|
Description |
"Gala-Leda rendered 'in accordance with the modern "nothing touches" theory of intra-atomic physica' (Dali)." (Caption); Dali himself was only too happy to admit his debt to Gala. In the early 1930s he had begun to sign his paintings 'Gala-Salvador Dali', as if they were one person, and by the 1940s this practice had become habitual; in the Secret Life the debt was made explicit again and again; by 1944 he had painted and drawn her dozens of times; the next step had come with the invention of 'Clédalism' in Hidden Faces. […] If we knock off the initial 'C' of 'Clédalism' we find ourselves looking at the word 'lédalism', in which 'léda' and 'Dali' overlap. As he toyed initially with 'clé' ('key') and 'Dali', it seems that the painter suddenly perceived this further significance, perhaps feeling that it was another instance of Surrealist 'objective chance'. In Greek mythology Leda, the daughter of Thestios, the king of Aetolia, was married to the king of Sparta, Tyndareus. Seduced by Zeus in the form of a swan, she bore the twins Castor and Pollux, the Dioscuri ('sons of Zeus'), and perhaps also the beautiful Helen (later of Troy). Since Gala's real name was Helen, it was an easy jump to the conclusion that Dali and she were twin souls, and divine at that […]. But Dali went further and also identified Gala with Leda herself, since, for him, as well as soul-mate, she was a substitute for his dead mother. It is in this latter guise that she is mythified in Leda Atomica […]. Dali commented then: 'As far as I know - and I believe I do know - in Leda Atomica the sea is for the first time represented as not touching the earth; that is, one could easily put one's arm between the sea and the shore without getting wet. Therein resides, I believe, the imaginative quality which has determined the treatment of one of the most mysterious and eternal of those myths in which the 'human and the divine' have crystallized through animality. […] Instead of the confusion of feathers and flesh to which we have been accustomed by the traditional iconography on this subject, with its insistence on the entanglement of the swan's neck and the arms of Leda, Dali shows us the hierarchized libidinous emotion, suspended and as though hanging in mid-air, in accordance with the modern "nothing touches" theory of intra-atomic physics. […] Leda does not touch the swan; Leda does not touch the pedestal; the pedestal does not touch the base; the base does not touch the sea; the sea does not touch the shore. Herein resides, I believe, the separation of the elements earth and water, which is at the root of the creative mystery of animality.' […] Leda Atomica, finished in 1949, 'exalted Gala,' Dali said later, 'as goddess of my meta-physics'. That Dali put a huge amount of thought and work into the painting is borne out not just by the unfinished study exhibited at Bignou's, but by the detailed sketches done in collaboration with the Romanian mathematician Prince Matila Ghika, in which the painting's proportions and layout are plotted with extreme precision. But while it may be conceded that the finished work exalts Gala as goddess of Dali's metaphysics, the impression of 'suspended space' is not satisfactorily achieved in Dali's handling of the sea, which looks as if it is stuck to the earth by glue rather than levitating just above it. The swan, copied from a stuffed specimen, looks more like the model than the real thing. Dali's failure to render Gala's face is also striking. In the study the resemblance is minimal; in the finished painting only approximate. Dali was never to match again the marvel of Galarina, and when he tried to embellish Gala's appearance, to smooth out the lines in her visage, to make her look younger than she was and, above all, pleasant, the result was invariably unsatisfactory." (Excerpt, pp. 495-496) |
