Salvador Dalí was as famous for his outlandish antics as for his technically superb, realistic renderings of imaginary, subconscious content, often dreamt, aka surrealism. The psychological theories of Freud were central to this movement; and Dali read him voraciously, even met with him.
As Dalí painted 'dream photographs,’ supposedly representing his own inner emotions, obsessions and fears, these suggested that he was suffering from the majority of the illnesses Freud discussed. If his paintings were to be admired, and if he was to be respected as a true surrealist, then his behavior would have to mirror the symptoms of the illnesses that his paintings portrayed.
As you listen to the sequence of conversations with this celebrated artist, notice the obvious cases of automatism (free association). These give way, gradually, to some much more plain-spoken comment on the enigmas, the traditions, even the science, on which his work is grounded.
January 1972
February 1972
Important Notes to the 1972 Recording
Douglas Cooper asks Dali a range of questions. In almost every answer, Dali refers to the Tropaeum Traiani, a monument to the Roman Emperor Trajan located in Adamclisi, Romania.
Cooper asks, for example, how the atomic age and new molecular structures have influenced Dali’s works, and Dali responds that the structure of DNA discovered by Watson and Crick was prefigured in this monument. Everything, in fact, exists in its root in the Tropaeum Traiani.
When asked where he would like to be, he responds, “Adamclisi.” The most productive time in the day? The moment he starts to think of Romania. What sets him apart from other artists and their dreams? They do not have information about this Romanian monument.
Cooper tries to argue that Dali has symbols—like the watch or the crutch—that are not Romanian in origin, but Dali insists that watches already existed in this monument.
He describes the production of his famous surrealist film, Un Chien Andalou, as “only a very little melodramatic experience,” and insists that movies and television do not interesting him because he only thinks about Romania and Emperor Trajan.
He also refers several times to the 17th century painter, Diego Velazquez, and most specifically to his painting, “Las Meninas.”
Occasionally, however, he elaborates. He describes, for example, a book that describes ten ways of preserving one’s body after death to be returned to life, including Egyptian dehydration.
He also declares that all of his work is prophetic. He cites a recent cover of Vogue as an example. There, when they paired Chairman Mao and Marilyn Monroe, everyone laughed. Now, as Nixon is coming to China, the image becomes “Cartesian” and “logical.”
1973 (month unknown)
Important Notes to the 1973 Recording
The interview begins abruptly. There is a banging noise in the background, which Douglas Cooper explains is “Mrs. Dali.”
Dali tells Cooper about a discovery he made in Walt Disney’s studio—liquid television. He also, he says, saw a three dimensional movie in Paris the week before.
Cooper asks how he plans to apply surrealism to the three dimensional film.
He replies that he is less concerned with surrealism, and more interested in the new Avant Garde of hyperrealist, photosurrealist work being done in California—exact copies of photographs, with photo effects accomplished using holograms and laser beams. His latest works are hypersurrealist and stereoscopic he says—two different pictures of the same subject, one for the right and one for the left eye. They create the astonishing effect of depth through a series of lenses.
Cooper compares this effect to stereo speakers, calling it stereovisual, and Dali agrees. The fusions, he says, of two visions creates an effect of reality. He also refers to acoustic holographic effects, and says that each molecule of each hologram contains all the information of the hologram.
Cooper asks about the relationship between these new technologies and surrealism.
Dali quotes a Jesuit book. It says, he claims, that when you look at something in reality, you don’t see the object, but what is in your soul. To copy a photograph, he says, is the same thing—you copy your personality. If Vermeer copied a photograph, he says, it would not be a photograph, but a Vermeer. Similarly, if a stupid person copied the photograph, the result would be stupidity. The different between a beautiful photograph and a painting in oil of the same by Velasquez, he says, is that the painting by Velasquez is worth, for the moment, 6 million dollars.
Cooper asks if the only difference is the financial one.
There’s no distortion in the Velsquez, Dali says. The colors are the same. But one is an immortal masterpiece and the other, the photograph, is non-permanent and transitory. It is worth maybe 10 or 100 dollars, but never 6 million.
When Cooper asks if photographers are artists, Dali responds that the hyperrealists paint from “bad” photographs, with banal subjects or bad focus. These are “much better” to create a work of art.
Cooper asks what the relationship is between his film, Un Chien Andalou, and art, since the film is photographic. Dali says that the film is a narration of a dream. The artistic element of it consists, not in the objectivity of the image, but in the symbolic suggestion of the sequence. He says that his early paintings, too, created a sequence of daydreams or consciousness. But the stereoscopic photograph, he says, has the same reality as a Dutch Vermeer, but it’s one thousand times more mysterious and surrealistic than his first period of narrative symbols.
They talk about his new museum in Spain, and the exhibits there, and his ambitions to produce works like the hyperrealistic, hypermysterious “Las Meninas.”
He also says that he is becoming more monarchic as he learns about DNA. If all information is genetic, he says, then the king has the maximum genetic information of his country.
The interview ends with a conversation about his genius. He is not such a great painter, he says. He is only the best because others are so bad. But his genius is a thousand times superior to his ability to paint. “My capacity to paint is only an infinitesimal part of my genius,” he says as the program ends.
1974 (month unknown)
1974 (month unknown)
In this final, bonus interview, we hear from Dali and one of the great collectors of his work, A. Reynolds Morse. It is, in a way, a joint interview - Morse and Dali both interject into each other’s interviews, though each is given his own space to answer questions.
Dali’s short interview focusses on the opening of the two museums featuring his work - his own in Figueres, Spain, and Morse museum in Beachwood, Ohio, just outside of Cleveland (this collection became the famed St. Petersburg Dali Museum). Dali notes, with some help from Morse, the Cupola designed by famous architect Buckminster Fuller that tops Morse museum.
Cooper asks about the feelings he had at the opening of his own museum in Figueres. Dali responds by referencing the rush of remembrance that accompanied Proust’s taste of Madeline and links his similar feelings to a discussion of sexual continence.
Cooper turns to Morse, and they discuss Morse’s interest in Dali’s work, his use of mirrors, his anticipation of artistic trends, and especially his artistic study of sleep. Morse argues the approach to sleep in Dali’s work is scientific. He links Dali’s work to the periods between sleep and wakefulness, which has its own word in Spanish, “ensueño,” and has no direct equivalent in English. Cooper and Morse close the interview by discussing information on the museum for potential visitors.
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The Douglas P. Cooper Distinguished Contemporaries Collection (1967-1974) contains rare interviews with influential writers, statesmen, artists, songwriters, journalists and others who have left their mark on our culture.
The Origins of The Cooper Collection