Bullet 1682 (1949)
UNDER HIS PICTURE
Surrealist’s signature
indicates bottom
This is the bottom.
The boots were so
heavy that Dali could hardly lift his feet and he had to be bundled onto the
stage with the support of his stumbling assistants. Once there he stood
motionless in the full deep-sea diver suit holding two white Russian wolfhounds
on a leash. Then he tried to begin his lecture on Fantomes paranoiaques
authentiques or, since he was in London, authentic paranoid fantasies.
When the eccentric Lord
Berners had hired the suit for the show, he had been asked to what depth
exactly the artist was intending to sink. The reply, of course, was that Dali
intended to descend to the level of the subconscious. As it turned out, no one
had thought to include breathing apparatus with the suit and it was only when
the great man started to deliver himself of his thoughts on paranoia that he
realised no one would be able to hear him from behind the glass porthole of his
helmet. Not only that, but he was beginning to suffocate. Luckily, swift action
from Surrealist patron Edward James and a hammer saved Dali from a descent into
the unconscious.
The audience that day in June 1936, unaware that the artist was in real danger of expiring before them,
had accompanied the wild thrashings around of Dali and his rescuer
with sustained, enthusiastic applause. For them it was all just the kind of
exciting unexpected thing that these new artists were getting up to. They had
already seen in the halls of the New Burlington Gallery the works of Dali,
Miro, Rene Magritte and Max Ernst among others in the first major UK exhibition
of Surrealist art. In their thousands, they had marvelled at noses growing into
pipes, clocks melting and fur-lined tea cups.
For the man in the
street, the man on the Clapham omnibus and most of John Bull’s readers, though,
good art was art that cleverly reproduced the appearance of recognisable
things. The comment of a reporter on the Sheffield Independent who had been
despatched to the London show summed up this attitude. Praising the technique
of the artists, he went on to say with some regret that most of them could
“obviously do ‘straight’” if they put their minds to it. In fact, he was
only getting the satisfaction of technical virtuosity because of the realism
that had to be there before it could be subverted to become surreal. What he
would have thought of later developments like colour field painting or
performance art can be only be guessed.
The reaction of a
large part of the general British public to modern art has always been marked
by contempt and/or derision, fuelled by a deep suspicion of all things
intellectual. There’s a feeling that someone is trying to pull the wool over
our eyes, usually for personal advancement and money. More often than not, this
antipathy is manifested as humour. Tony Hancock's rebel was the best of many comic portrayals of the modern artist and, over the years, a whole genre of newspaper
cartoons has developed with the pretensions of modern art as its target.
The mockery in this
Bullet revolves around one of the most often expressed put-downs of modern art.
Given the technical competence of the Surrealist painters, the old ‘my 5-year
old could have done that’ won’t wash. So the next most obvious deviation from
notions of good art is that it is impossible to tell what is going on in the
picture, so most normal people would have no idea which way up it should go.
This is the top.
Family Corner:
Did Dad like art?
What art did Dad like?
What pictures did we have on the walls at Christchurch Street (1940s-1970s)
Were your artistic achievements and aspirations celebrated and encouraged?
This is the top.
Family Corner:
Did Dad like art?
What art did Dad like?
What pictures did we have on the walls at Christchurch Street (1940s-1970s)
Were your artistic achievements and aspirations celebrated and encouraged?
