A
MODERN VOLUPTUARY
handbook, instructive in the "science and chemistry of painting." Ac–
tually there is not an item of useful information on technical procedures
in the entire book-unless the endless recommendations for inducing
mild swamp fever and auto-hypnotic hallucination are considered in–
dispensable for sound picture-making. The concluding piece of in–
telligence, the climactic fiftieth secret the prologue has prepared us for
as the core of Dali's method, is a typical frustration, with its advice to
seek divine guidance.
On the other hand, if we acquiesce in this poorly disguised swindle,
we can find something to admire in Dali's uncanny taste for the ex–
travagant; he has his sociological interest as well. By going to his draw–
ings and color reproductions, scattered through the text and along the
margins, we can assure ourselves these points of interest have little or
no connection with what is commonly understood as art or expression.
The myths of Dali's draftsmanship and virtuosity are over-generous in–
terpretations for the rubbery congruity of his forms, his mechanical
penmanship and disinfected surfaces. But there is a peculiar underscoring
of effect that needs explaining. Weare aware Dali is consumed by
something. Even George Orwell's shrewd reading of Dali as the mis–
placed Victorian decorator whose naughtiness conceals a commonplace
inspiration is not entirely satisfactory, although it helps us to understand
why his defiances have proved so undamaging to authority. Dali might
be fruitfully examined as the child of popular culture who still retains
a nostalgia for a condition of life only the Medicis could support. Lack–
ing that, Dali has blandly become his own patron and audience, fash–
ioning his style on whatever ingredients of a counterfeit commercial cul–
ture are ready to hand. The discrepancy between his essentially miniatur–
ist gift, a talent for enamels, and his unconta.ined ambition is expressed
as a species of wealth-fantasy. Even his aggrandizement of the past is
conducted in a rather demented spirit of acquisition. His position is justi–
fied by making the old masters hygienic enough to accommodate window
display. After the process of disinfection, a real taste for the extravagant
still makes itself felt. But it is the intoxicated, slightly voracious and
undiscriminating response to luxury of one of the culturally disinherited.
A
prolonged apprenticeship to window-shopping in a mean street has
reduced Dali to a voluptuary of the toilet article.
Besides the sociological content, there is a certain interest for the
bibliophile in the jl1ustrations, a fabulous rummage of heraldic devices,
surgical appliances, scientific text-book illustration, recollections of old
masters and the mail order catalogue-Dali's paste-pot fiat edition of the
erudition of the past and the vulgarity of the present. When he is not
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