Maniac Eyeball (7 page)

With complete assurance, I stated that in smashing the violin I had wanted to establish the supremacy of painting over music. They all broke out laughing.

“How did you think you’d do that?” the teacher asked.

“With my shoes.”

More laughter from all concerned.

“That’s perfectly senseless,” the teacher now replied.

“To you and the fellows, it may be,” I countered, “but my shoes don’t see it that way.”

And I was right, as I have since proved in my paintings by showing the realistic virtues of the shoe – which I even immortalized by putting it on women’s heads when Elsa Schiaparelli executed my hat – while I reproduced musical instruments limp, soft, or broken, thus making a monument out of every detail of my existence, even the worst of them.

The teacher, floored by my answers, did not punish me, and I was the subject of even greater admiration. The efficacy of my eccentricities began to be intriguing and my alleged madness appeared as proof of my extraordinary temperament. I realized that my de lirium could convince people and subjugate them. It was easy to fool everyone about the origin and meaning of my actions, and thus create a beneficient confusion all about me.

I worked a great deal, except at those subjects needed for the
baccalauréat.
My artistic work went on apace. I began doing tempera paintings, my favorite subject being Gypsies, who happily filled my studio on Calle Monturiol, and willingly served as my models. Two or three works a day went up on the walls, but I was perpetually unsatisfied with the results, which to me always failed to come up to the idea I had inside myself.

What Hold Did Dalí Have Over His Schoolmates?

My legend preceded me. The armistice ending World War I was the occasion for great rejoicing in Catalonia. A public celebra tion was decreed for Figueras, with parades and flags.

And to the great delight of my father, who loved to do the
sardana
, there was to be dancing on the
ramblas.
The students, however, decided to debate whether or not to take part in these festivities. I was asked to make the opening remarks. My first public speech. I studiously figured out before the mirror what attitudes would make me appear to best ad vantage, and polished my words with fine Dalínian emphasis, which was to floor the audience by its originality.

I learned it by heart, but at the mere idea of speaking to an audience I got a mental block, and could not control myself. I was trembling with rage.

When the day came, I was more out of control than ever. I made a copy of my speech, and rolled it up carefully, then went to the Republican Hall an hour ahead of time to get used to the setting and the intimidating platform all decorated with flags. At the appointed time, I took my seat between the president and the secre tary, who got up to explain the aim of the meeting. He was heckled by a few spoilsports who did not think we were serious about demonstrating. Before turning the floor over to me, he mentioned what he called my “heroism”, in the incident of the incinerated flag. I got up.

Silence in the hall. I had not known how pleasing it would be to have this sensation of acceptance and total anticipation – intimidating though it was – presented to me by the group of men and women waiting just to hear me. What pleasure there was in that desire of which I could sense the fervor! But not the first word of my speech came back to me. I just eyed the crowd with the utmost authority. Blank. And then my genius pointed the way out. I yelled at the top of my lungs:

“Long live Germany! Long live Russia!” and at the same time overturned the table on the platform and knocked it down into the audience. But, strangely, my gesture brought no adverse reaction toward me. The audience immediately broke into two groups, who started to insult and hit each other. The tumult was deafening. I bolted out.

Martin Villanova, one of the leaders of the movement, gave a very convincing explanation of what I had done: Dalí wanted to say there were neither winners nor losers, that the Russian revolution, now spreading to Germany, was the real result of this war. And he shoved the table down into the hall, because he felt we were too slow in catching on. That very evening, we had a parade through Figueras, behind German and Soviet flags. I was carrying the German banner. I had turned the situation to my advantage.

That year, I began growing a beard and my sidewhiskers took on respectable size. I lost my mother, and a world of sorrow broke around my head. She adored me and I venerated her. Only the immortal glory I had now decided to earn was able to console me for this loss.

The great day for the departure to Madrid arrived, and I left, with my father and sister. I was to compete for admission to the Fine Arts School. The competition involved making a drawing in six days of a casting of Iacopo Sansovino’s
Bacchus.
On the third day, making small talk with the concierge, my father found out that my drawing was not the prescribed size. He was terribly worried. As soon as I came out, he rushed over, and questioned me, worrying me, too.

The next day. I erased the whole thing in half an hour, but now my handicap was too great, and I was unable to get anything on paper for the new drawing. That day I took evil delight in tor turing my father, who was fit to be tied and beginning to be sorry he had said anything to me at all. He did not sleep a wink that night. The next day, I did my very best, only to discover finally that my drawing was too big and would not fit entirely on the sheet. I erased it. My father wept when he heard this. He could already see us returning shame-faced to Figueras. I took further unfair advantage of the situation by adding to his despair with defeatist talk, trying to put the whole responsibility for my failure on his shoulders.

My father was of course crushed by this situation, and the weaker he became the more my own strength battened on his anguish. The last day, I set to work with extraordinary skill and determination. I finished my entry with amazing speed, and still had an hour left over to admire my handiwork. I took careful note, and now saw with surprise that its size was even smaller than that of my initial effort. I informed my father of this when I came out, and was elated at his utter breakdown. I was accepted to the school, with the mention, “Although the drawing was not done in the prescribed dimensions, it is so perfect that the jury has accepted it.”

My father entrusted me to the charge of his friend, the poet Eduardo Marquina, who gave me a recommendation to the head of the University Residence, Gimenez Fraud. This was the start of a monkl-ike period for me, devoted entirely to solitary work: visits to the Prado, where, pencil in hand, I analyzed all of the great masterpieces, studio work, models, research. I painted under the inspiration of Cubist theories, particularly reproductions of the work of Juan Gris. I also altered my palette, eliminating violent colors in favor of sienna, olive green, black, and white. I assiduously went to class, drunk with learning the secrets of technique – the painter’s
métier
– and I was greatly disappointed to find that the teachers, turning their backs on all the lessons of academicism, in order to suit the taste of the day essentially encouraged freedom and self-expression. I had no need of them to give me that kind of genius.

What I wanted to learn was the formulas for mixing oils and colors, the way to spread the colors, the quality of marriages of tones, the best way to put in grounds, and all the technological information there might be about the great masters. The fact is, the teachers knew nothing of the essential, and their approach was empirical and vulgar. They taught the absence of rules, while my highest ambition was to learn the laws of the art of painting. I was furious with them. The only one who escaped in my eyes was José Moreno Carbonero, one of the oldest ones, who had solid
métier
and faultless professional conscientiousness. But the pupils laughed at him, at his coat, the black pearl stickpin he wore in his tie. and his white gloves. His skill was unmatched, but no sooner did he turn his back than the little upstarts erased his corrections, which in fact reflected the gifts of a true master.

I preferred to keep apart from that bunch of loafers and idiots, and go on with my Cubist experiments. One of my paintings led to my making contact with my new friends. Within the Residence, there was a sort of segregation based on intellectual snobbery. Around Federico García Lorca, Luis Buñuel, and Eugenio Montès, a small avant-garde literary and artistic group had taken shape. One of its members, Pepin Bello, passing down the corridor one day, peeked through the open door of my cell-like room and saw the Cubist canvas on the easel I was working at. He imparted this news to the others who had thought I was backward-looking and were happily surprised at my avant-gardism. They would have been even more surprised, had they known that it was out of a concern for better understanding of representation and realism, of the exact science of drawing, and for research in perspective, that I was indulging in this manner, and not out of any drive toward abstraction or provocation. They made me one of them.

How Does Dalí Remember That Period?

My attire, since my arrival, had acquired a waterproof cape that came down to my heels, and a broad-brimmed hat. Wearing gaiters and hair down to my shoulders, and my huge ascot tie, I never went unnoticed. My friends were all Beau Brummels, in the finest manner of English dandyism. They came from some of the best families of Spain, but their admiration was undivided and their friendship total. My words and ideas intrigued them, and quickly became the group’s gospel. They adopted my revolt against the faculty, with its demagogic pedagogy that was thirty years behind the times, teaching Impressionism when Cubism was fashionable, while disregarding all true tradition. With them, and through them, I first heard the expression that was to be so successful – and make me so, at the same time – “It’s Dalínian.”

But I quickly wearied of their flattery and their open-mouthed speeches. The fact is, very few of them were worth my attention and I would very soon have left a great distance between me and all of them, except for Lorca, whose personality and gifts truly impressed me, but they did reveal a world to me that I was unaware of: that of the pleasure born of alcohol, orgy, music, and painting the town a bit of an off-color red.

It was at the Crystal Palace, one of Madrid’s most elegant tearooms, that I got my baptism of fire. Our entry, with me at their head in my painter-anarchist’s uniform, made quite a little sensation. To the point that in later similar circumstances, my friends, led by Bruñel, were generally turned into bodyguards, and forced to fight it out. This time, there was no disturbance, but for the first time I saw what might be termed an elegant lady, plucked eyebrows, armpits bluish and devoid of hair, and gown and jewels of greatest luxury; and I had only one idea left: to please her. So, I decided forthwith to return my outfit to the wardrobe department. I thanked my friends for their fortitude, and to their great consternation, for they enjoyed the game and found it a magnificent opportunity for provocation, decided that I too would be a Beau Brummel, whom women might be interested in. Once more, they mistook my intentions and thought I was acting this way out of friendship.

As I was having my hair cut, I thought I would faint at being shorn of the signs of my singularity, but I stuck to it. I bought a sky-blue silk shirt, a pair of sapphire cufflinks, ordered a fashionable suit, and to top it off plastered my hair with a coat of picture varnish that turned it into a plaque as flexible as galalith, giving me a veritable black helmet. In my hand I nonchalantly twirled a bamboo cane, and took my place on the terrace of the Café Regina. It was the start of a new era...

This era was marked by two revelations: alcohol and the all-powerfulness of money. The effect of cocktails on my stomach was explosive. Vermouths, champagnes, martinis opened a new world to me as in olden days the Pichots’ cut-glass carafe stopper had shown me an “Impressionist” universe. We spent our days and nights in discussions, eating and drinking in the midst of laughter and shouting. With the wee morning hours we wondrously discovered jazz at Rector’s Club. We swore all kinds of pacts, sealed in champagne. (One of my friends from those days still has a hunk of cardboard with our six signatures, swearing we would all meet again in the same place fifteen years hence. I had clean forgotten that childishness.) Of course, we needed money for drinks, gardenias, meals, and the sumptuous tips that turned waiters into slaves. I signed notes to the Bursar of the University Residence, to be honored by my father, being only too happy to make things as disagreeable as possible for him.

In October, the Dalmau Gallery in Barcelona showed some of the students’ works. I exhibited a jug that scored quite a hit, but I never got time to enjoy it.

After one particularly hard-drinking night, when I had thrown up everything in me, I had to take to my bed, unable to keep food down. When I got back to school the following day, I found things in a tizzy. A contest was being held to name a new professor of painting, on the basis of one free work and one obligatory subject. The works of all the candidates had just been exhibited, and all the students agreed that Daniel Vázquez Díaz had submitted the most remarkable pictures.

But there were backstage maneuvers we were perfectly well aware of, which eliminated him and substituted an old fogey we wanted no part of. The students wanted me to be their spokesman in the revolt.

Everything happened as foreseen. The president of the jury announced the result, meaning we had lost. I rose and stalked out without a word. I did not come back until the next day, but then found out that after I left the students had insulted and manhandled the jury, and then barricaded themselves, making it necessary to call in the police. Since my departure, though wordless, had been the apparent signal for the fight, I was the obvious suspect as leader. I was given a year’s suspension. And, as if that were not enough, as soon as I got back to Figueras, the police came to arrest me and move me to Gerona, where I spent a month in jail. That gave me time to ponder the success, the glory, and the popularity that lay before me.