous versatility, Xing said, the 38 illustrations about Don Quixote at the show display the refined skills, artistic acumen and great talents of the artist.

Noticeably, some of the sketches were produced with Chinese ink, indicating that Dali had adopted the influence of Chinese art and culture, just like other 20th-century Spanish masters such as Picasso, Miro and Tapies.

To help visitors better understand the art of Dali, China International Exhibition Agency, the Chinese organizer, prepared reproductions of his other works and a documentary film, which are shown in two adjacent exhibition halls in the museum.

"It's a pity that we are unable to see more originals of representative works by Dali, especially surrealist paintings. Otherwise the exhibition would be more exciting," said Xing Junqin, an artist from Beijing.

Insiders said that the somewhat disappointing selection of works in the exhibit is mainly because of the limited funding for insurance and transportation.

Zhang Yu, general manager of the China International Exhibition Agency, said many important works by Dali are in the collections of major art museums in the United States and France, where Dali lived during the most productive years of his life.

The expensive costs to exhibit artwork by world-class masters has always been a headache for Chinese organizers, he noted.

Date: 06/16/2000
Author: YANG YINGSHI, China Daily staff
Copyright? by China Daily

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