Images or Orwell And Dali Via Wikimedia Commons
Should we hold artists with the same standards of human decency that we expect from everyone? Should talented people be exempt from ordinary morality? Should artists of doubtful character make their work recorded in the trash with their personal reputation? These questions, despite all their news in the present, seemed no less thorny and convincing 81 years ago when George Orwell confronted the strange case of Salvador Dali, an undeniably extraordinary talent, and – Orwell writes in his 1944 Test “Clergy advantage”– A “disgusting human being”.
The judgment may seem too hard, except that any honest person would say the same thing given the episodes that Dali describes In his autobiographythat Orwell finds completely revolting. “If it were possible for a book to give a physical stench on its pages,” he wrote, “the latter would.“” The episodes he refers to include, at six, Dali kicked his three -year -old sister in his head, “as if it was a ball”, writes the artist, then flee “with a” delirium joy “induced by this wild act”. They include the launch of a boy from a suspension bridge and, at 29, the trampling of a young girl “until they have to tear her, bleeding, out of my reach.” And many other violent and disturbing descriptions.
The litany of cruelty towards humans and animals of Dali constitutes what we expect at the beginning of serial killers rather than famous artists. He surely puts his readers, wildly exaggerating for the value of the shock, like the autobiographical fantasies of the Marquis de Sade. Orwell allows it. However, which stories are true love To do. “Moreover, Orwell is as rejected by Dali's work as by the artist's character, informed that by misogyny, a avowed necrophilia and an obsession with excrement and rotten corpses.
But against this, it is necessary to define the fact that Dali is a very exceptional gift designer. He is also, judging by the thoroughness and certainty of his drawings, a very hard worker. He is an exhibitionist and a carrier, but it is not fraud. He is fifty times more talent than most people who would denounce his morality and make fun of his paintings. And these two sets of facts, taken together, raise a question which, for lack of basis of the agreement, rarely obtains a real discussion.
Orwell does not want to reject the value of Dali's art and distance themselves from those who do it for moralist reasons. “Such people”, he writes, are “unable to admit that what is morally degraded can be aesthetically correct”, a “dangerous” position adopted not only by conservatives and religious fanatics, but by fascists and authorities who burn books and lead campaigns against “Degenerate” art. “Their impulse is not only to crush all the new talents as it appears, but also to castrate the past.” (“Witness”, he notes, outcry in America “against Joyce, Proust and Lawrence”.) “At a time like ours”, writes Orwell, in a particularly discordant sentence, “when the artist is an exceptional person, he must have a certain number of irresponsibility, just like a pregnant woman.”
At the same time, supports Orwell, to ignore or excuse the amorality of Dali is itself largely irresponsible and completely inexcusable. Orwell is an “understandable” response, writes Jonathan Jones to The guardianSince he had fought fascism in Spain and had seen the horror of war, and that Dali, in 1944, “was already flirt With pro-Franco views. “But to fully illustrate his point, Orwell imagines a scenario with a much less controversial figure than Dali:” If Shakespeare returned to the earth, and if his favorite recreations violated little girls in railroad cars, we must not tell him to do so on the field he could write another King Lear. “”
Draw your own parallels with more contemporary figures whose criminal, predators or violently abusive acts have been ignored for decades for the good of their art, or whose work has been thrown with toxic bath water. Orwell is looking for what he calls a “median position” between moral condemnation and aesthetic license – a “fascinating and laudable” critical thread of the needle, writes Jones, who avoids the extremes of “conservative Philistines who condemn the forefront, and his promoters who count everything that someone like Dali does and rebellious to see him in a moral or political context”.
This ethical criticism, Writing Charlie Finch in ArtnetAttack the hypothesis in the art world that an appreciation of artists with Dali's particular tastes “is automatically lit, progressive”. Such an attitude extends from the artists themselves to the company which nourishes them, and which “allows us to welcome the owners of diamond-minion who finance the biennials, the billionaires Gazprom which buy diamond skulls and the real estate magnates which dominate the temples of modernism.” Again, you can make your own comparisons.
Note: a previous version of this article appeared on our site in 2018.
Related content:
When the surrealists expelled Salvador Dalí for “the glorification of Hitler's fascism” (1934)
Critics of George Orwell Mein Kampf: “He envisages a horrible brainless empire” (1940)
How the Nazis waged war against modern art: within the “Degenerated Art” exhibition of 1937
Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him to @jdmagness
At Learnopoly, Finn has championed a mission to deliver unbiased, in-depth reviews of online courses that empower learners to make well-informed decisions. With over a decade of experience in financial services, he has honed his expertise in strategic partnerships and business development, cultivating both a sharp analytical perspective and a collaborative spirit. A lifelong learner, Finn’s commitment to creating a trusted guide for online education was ignited by a frustrating encounter with biased course reviews.