GALA/DALÍ/DIOR: OF ART AND FASHION.

JOANA BONET

BEA CRESPO

CLARA SILVESTRE

OF ART AND FASHION

MONTSE AGUER

A PASSION FOR ART / THE KINGDOM OF FASHION / THE BALL OF THE CENTURY

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OF ART AND FASHION

MONTSE AGUER

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THE CONSPIRACY OF BEAUTY

JOANA BONET

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A PASSION FOR ART

BEA CRESPO / CLARA SILVESTRE

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THE KINGDOM OF FASHION

CLARA SILVESTRE

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DIOR / DALÍ. REVOLUTION AND TRADITION GALA WEARS DIOR DALÍ / DIOR. AFFINITIES IN ART AND FASHION

THE BALL OF THE CENTURY

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BEA CRESPO

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CATALOGUE LIST

MONTSE AGUER

Director of the Dalí Museums

OF ART AND FASHION Christian Dior, Tony Sandro, Gala, Victor Grandpierre and Salvador Dalí in Los Caracoles restaurant, Barcelona, 1956. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí collection. Centre for Dalinian Studies

For over twenty years Gala Dalí’s castle in Púbol has been the home of small format exhibitions organized by the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí to showcase the results of various lines of research being pursued at the Centre for Dalí Studies. The aim is to deepen our knowledge of Salvador Dalí’s life and work and his creative and intellectual milieu, which necessarily also includes Gala Diakonova, lady of Púbol Castle and the artist’s wife, muse and collaborator. This year, with the Gala/ Dalí/Dior: Of art and fashion exhibition, we launch a new line of exploration that centres on the fascinating relationship Dalí sustains throughout his life with the world of fashion, in the broadest sense of the term.

1 Christian Dior, Christian Dior and I, E. P. Dutton & Company INC., New York, 2007, p. 36-37.

2 Marcia Winn, “It’s The ‘Natural Dress’ – Dior Defends Long Skirts”, The Journal Herald, 24/09/1947, Dayton, OH, p. 10.

3 Dalí spells it out in The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí: “My brother and I resembled each other like two drops of water, but we had different reflections. Like myself he had the unmistakable facial morphology of a genius. […]

My brother was probably a first version of myself, but conceived too much in the absolute.” See Salvador Dalí, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, Dial Press, New York, 1942, p. 2.

In short, we are focusing on two individuals who are points of reference and expressions of the twentieth century, and are both defined by their attitude towards artistic creation, able to fuse technical rigour, obsessive creativity, constant research, a wish to transcend, elegance, stage-setting and glamour. They represent two artistic trajectories where art and fashion intertwine in creations nourished by specific, personal interests. With a keen eye for these links and affinities, we attempt to underline the mutual admiration experienced by Gala, Dalí and Dior and bring the viewer into that shared imaginary through a curated selection of the artist’s original work, Dior designs and documentary materials from the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí and Maison Dior that are structured in three different areas: A passion for art, The kingdom of fashion and The ball of the century.

A passion for art opens the exhibition and puts into relief the convergence of Gala, Dalí and Dior in the early Thirties.

While Dalí is trying to make a name for himself in the capital of art with the help of Gala, the artist’s stubborn, tireless representative, Dior runs galleries in Paris with renowned partners like Jacques Bonjean and Pierre Colle, who dare exhibit works by newly emerging twentieth-century artists. Their encounters are as inevitable as they

In the second section, The kingdom of fashion, clothes from the personal collection of Gala, thought to be one of the most influential muses in the last century, signal her interest and admiration for Christian Dior’s style, and also allow us to chart a turning-point in the professional development of Dior, who from 1947 firmly establishes himself in the field of fashion design.

With the creation of the New Look, the fashion designer sets out to overturn the boundaries of haute couture, as Salvador Dalí had done years before in the field of art, and give femininity back its splendour.

OF ART AND FASHION

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We begin this new phase with the relationship that Dalí — and also Gala — enjoy with Christian Dior. These two creators, whose birthdays are so very close, share a universe and many more points in common than one might expect at first sight. I would like to underline the concept of split personality that is so important for Dalí, and is also present in Dior, who makes it explicit in his autobiography Christian Dior and I, which contains several paragraphs that seem straight from the pen of Dalí. For example when he states, “…I had to step out of the warmth and intimacy of the family circle and welcome into the world that forbidding stranger — Christian Dior.”1 Significantly, an article published in 1947 notes that Dior is carrying a copy of The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí under his arm.2 We can speak, then, of a split personality that in Dalí’s case also refers back to his deceased brother3 and to Gala, a Gala with whom he combines to sign many of his works “Gala Salvador Dalí”.

are promising. From the very beginning, Dior believes in Dalí and declares that his works aren’t “unsaleable”. They are united by a passion for art.

As well as sharing an awareness of leading public and private lives and constructing a persona, we must also mention many other links and affinities that are consistently present: the quest for technical excellence and mastery, the passion for craft — in the traditional sense of the term —, a command of writing, specifically of autobiography, the importance of theatricality — spectacle, performance and stage-setting — in every facet of life, a tendency to obsess, a tireless work-rate, a wish to succeed in the United States, the centrality of women on their paths in life or close bonds with the landscape of their childhood and youth, a landscape far from the big city. Equally, the evocation of a world that is universal, local, and private and at the same time a fondness for big parties and glamour, always searching for a particular idea of beauty.

A more transgressive, even edible, beauty, in the case of Dalí, but beauty nevertheless.

The final section, The ball of the century, sheds light on the spectacle of pomp and elegance that dazzled Venice and its guests on the night of 3 September 1951. Gala, Dalí and Dior were privileged participants at the masked ball organized by extravagant multimillionaire and interior designer Carlos de Beistegui at the Palazzo Labia.

Their entrance to the ball disguised as Venetian festive giants is one of the highpoints of the soirée. Their attire, made for the occasion by Maison Dior, is the fruit of the collaboration between two great twentieth-century artists: Christian Dior and Salvador Dalí. Attire for a glamorous ball but at the same time attire that, on Dalí’s strict instructions, is exhibited in his last great work, the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres, his theatre of memory, inaugurated on 28 September, 1974.

This exhibition couldn’t have seen the light of day without the collaboration and generous support of Christian Dior Couture. We would like to thank also Joana Bonet, writer and journalist, for her passionate and profound essay, that has captured the essence of our project so sensitively. And thanks to Fundació Bancària ”la Caixa”, one more year for its invaluable support, that allows us to continue opening paths of research around the figure of the artist and the interests that drive him and assume form in his work. And I must also give great thanks to curators, Bea Crespo and Clara Silvestre, for their dedication, attention to detail and enthusiasm.

Writer and journalist

JOANA BONET

THE CONSPIRACY OF BEAUTY

The young Dior wanted to study Fine Arts, but his horrified parents reminded him of the tragic case of Van Gogh, and the shadow of shabby, ill-fated poverty that hovered over bohemian artists. Industrialists who had made a mint from fertilisers, his family couldn’t conceive how a son of theirs would want to become an artist, even though he had been attracted to gardens, music, painting, and furniture from early childhood. Dior enrolled at Sciences Po in 1923, but realized immediately he taken the wrong step. And should be heading elsewhere, because only a longing for pure beauty excited him.

Gala, silent and elusive, endowed with the sixth sense of distinction, possessed by an indecipherable mystery. Her sphinxface, her distant beauty, her athletic tension, her small breasts — Dalí found big breasts repugnant —, her Tartar origins, — she was born in Kazan, crossroads between East and West — a nature at once exotic and discreet. When Dalí met her, he felt pierced by the arrow of Eros: “Gala’s body seemed to the touch to be made of the ‘flesh-heaven’ of a golden muscat.” Their first meeting, that summer of 1929 in Cadaqués, becomes an event.

Her haughty air, her sensitive face, her manner wounded by love unrevealed as yet because the unfaithful Éluard did not demand exclusivity, and even thrust her into a ménage à trois with Max Ernst that excites both but with which Galuchka is uncomfortable. She sublimates beauty, tenderness and inner quietude. And begins loving little Salvador, the paranoid artist who jars in the city when he crosses its streets, sporting a sad moustache and rarely conversing beyond his loud guffaws. The Dalí, as yet no celebrity, with whom she lives in a shack in Cadaqués, spinning out her stay, as the Mediterranean sun gilds her skin, and weaving a way to be in the world, posing and gazing into her camera apt for a silent creator who lives in the company of artists and displays singular talent.

In 1928, and on the condition that he wouldn’t use the family name, Madeleine and Maurice Dior agreed to give their son the necessary amount of money to open, with his friend Jacques Bonjean, the art gallery that would carry the latter’s name (although his friends rechristened it Galerie Jambon-Dior in an onomatopoeic play of words).

His mother was of the opinion that using one’s own name to sell paintings bestowed the same social disrepute as running a grocery store. The gallery, in the cul-de-sac of Rue La Boétie, became a kind of laboratory frequented, among others, by Christian Bérard, who fostered Dior’s liking for intricate detail in dresses and a chromatic interplay that helped define aesthetic modernity.

The inter-war years were a golden age of fashion. Silvery silk fourreaux sheathing the siren silhouettes of Hollywood stars coexisted with more masculine garments, a sign of the importance the backs of wardrobes had for women whose husbands had departed to First World War fronts, because they had to re-make their overcoats into skirts and jackets. A great fashion-designer, Madame Vionnet, achieves excellent bias cuts by working the material on models’ bodies. Her neoclassical style explores the difficulty of apparent simplicity of form. According to historian Yvonne Deslandres, a fashion magazine asked several women from different social strata what their favourite item of clothing was and all replied: “a smooth black dress with a pearl necklace.” Gala flees dominant bourgeois taste and projects herself with greater freedom. A restrained air still marks out trends. Fashion shows have been instated as the way to present collections to their clientele and new fashion houses open in Paris.

An old friend of Dalí’s, Christian Dior, works in one of them. It is the workshop of couturier Lucien Lelong, where finally, once his mother — opposed to Christian’s artistic leanings — has gone, he is free to learn his trade, to be CD.

THE CONSPIRACY OF BEAUTY

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In the Thirties, Gala — real name, Elena Ivanovna Diakonova — is a modern woman in the palazzo trousers with which Chanel gave women back their freedom of movement; she opts for flat shoes, wraps herself in knitted jackets and sailor caps; she renounces adornments and selects sober garments, though cut by good tailors and daringly conceived, that she wears unpretentiously [FIG. 1]. In Cadaqués she abandons the pleats and swagger of Parisian flappers and begins her transformation into a canvas. Yes, the Gala who poses for Ernst’s Au rendezvous des amis (1922) with André Breton, Louis Aragon, Giorgio de Chirico, Benjamin Péret, Robert Desnos and other surrealist colleagues, immortalized with her short, wavy tresses, thin cord belt and neckline swooping down her back, will gradually mutate into an extraordinary aesthetic icon. “She’s pretty, but too artificial to be pleasant,” Peggy Guggenheim said of her. Her foreignness, her gaze from the steppes, her indomitable character, would perch on her like an invisible, unique, rare bird.

FIG. 1

Gala and Salvador Dalí in palazzo-style trousers, Vernet-les-Bains, ca. 1931. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí collection. Centre for Dalinian Studies

Three years after the first Dalí-Gala encounter, in 1932, the Bonjean gallery organizes an exhibition promoted as “the best selection ever made. It may be the starting-point for a new Paris Salon.” On its walls: works by Alberto Giacometti, Joan Miró, Léon Zack and a bold Catalan, different to them all. Salvador Dalí. Later, after two solo shows in the Pierre Colle gallery — the second directed by the French designer before he ever was one —; in 1933, it staged a great exhibition of surrealist art, thanks to which the two geniuses became entwined in a friendship that enriched them both. Conversely, sixteen years afterwards, Dior would dedicate to him a black satin creation with bronze and gold brocade to him that bore his name: Dalí. The year was 1949 and only two years had passed since the triumph of his New Look, which established him as the fashion designer who liberated Paris from its gloomy post-war sadness.

But Dalí already loomed large in his imaginary.

of their first joint pieces is the famous white organdie lobster creation with the immense red crustacean painted by the artist, that Wallis Simpson immediately dares to wear in a reportage for Vogue, photographed by Cecil Beaton.

The Catalan artist, who had always admired fashion, discovered in Gala a mirror where he could reflect both his love of luxury and personal vision of strange beauty. She is not only his model but an artist, a creator without creations, an intellectual and writer, as her biographer Estrella de Diego documents in Querida Gala. Las vidas ocultas de Gala Dalí. She often read and sewed. She designed her own dresses. “a white dress with light blue stripes; a broad skirt that begins at the breasts”, she notes in a letter to Éluard when she is still dressing for him. Gala is a unique character in surrealist Paris. The only female member of the club, pace Leonora Carrington and Lee Miller. She hobnobs with the Parisian intelligentsia of the inter-war years. She also meets Coco Chanel, who is well disposed towards her, and fits her canon perfectly.

Fabrics and above all the cut acquire remarkable lightness on Gradiva’s body.

“Gala temporarily abandons Chanel’s tailored dresses that she loves to wear for a completely contrary style: the sumptuous baroque of designer Elsa Schiaparelli. And so she dresses with Schiap for the entire period when Dalí is designing and signing off dresses and hats for the beautiful Italian’s collections on Place Vendôme. Eccentric and extravagant. Sheathed in a fairy’s dress with sweet-shaped buttons and covered in bees; another one, dotted with shell from lobster claws. A dress covered by fleshy lips. Holding a blue suede handbag shaped exactly like a telephone. Or sporting on her head, superbly natural, the collection’s star item: a black stiletto-heeled, pointed shoe!” as biographer, French academic, Dominique Bona writes in Gala. La muse redoutable [FIG. 2]. And not only that: she

In the portrait à deux photographed by Cecil Beaton, Gala’s head is covered by a black scarf knotted in the form of a foulard-hood, headwear that remains extremely contemporary, and she wears a black dress with a bustier of precious stones that exposes her back; Dalí, for his part, wears an impeccable dark suit and projects his shadow on the back cloth, clutching a foil in his left hand.

Their aesthetic complicity is astounding in such a scenario. “The outfit is essential in order to conquer. In all my life, the occasions are very rare that I have abased myself to civilian clothes. I am always dressed in the uniform of Dalí” the painter would declare.

While the couple travel the world, Christian Dior’s life takes a sudden turn.

First his mother dies — aged 51 — after her young son, Bernard, is interned in a psychiatric hospital. He falls ill and soon dies of septicaemia. Then, his father is bankrupted overnight and the Pierre Colle gallery is forced to close in 1933.

Helped by friends like Cocteau, Serge de Poligny and Claude Autant-Lara he starts working for the cinema dressing Odette Joyeux in Le Lit à colonnes (1942), Lettres d’amour (1942) and Le baron fantôme (1943). He works at a dressmakers. But doesn’t start from zero. His aesthetic baggage brings with it a great ability with dresses. “I think I will even be able to dedicate myself to dressmaking,” he declares. He sells hats to the most famous Maisons: Balenciaga, Nina Ricci, Schiaparelli, Paquin, Patou… and his name begins to reverberate throughout the fashion world. Curiously, both Chanel and Dior, and Dalí with Gala, enter fashion through their hat collections.

THE CONSPIRACY OF BEAUTY

actively participates in the projects, comes up with ideas that then flower with Dalí’s talent. A splendid example is that Shoe-hat, the genesis of which is a photo she took of Dalí in that guise. In short, as Bona concludes, Gala “is always Gala” sure of herself and of him [Dalí], indifferent to the rest of the world and, absolutely classical even in surrealism.”

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Jean Cocteau, Paul Éluard, the Magrittes, Beaton and Man Ray introduce the Dalís to the high society of the Thirties.

At one soirée, they meet the Italian Elsa Schiaparelli, a sophisticate and conceptual fashion-designer who made objects not dresses, since she opined hers was “a very difficult, frustrating art, because hardly is a dress born than it already belongs to the past. A dress can’t be hung on a wall like a painting.”

This relationship will be a turning-point and Dalí begins to interest himself in the transformative power of fashion, that is capable of changing one’s perception of reality with its optical games. “A Schiaparelli dress is a real modern painting,” he tells The New Yorker in 1932. Five years later, designer and painter begin to collaborate. One

When the Dalís reach the United States on the transatlantic liner Champlain, as Bona notes in her biography, the artist stages one of his performances with a baguette of bread — another of his aesthetic obsessions like ants, flies, grasshoppers or lobsters — that is over twenty metres long and a photo of Gala dressed by Schiaparelli in a hat made from raw lamb chops that creates a huge hue-and-cry. Even more famous will be the huge black hat she wears at the Coq Rouge club, with a celluloid doll symbolizing a dead, decomposing child, at a time when the whole of North America was in tears over the terrible murder of national hero Charles Lindbergh’s son, as pointed out by the author of Gala. La muse redoutable. The Dalís’ originality and fetishism dazzle, and Gala’s hieratic pose, as if she had cast off the mundane and inhabited an oneiric world, boosts but also darkens her person. Far from the war bleeding old Europe, they become wealthy and Gala is resplendent in her fur foulards and slim lines.

In December 1946, Dior, orphaned and aged 41, can finally be himself. He opens his Maison at 30, Avenue Montaigne. He recruits his team of stellar petites mains, secures artistic freedom and counts on the opinions of artist-friends like Bérard, René Gruau, Denise Tual and MarieLouise Bousquet. He shows them his creations and they burst into applause, moved by so much beauty, which intensifies the angst of a superstitious Dior — he was as much so as Gala.

According to his biographer, MarieFrance Pochna, “he never did anything to épater, detested gratuitous derring-do and was hugely respectful of traditions, though he wanted to renew them.” On 12 February 1947 he is enthroned in the history of fashion. The effect is electric.

Editor-in-chief at Harper’s Bazaar, Carmel Snow, coins the propitious label of New Look, that will mark a before and an after. And she is so enthusiastic, she throws herself into Dior’s arms at the end of the show. In her articles, Snow declares that Dior is saving dressmaking as France was saved at the Battle of the Marne. The news appears in the US media because French journalists are on strike.

Corolle is the title of the collection that unleashes his dream of beauty, quite removed from all the post-war penury. Tendresse and Bonheur are the

names of just two of his dresses, with which he hopes to restore optimism to a precarious, depressed society and re-instate the civilized ideal of wellbeing. Flower-dresses, full skirts, narrow waists, shot shoulders… an explosive femininity, a weapon of desire. The show on the catwalk excites the audience.

Collette affirms that “the nioulouk reconquers America.” The work-room on the Avenue Montaigne stays open at night to meet all the orders. Blissful lunacy. Women want to lift up their heads, and be touched by Dior’s angel and his sublimation of their bodies. That same year, Dior triumphs in the United States, where he meets Dalí and Gala.

“Meeting again after so many years,” the painter recounts, “we kissed each other affectionately, and then, looking at him with surprise, I exclaimed: ‘Well, tell me how things have been going with you?’

And Dior answered, ‘The same as with you — great success!’”

But the creative trio wouldn’t reach their zenith until 1951. On a warm September night, Venice’s baroque Palazzo Labia, its ballroom decorated by Giambattista Tiepolo with scenes of Cleopatra and Mark Anthony’s amorous encounters and quarrels, opened its doors to welcome almost twelve hundred guests of multimillionaire Carlos de Beistegui y de Yturbe, renowned art collector and interior designer for European and North American high societies, one of the most extravagant characters among the

“happy few” of the last century. Princes and princesses, duchesses, counts, baronesses and none other than the Aga Khan… half the Royal Almanach of Gotha put in an appearance at that Oriental Ball that is still talked about today as “the ball of the century.” Also the most select of the snob art in-crowd of the moment, from Orson Welles to Robert Doisneau, via Cecil Beaton or Jacques Fath. Dalí was invited with Gala to that party which called for the creation of disguises expressly for the grand occasion. Among the most remembered are the slender, phantom-like giants by Dalí and Dior, mediated by Gala and helped along by Pierre Cardin, that from their spectacular entrance to the ball — preceded by a procession through the city streets — marked one of the climaxes of the evening. The choice of the figure of the carnival giant — that, with its extraordinary stature, clearly denoted power and strength — suggests a symbolic reading that perfectly fit Dante’s words in his Canzoniere: “Whoever has to paint a figure, cannot draw it, if he can’t transform himself into it.” They couldn’t find a better representation of themselves: Dalí-Gala and Dior as giants.

“I want to create surrealist paintings quite unconsciously, like bread baskets.

And, to start off, I will paint the portrait of my wife, Gala, the being I most love, in the Dior dress she wore on Christmas night. A lamé dress made from tiny

scales in every colour. I will take as long as I need. It will be the world’s most expensive painting”, Salvador Dalí told Panorama magazine. The metallic mohair of end of Sixties Dior, signed off

by Marc Bohan, very high waisted as Gala preferred, with folk arabesques, reflected the light she had always identified with love.

THE CONSPIRACY OF BEAUTY

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Dalí had already collaborated with Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli, and in the Sixties does so with Piaget and his gold cufflinks, but his relationship with Dior will be at once warm and symbolic.

Because Gala also admired the fashion designer’s clothes and recognized a style there that met her needs. She began to visit Dior and purchased several items from the spring-summer 1949 haute couture collection. Like the Musée du Louvre creation, in the Trompe-l’œil collection, the aim of which he defined as: “to bring to the silhouette the correctives necessary to release the entire value of the fabric, unleash the suppleness of the body and allow it complete freedom of movement.” The dress, embroidered in black, fused its floral pattern with the different parts of the body, thus creating an elevated, ethereal whole. Another garment from the couturier, Gala’s favourite, and iconic for her, will be the Saint-Ouen red coat.

FIG. 2

André Caillet. Gala in the Shoe-hat and tailored-suit with embroidered pockets in the form of lips

by Elsa Schiaparelli, 1938. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí collection. Centre for Dalinian Studies

The woman, who described herself as “cold as fruit in the shade” and “good as cool water from a spring on a very hot day” died in bellezza, aged 88, looking towards Cap de Creus. Dalí’s only desire is to follow her wishes — to be buried in Púbol castle — and he soon moves her corpse from Portlligat in his Cadillac, with chauffeur Arturo at the wheel. Her body journeys naked, wrapped in a blanket, and upon reaching its destination, is enveloped in a red silk Dior evening dress, her favourite, wearing which she is buried in a private declaration of victory: she rode the waves of life with creative passion, the true mark of that great adorer of absolute beauty, Gala, queen of Paleùglnn.

Coordinators of the Centre for Dalinian Studies

BEA CRESPO / CLARA SILVESTRE

LA PASSION FOR ART

— christian dior

“Dior was one of the first people in Paris to concern himself with the sale of my ‘unsellable’ surrealist paintings.”2

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— salvador dalí

When Gala, Dalí and Dior converge in Paris at the beginning of the Thirties, the city is a pole of attraction for artists from around the world who settle there, drawn by the new forms of artistic expression and opportunities to give visibility to their own work3. Flush with dealers, galleries, art enthusiasts and customers ready to pay large sums for a painting, the city on the Seine — that equally overwhelms and captivates the newcomers — offers an ideal space for artists who want to exhibit and find outlets for their work. Dalí knows that the key to his success depends on becoming recognized in the City of Light, and to achieve that he can count on the tenacious help of Gala, who from the start of their relationship develops what will be a consistent role in her life with the painter. Inseparable muse, companion and collaborator, she also becomes the artist’s dealer and manager of his stock. The single-minded Gala arranges everything so he can simply devote himself to creating; she organizes Dalí’s social and daily life in Paris and searches out the best clients, the most avant-garde galleries and sophisticated collectors to exhibit his works and sell to.

In parallel, a young Christian Dior also dreams of making a name for himself in the art world, but not as an artist.4 He strays far from the respectable, boring future his parents imagine for him and,

1 Christian Dior, Christian Dior and I, E. P. Dutton & Company INC., New York, 1957, p. 229.

2 Salvador Dalí, “Salvador Dali In The Lyons Den”, New York Post and The Home News, 25/02/1948, New York, NY, p. 36.

3 The French capital becomes the key centre of various avant-garde movements of the first half of the twentieth century, like fauvism, cubism and surrealism.

4 “I was lucky to meet painters and musicians (Bérard, Dalí, Sauguet and Poulenc, especially) who I befriended and whose success excited me so much it freed me of any desire to do anything myself.” Translated from: Christian Dior, “Christian Dior : Je suis Couturier”, Elle, no. 298, 13/08/1951, p. 15.

A PASSION FOR ART

“I meditated on the profession I must choose once I was free. I settled on the most sensible course, one that must have seemed the deepest folly to my parents — the ownership of an art gallery!”1

between 1928 and 1933, runs a gallery in Paris. Together with his friend Jacques Bonjean, Dior opens a small business in ground-floor premises on Rue Boétie: “Our ambition was to show the masters we admired the most — Picasso, Braque, Matisse, Dufy — and the younger painters we knew personally and already held in high esteem: Christian Bérard, Salvador Dalí, Max Jacob and the Berman brothers.”5 The gallery gets off to a promising start and can quickly count on the support of a crucial ally: the art magazine Formes and its editor-in-chief Waldemar George.6 Unfortunately, in 1931 their prosperous business suffers from the fall-out from the world crisis heralded two years previously by the American Stock Exchange crash of 24 October 1929. What with the economic recession and downturn in demand from the American market — the purchase of paintings had ceased to be a priority — Dior and Bonjean are compelled to end their partnership and divide up the gallery stock: “I was busy trying to sell the pictures in the gallery, an incredibly difficult task in those panic-stricken times. Paintings which today would be worth millions of francs fetched hardly a few tens of thousands. With the rare exceptions of wealthy patrons and collectors like the Vicomte and Vicomtesse de Noailles and David Weill, dealers were forced to sell pictures to one another at ever-decreasing prices.”7

5 Christian Dior, Christian Dior and I, op. cit., 1957, p. 229.

6 As can be seen from the flow of advertisements that appear regularly on its pages and the favourable reviews posted of the exhibitions he mounts. See: Xavier Landrit, “Christian Dior, 1928-1934. An aesthete’s first career in art”, 2010, p. 4, [doctoral thesis].

7 Christian Dior, Christian Dior and I, op. cit., p. 233-234.

With Pierre Colle’s help, Dalí launches his second solo exhibition in Paris in June

8 Viscomtesse Marie Laure de Noailles and her husband, Viscomte Charles de Noailles, were important patrons of the arts in France in the first half of the twentieth century. Maecenas of the surrealists — they financed Luis Buñuel’s L’Âge d’or — and especially of Dalí, whom they gave money to buy the house in Portlligat. Their collection contained important works by the painter, like The Lugubrious Game (1929) [cat. no. P 232] and The Old Age of William Tell (1931) [cat. no. P 285].

9 La Vie publique de Salvador Dalí, Centre Georges Pompidou, Musée national d’Art moderne, Paris, 1980, p. 23.

10 Pierre Colle was a business associate of Christian Dior and Jacques Bonjean between 1929 and 1931.

11 Translated from: Maurice Sachs, La Décade de l’Illusion, Gallimard, Paris, 1950, p. 49.

12 Exposition d’œuvres récentes de Christian Bérard, Salvador Dali, Jean Hugo, Max Jacob, Jean Lurçat, Pierre Colle, 1933, Paris.

See: Formes : revue internationale des arts plastiques, no. XIII, 03/1931, Paris, p. 66.

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FIG. 1

FIG. 2

Christian Dior and Christian Bérard in the fleamarket, ca. 1932. Collection Dior Héritage, Paris

Salvador Dalí. The Sense of Speed, 1931.

Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres

1931. The show includes one of his best known paintings, The Persistence of Memory (1931) [CAT. NO. P 265],13 that will be acquired by the New York gallery owner and art dealer, Julien Levy. Soon after, in September, Christian Dior — who reappears on the Paris scene after a trip to Russia — decides to embark on a fresh partnership with Colle14 and work with his gallery: “I separated from my partner, Jacques Bonjean, only to share in the even worse luck of Pierre Colle.

We went from losses to forced sales,

13 The artist’s work, mentioned in this publication, are numbered according to the Catalogue Raisonné of Works by Salvador Dalí, that can be consulted at https://www.salvadordali.org/en/artwork/catalogue-raisonne/.

14 Dior meets the young poet and subsequent gallery owner Pierre Colle at a Max Jacob exhibition held at the Jacques Bonjean gallery. They immediately strike up a close friendship truncated by Colle’s death in 1948.

See: Christian Dior, Christian Dior and I, op. cit., p. 229-230.

A PASSION FOR ART

13

A year before, in 1930, Gala and Dalí are in Carry-Le-Rouet, on the Côte d’Azur when they discover that the Goemans Gallery, where the artist had staged his first solo exhibition in the French capital in 1929 is about to go bankrupt. Fortunately, the Dalís can rely on the support of the viscount and his wife,8 who offer them financial help and include them in their network of friends.

It is, in fact, Charles de Noailles who puts Salvador Dalí in contact with gallery owner Pierre Colle,9 who after partnering Dior and Bonjean for a short while,10 decides in March 1931 to open his own gallery at 29, Rue Cambacérès. There, Colle, “who has always owned some of the best paintings”11 opts to champion young, little known, but promising artists like Alexander Calder or Alberto Giacometti, and the most up-to-date artistic tendencies, surrealism being the most outstanding, with key figures like Salvador Dalí. Colle, who also decides to advertise through Formes magazine, uses works by Dalí to promote his first exhibitions and thus captivate the Parisian public [CAT. 02, CAT. 03]. The gallery owner, who has just signed a contract with the young Dalí, counts on him for his inaugural show, Max Jacob and Christian Bérard, a close friend of Christian Dior also feature [FIG. 1] .12

meanwhile continuing to put on Surrealist or Abstract exhibitions, which only drove away the last private collectors.”15 Together they devote a second solo exhibition to Dalí in the Pierre Colle gallery, in June 1932 [CAT. 04], where they show works like The Sense of Speed (1931) [CAT. NO. P 386] [FIG. 2] and the drawing Paranoiac Metamorphosis of Gala’s Face (1932) [CAT. 05].16 From this piece and many others that come later we begin to see how Gala, the muse of the surrealists — who had inspired Paul

15 Christian Dior, Christian Dior and I, op. cit., p. 234.

16 Exposition Salvador Dali, Pierre Colle, 1932, Paris, cat. 10 and 25. Figueres, Centre for Dalinian Studies, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, NR 30548. Gala’s name appears for the first time in the title of a work by the artist. See: Bea Crespo, Clara Silvestre, “Gala: The Chronology” in Gala Salvador Dalí. A Room of One’s Own at Púbol, Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona, 2018, p. 219.

Éluard’s poetry, inhabited Max Ernst’s painting, dazzled Giorgio de Chirico with her intellect and pierced Man Ray’s photographs with her gaze —, starts to frequent Salvador Dalí’s work as a model and inspiration.

17 Exposition surréaliste, Pierre Colle, Paris, 1933. Figueres, Centre for Dalinian Studies, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, NR 35179.

18 Salvador Dalí, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, Dial Press, New York, 1942, p. 291-292.

FIG. 3

buyers for these works is far from easy and they often end up as part of the decor of his Paris flat [FIG. 3].

Nevertheless, Gala doesn’t give up and roams the streets of Paris searching for potential clients, as Dalí writes in his autobiography: “These inventions were torture for us, especially for Gala. Gala, with her fanatical dedication, convinced of the solidity of my inventions, went out every day after lunch with my projects under her arm, and launched a crusade to which she harnessed a resistance that exceeded all human limits.”19 In his

19 Salvador Dalí, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, op. cit, p. 292.

A PASSION FOR ART

Salvador Dalí in his Paris apartment, 1935-1937.

Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí collection. Centre for Dalinian Studies

14

In June 1933 he is a presence in the prolific exhibitions at the Pierre Colle gallery. “Il faut visiter l’Exposition surréaliste”, declares the invitation to the collective show held from 7 to 18 June [CAT. 06, CAT. 07], where the artists exhibited include, among others, Marcel Duchamp, René Magritte, Valentine Hugo, Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti, Man Ray, Yves Tanguy, Joan Miró and Salvador Dalí. In Man Ray’s photo that depicts the arrangement of some of the pieces shown we can glimpse items created

by Dalí at the time, like Atmospheric Chair (1933) [CAT. NO. OE 16], Retrospective Bust of a Woman (1933) [CAT. NO. OE 14] and Untitled. Head of roaring lion with open mouth with a plate of fried eggs in its mouth (1933) [CAT. NO. OE 15], as well as the painting Board of Demented Associations (1930-1931) [CAT. NO. P 1185] [CAT. 08].17 Driven by the difficulties he found selling his surrealist paintings, the artist had begun to create all kinds of inventions that, in his opinion, ought to be very successful commercially. These include designs that, according to him, could have revolutionized fashion for a hundred years.18 Unfortunately, locating

writings the artist acknowledges his devotion to Gala and also to Dior,20 who in the early Thirties is fully engaged in the task of being a gallery owner: “Dior was one of the first people in Paris to concern himself with the sale of my ‘unsellable’ surrealist paintings.”21 As Dalí recalls, Dior had succeeded in selling a wealthy shoe manufacturer a painting of an absent-minded wet-nurse sitting on a beach, balancing on her head a woman’s shoe out of which poked a grilled lamb chop.

In the same June of 1933, Dior and Colle’s gallery mounts a third solo exhibition to Dalí [CAT. 09]. The show exhibits works like the then unfinished portrait of architect Emilio Terry (1934) [CAT. NO. P 249] [FIG. 4] and Automatic Beginning of the Portraits of Gala, described in the catalogue as belonging to Gala’s collection.22 As we can verify from the photograph of the painter and his muse in their Paris flat [CAT. 10], the canvas that Dalí launches at the time comprises two portraits of Gala which the artist eventually decides to separate and show independently.

These are the oil paintings Portrait of Gala with Lobster (ca. 1933) [CAT. NO. P 330] and Automatic Beginning of a Portrait of Gala (ca. 1933) [CAT. NO. P 309] [CAT. 11]. Paintings like these underline the extraordinary virtuosity and precision with which he executes his works, that are also small exercises which the artist

20 Salvador Dalí, in the speech given on the occasion of his appointment as an associate foreign member of l’Académie des Beaux-Arts de l’Institut de France, lists among the first Dalinians who believed in his talent: Gala and Paul Éluard, the Vicomte de Noailles and Christian Dior. See: Salvador Dalí, “Gala, Velasquez et la toison d’or”, Vogue, no. 597, 06-07/1979, Paris, p. 147.

21

Cit. supra, n. 2.

22 From the beginning of her relationship with Dalí, Gala takes care not to avoid selling key works, which will form part of what we know today as the artist’s collection. Some of these pieces, as is the case of Automatic Beginning of a Portrait of Gala (ca. 1933), are exhibited in the permanent collection of the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres.

travelling to America and opening new paths into a reality. From 1932, Julien Levy, who had organized exhibitions with the Pierre Colle gallery, shows and sells the artist’s work in his brand-new gallery located in Manhattan.27 Aware the artist’s work had been well received, the Dalís savour the prospect that New York might provide what they had lacked in Paris: the success and consolidation of Dalí as an artist internationally.

After the definitive closure of the gallery, Dior brings over five years of activity as a gallery owner to a final conclusion and decides to move away from Paris. Dalí and Gala also search for new horizons and decide to turn their dream of

23 Bea Crespo, “Paris”, in Dalí and His Studios, Das Edicions, Figueres, 2013, p. 21.

24 M. Z., “L’Art à Paris”, Formes : revue internationale des arts plastiques, no. 16, 06/1931, Paris, p. 107; André Lhote, “La saison de Paris”, La Nouvelle revue française, year 19, no. 214, 01/07/1931, Paris, p. 168; Paul Fierens, “Les Nouvelles Artistiques : de Bonington a Berman”, Les Nouvelles Littéraires, year 11, no. 503, 04/06/1932, Paris, p. 7; “Adieu, saison 1933…” Vogue, 08/1933, Paris, p. 50; André Lhote, “Les Arts: Irréalisme et Surréalisme: Bonnard (Bernheim Jeune), Dalí (Pierre Colle)”, La Nouvelle Revue Française, year 21, no. 239, 01/08/1933, Paris, p. 307-309.

25 Salvador Dalí, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, op. cit., p. 327.

26 Christian Dior, Christian Dior and I, op. cit., p. 234.

15

The subsequent exhibitions the Pierre Colle gallery devotes to Dalí between 1931 and 1933 bring him a degree of notoriety, as is clear from press coverage at the time,24 but little in the way of sales.

That explains why at the end of 1932, Gala decides to encourage the creation of the Zodiac Group, comprising various prominent individuals, to give economic support to Dalí in the early years of his artistic career. Nevertheless, the situation in the art market at the beginning of the Thirties doesn’t head in the direction Colle and Dalí were hoping and their financial worries become only too tangible: “My contract with Pierre Colle was ended and his financial situation did not enable him to renew it.”25 At the end of 1933, as Dior would remember, “our deserted gallery had to close its doors.”26

In Dior’s case, the act of leaving the capital becomes a key act in terms of his future professional career: “It was during this retreat from Paris, where I had always been content to admire the artistic achievements of others, that I discovered the desire to create something of my own.”28 The friendships forged in Paris during the years of his youth29 and the time spent at the Jacques Bonjean and Pierre Colle galleries become at once inspiring and vital for Dior. Among the former, his acquaintance with Dalí, with whom he shares a passion for art and a fascination for the flowers30 embellishing the art nouveau items they hunt down together in the streets of Paris, will be one of the most lasting and fertile [CAT. 01]. Though he doesn’t realize it yet, his love of the arts and their practitioners will lead Dior to trace his own, revolutionary path, that dawns in the Thirties and triumphs in 1947.

27 Among the exhibitions the Pierre Colle gallery organizes in collaboration with Julien Levy, the most noteworthy are the Eugène Berman in 1932 and the Dalí in 1933. See: Formes : revue internationale des arts plastiques, no. XXIV, 04/1932, Paris, p. 264. In Dalí’s case, 10 of the 22 works that formed part of exhibition held in the Pierre Colle were shown at the end of the year in Julien Levy’s gallery. In a letter to Julien Levy on the occasion of the show, Gala notes that the price for the sale of the works had been agreed jointly between Colle and Dior. See: Letter from Gala to Julien Levy, 1933, Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art Archives, Julien Levy Gallery records.

28 Christian Dior, Christian Dior and I, op. cit., p. 235.

29 “In that varied spiritual climate I formed not only the taste but also the friendships which were to give shape and meaning to the serious side of my life.” See: Christian Dior, Christian Dior and I, op. cit., p. 226.

30 Salvador Dalí, “Salvador Dali’s mimicry in nature”, Flair, Annual 1953, Chicago, IL, p. 206.

FIG. 4

Salvador Dalí. Portrait of Mr. Emilio Terry, 1934.

Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres

A PASSION FOR ART

uses to practice his paranoid-critical method. By virtue of the juxtaposition of apparently unrelated images, coming from what he dubs “concrete irrationality”, Dalí creates a series of quite disturbing portraits dedicated to his muse, as those two pieces bear witness.23

Centre for Dalinian Studies

CLARA SILVESTRE

THE KINGDOM OF FASHION

“Meeting again after so many years, we kissed each other affectionately, and then, looking at him with surprise, I exclaimed, ‘Well, tell me how things have been going with you?’ And Dior answered, ‘The same as with you — great success!’”1 — salvador dalí

DIOR / DALÍ REVOLUTION AND TRADITION 1 Salvador Dalí, “Salvador Dali In The Lyons Den”, New York Post and The Home News, 25/02/1948, New York, NY, p. 36.

1947 is an important year in the professional life of Christian Dior. At 42 he starts a new path in his career that represents a paradigm change in the mid-twentieth-century world of fashion.

At the beginning of the following year, Dior and Dalí meet again in the artist’s studio in Monterrey, California, at a highpoint for the designer who has just been awarded the prestigious Neiman Marcus Award2 in the field of fashion for his first collection. Salvador Dalí, for his part, is immersed in the creation of a new painting, Leda Atomica [CAT. NO. P 642], that he shows unfinished at the end of November in New York’s Bignou Gallery.3 This painting was to become a masterpiece and marks a crucial watershed in his artistic career. Both men tackle these new projects basing their new work on a return to tradition and craft, the base from which they wish to subvert twentieth-century art and fashion.

2 Known as the “Oscar of fashion” from 1938 the Neiman Marcus Award for Distinguished Service in the Field of Fashion had been giving recognition to interior and fashion designers, fashion journalists and icons of style, among others, who have had a decisive influence in that field. In 1947 it wasn’t only awarded to Dior but also to shoe designer Salvatore Ferragamo and designers Irene Gibbons and Norman Hartnell, in an act that took place in Dallas.

3 New Paintings by Salvador Dalí, Bignou Gallery, New York, 25 November 1947 3 January 1948. Salvador Dalí shows Leda Atomica [cat. no. P 642] as his first masterpiece in the process of creation that must be seen in relation to his book 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship, published in 1948. For an indepth exploration of this work and its display at the Bignou Gallery see the exhibition catalogue: Dalí atómico, Fundación Bancaria “la Caixa”, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Barcelona, Figueres, 2018.

4 A term coined in 1947 by Carmel Snow, editor-in-chief at Harper’s Bazaar.

FIG. 1

between the eighteenth century and the outbreak of the First World War5 and the recuperation of styles like Tapissier and the Belle Époque.6 Reinterpreting the past according to the demands of his time, Dior makes his mark with a taste and temperament that are entirely his own, leading to a renaissance in feminine fashion7: “In the opinion of the public,

5 Ilya Parkins, “Christian Dior and the Aesthetics of Femininity”, Athenaeum Review, 25/07/2019, University of Dallas, Texas, TX. Consult on line at: https://athenaeumreview.org/ review/christian-dior-and-the-aesthetics-offemininity/ [consulted: 29/10/2019].

6 The Tapissier style (1869-1889) inspired by the style of the same name that predominates in these years in interior design that focusses interest on the rears of ensembles, achieved by using and adapting materials and fabrics that at the same time accentuate the hips.

From the end of the nineteenth-century to 1914, the predominant Belle Époque style incorporates most of that interest in derrières while giving more importance to corsets, that shape the new feminine silhouette and gives a sharper cut to fabrics. For more information on these styles, see: L’Album du Musée de la Mode & du Textile, Musée de la Mode et du Textile, Réunion des Musées Nationaux, Paris, 1997, p. 82-99.

7 Christian Dior, Christian Dior and I, E. P. Dutton & Company INC., New York, 1957, p. 249.

DIOR / DALÍ. REVOLUTION AND TRADITION

Christian Dior. Press communiqué for the first haute couture collection, spring 1947, Corolle and En Huit lines.

Collection Dior Héritage, Paris

25

On 12 February 1947, in Paris, Christian Dior revolutionizes fashion with the launch of his new collection, soon to be dubbed the New Look,4 a term that heralds a new way of conceiving the feminine aesthetic and designing fashion [FIG. 1]. A reactionary against his times, as he defines himself, in his designs Dior seeks this revolution in dress through an appeal to the past, centred on France’s period of glory

this was exactly the function my first collection performed. […] clothes which were well made, and styles which for the first time in years were ‘becoming’ and ‘pretty’. In 1947 it was time for fashion to forsake adventure and make a temporary return to base.”8 The intrinsic wish to return fashion to its origins implies the renewal of an abandoned tradition, opting for artisanal techniques of manufacture where maîtrise rules in the making of his creations.9 He thus moves away from the preceding practical, functional, mass-produced fashion to return to an art of dress-making that “wanted to revert to its true function: enhancing feminine beauty”.10 After a period of convulsions, marked by the fighting of two world wars, Dior dreams of restoring joie de vivre, pursuing an ideal of happiness with which he not only wants to embellish women but also to make them more fortunate in life.11 In parallel, in his “treatise” on painting 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship (1948) Salvador Dalí calls for a return to the classical tradition via the grand masters of the Renaissance, recovering the technical skills and flair of the past, re-asserting the value of painting in oils and processes of artistic creation in order to refashion the history of painting.12 Disassociating himself from almost all the “isms” that according to the artist had led to a hollow emptiness

8 Christian Dior, Christian Dior and I, op. cit., p. 46.

9 Christian Dior, Christian Dior and I, op. cit., p. 248.

10 Cit. supra, n. 8. Dior wanted to distance himself from the stylistic paths opened by Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli as well as styles like Zazou. Chanel had democratized style with a practical style and a masculine touch, while Elsa Schiaparelli’s extravagant, surrealist ideas had, according to Dior, swept away the frontiers of distinction.

11 Christian Dior, Christian Dior and I, op. cit., p. 57.

12 Salvador Dalí, 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship, Dial Press, New York, 1948. For an in-depth exploration of this subject see the articles by Montse Aguer and Laura Bartolomé, ‘Dalí. A history of painting’, p. 160-171, and Lucia Moni, “Dalí: to become classic! or tradition as backdrop”, p. 178-183, published in the exhibition catalogue, Dalí. Une histoire de la peinture, Grimaldi Forum, Éditions Hazan, Monaco, Paris, 2019.

in painting,13 Dalí proclaims himself the redeemer of modern art and publicly declares the mission behind his art: “But, at this moment, a new name emerges: Dali, who, exactly like all the other great names, longs to follow the ancient tradition. […] the history of art finds in Dali a new starting point.”14 Aged 43 and preparing to paint his first masterpiece, the artist assures his reader that “I can guarantee that it is more meritorious to create beauty in 1947 than under the paternal tutelage of a Perugino”.15

13 In the Bignou Gallery catalogue he states: “Contemporary art, with the disintegration of the abstractionist ‘isms’ threatens to submerge the history of art once more in a totally anonymous pseudo-decorativism.” Salvador Dalí, “Appendix. History of Art, Short but Clear”, New Paintings by Salvador Dalí, Bignou Gallery, New York, 1947, p. 20-21.

14 Salvador Dalí, “Appendix. History of Art, Short but Clear”, New Paintings by Salvador Dalí, op. cit., p. 21.

15 Salvador Dalí, “Dalí, Dalí, Dalí”, New Paintings by Salvador Dalí, op. cit., p. 5.

16 Christian Dior, Christian Dior and I, op. cit., p. 40.

17 Ilya Parkins, “Christian Dior and the Aesthetics of Femininity”, op. cit.

FIG. 3

His passion for flowers, already reflected in his silhouettes and embroidering of fabrics from 1947 in the Corolle and En Huit lines, will become a constant in his whole creative corpus, defining his style in the art of pleasing.18 He shares this interest in flowers with Dalí dating back to the Thirties, when both of them threw themselves into the search for art nouveau, anachronistic and démodé objects19. Their morphologies, their women with wavy hair and sinuous lines, adorned with flowers and projecting a beauty awakening ecstasy, “were one day to re-appear with the ‘new look’.”20 The new style was focussed on form and unity, sculptured and shaped in the

18 Christian Dior, Christian Dior and I, op. cit., p. 45-46. As Dior himself explains, he inherits this fondness for flowers from his mother, who from childhood encouraged him to find pleasure tending the plants surrounding the family house, a habit he then cultivated throughout his life in his various private residencies.

19 Salvador Dalí, “Salvador Dali’s mimicry in nature”, Flair, annual 1953, Chicago, IL, p. 206.

20 Translated from: Salvador Dalí, “Le Mythe de Guillaume Tell”, La Table Ronde, no. 55, 07/1952, Paris, p. 27.

DIOR / DALÍ. REVOLUTION AND TRADITION

Salvador Dalí. “Proget de robe du soir” 1939 “Elegan Woman”?, illustration for The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, 1939-1941. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres

26

With the New Look, Dior not only brings back a traditional way of dress-making and dressing women, but also creates a new concept of femininity, that had been forgotten in the inter-war period, through a new stylistic model in which corsets are brought back, hips are accentuated and skirts lengthened. “I designed clothes for flower-like women, clothes with rounded shoulders, full feminine busts, and willowy waists above enormous spreading skirts. Such a fragile air can be achieved only by solid construction.”16 With his “flower-like” woman he is responding to the implicit needs of a society that wants to express itself by formulating a new canon of beauty with a fragile, delicate look that contrasts with the rigorous construction of his designs. That minute devotion to the detail of dresses, the technical precision in the making of each dress and the quality of his materials make Dior a “gardener” who is not content with allowing his flowers to grow in the wild, rather, on the contrary, he keeps them in a state of perfection and total elegance.17

FIG. 2

Salvador Dalí. Illustrations for the article “The kingdom of fashion” published in the Dalí News, vol. I, no. 2, 25/11/1947, New York.

Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí collection.

Centre for Dalinian Studies

female body, the basis for the manufacture of his creations in an evident desire to exalt women’s shapes and make them visible: “I wanted my dresses to be constructed like buildings, molded to the curves of the female form, stylizing its shape. I emphasized the width of the hips, and gave the bust its true prominence; and in order to give my models more ‘presence’ I revived the old tradition of cambric or taffeta linings.”21 Dior, a visionary for his time, thus decrees what the new feminine silhouette of the elegant, sophisticated, modern woman should be, with creations that like Dalí’s “unsellable”22 paintings, are often labelled as impossible to wear.23 The truth is that

21 Christian Dior, Christian Dior and I, op. cit., p. 40.

22 Dalí had himself said that “Dior was one of the first people in Paris to concern himself with the sale of my ‘unsellable’ surrealist paintings.” Cit. supra, n. 1. On the reception of Dalí’s work in Paris and the figure of Dior as a dealer and gallery director see “The passion for art” in this catalogue.

23 “Women in Dallas Deride Long Skirts”, New York Times, 24/08/1947, New York, NY, p. 24; Natalie Knight, “Dior — Women Too Fussed

by Longer Skirts”, The Gazette, 18/09/1947, Cedar Rapids, IA, p. 25.

re-instates the archetype of the eternal feminine, where women are transformed into passive objects, of adornment and contemplation, via dresses that emphasize desire and seduction.30 At the same time, the publicity and models chosen by the designer will become the brand’s key resources in projecting the New Look31 and turning his creations into fetish-like symbols of luxury and glamour.

24 Marcia Winn, “Dior Who Began That New Look, Meets Old Style”, The Daily Oklahoman, 25/09/1947, Oklahoma City, OK, p. 13.

28 Dave Hoff, Salvador Dalí, “Surrealist Creates ‘New’ Look In Reverse”, Oakland Tribune, 21/10/1947, Oakland, CA, p. 14.

31 Ana Balda, Cristóbal Balenciaga, una singular política de comunicación frente al avance prêt-à-porter, op. cit., p. 327, 329.

25 Christian Dior interviewed by Dilys Jones in “Paris Designer of Long Skirt Defends Art Here”, The San Francisco Examiner, 16/09/1947, San Francisco, CA, p. 10.

29 Salvador Dalí, “The Kingdom of Fashion”, Dalí News, vol. I, no. 2, 25/11/1947, New York, NY, p. 2.

32 Translated from: Christian Dior, Je suis couturier, Éditions Conquistador, Paris, 1951, p. 128.

30 Ana Balda, Cristóbal Balenciaga, una singular política de comunicación frente al avance prêt-à-porter, University of Navarra, Navarra, 2013, p. 74, [doctoral thesis]. Available at: http://dadun.unav.edu/handle/10171/48148 [consulted: 25/11/2019].

33 On the occasion of a charity tombola to raise money for soldiers, held in Dior’s birthplace, in Granville, a fortune-teller read the lines on young Christian’s hand and predicted: “You will suffer poverty […] But women are lucky for you, and through them you will achieve success. You will make a great deal of money out of them, and you will have to travel widely.”

Christian Dior, Christian Dior and I, op. cit., p. 15.

FIG. 4

the new conception he launches triggers criticism and polemics. On the one hand, it put an end to short skirts, a change that generated revulsion in US society; on the other, the high costs involved in acquiring one of his creations at a moment when Europe was mired in a state of economic and social impoverishment led to annoyance in some quarters.24 Dior defends himself from those discordant voices, by affirming that he considers himself an artist and thus feels under no compulsion to follow norms imposed by others.25

26

Cit. supra, n. 1.

27 Throughout his artistic career Dalí participates in the field of fashion. His activity mainly begins in the Thirties with one of his great collaborations in the field with the designer Elsa Schiaparelli. However, in parallel, he also collaborates in the design of wardrobes for plays, ballets and operas. In the Forties he will collaborate in the design of patterns for various American companies and in articles and designs for fashion magazines like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar. The presence of items of dress can also be seen in his paintings, as, for example, in The Lugubrious Game [cat. no. P 232], from 1929, where various hats can be seen.

27

Willy Maywald. Éventail dress, Christian Dior winter 1948-1949 collection, Ailée line.

Collection Dior Héritage, Paris

DIOR / DALÍ. REVOLUTION AND TRADITION

As for Dalí, he discusses Dior’s styles in the same vein, defending his own new approach to style: “I’m in favor of the long skirts, because they give woman

greater mystery.”26 The artist, who from the start of his career had felt drawn to the world of fashion and made his own incursions into that area, doesn’t remain untouched by the new conceptions that Dior launches.27 In that same year of 1947 he praises the new silhouette for women that Dior brings to his collection: “It is a question of changing the form of a woman. […] The function of a dress is to transform the body for a new silhouette [...] After 20 years Dior’s styles today point out the most important anatomy of the feminine body — the hips.”28 In parallel, in the Dalí News, a newspaper written and published by the artist, he exalts Dior as a successful designer and comments in an article entitled “The kingdom of fashion” on his own ability to anticipate in this field: “The terrifying morphological anatomies of the feminine figures of the 1937-39 Dali have been proved prophetic by the triumph of Cristian Dior’s concept of feminine beauty, especially in the importance given to the hipbones and derrieres, and the return of the corset to fashion” [FIG. 2].29 Drawings like those accompanying the article or the “Proget de robe du soir” 1939 “Elegant Woman”? are a clear instance of his multi-faceted creative ability and at the same time allow a range of parallels to be established with Dior’s conceptions centred on emphasizing the bust, cinching the waist and accentuating the hips [FIG. 3, FIG. 4].

These principles become the key values in the creation of the new femininity à la Dior, which in some respects

Installed at l’Avenue Montaigne no. 30, Dior himself gives voice to the challenge he faces in a period of desolation after the ravages wrought by the Second World War: “I considered the exercise of my trade as a kind of struggle against all that is demoralising and mediocre in our times.”32 To achieve that end, he relies on women, advisers, friends, workers, customers, who, as the fortune-teller in Granville had predicted in 1919,33 would be propitious for him, and through them he triumphed in the eleven years of his short, but successful career.

Dalí, for his part, reveals himself as the messianic “Salvador” [Saviour] of modern art — of the twentiethcentury — “in this abominable epoch of mechanical and mediocre catastrophes in which we have the distress and the honor to live.”34 To carry out that mission, he relies once again on Gala’s support, a collaboration that was vital to his project, a Gala who, assimilated in the image of the new, contemporary Leda, discovers and inspires the classicism of his soul.35

34 Salvador Dalí, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, Dial Press, New York, 1942, p. 4.

35 As Dalí himself affirms, “Gala discovers and inspires the classicism of my soul”, Salvador Dalí, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, op. cit., p. 344.

“One should either be a work of Art, or wear a work of Art.”1 — oscar wilde

GALA WEARS DIOR 1 Oscar Wilde, The writings of Oscar Wilde. Epigrams: phrases and philosophies for the use of the young, A. R. Keller & Co, Inc., London, New York, 1907, p. 143.

At the end of 1947, attentive to the new stylistic departures Christian Dior is introducing in the world of fashion, Gala voices her opinion on his new professional departures, and at the same time underlines the admiration he felt for Dalí’s work: “Christian Dior, he makes the study of Dali paintings and he has transcended his point of view.”5 Gala cleverly glimpses in Dior’s style, creative

2 In the few letters from Gala to Paul Éluard still extant, she not only expresses her own ideas for the dresses she wants made for herself, but, in one letter even includes a drawing of a model of dress and the type of materials she wants to be used in its manufacture, Paul Éluard, Lettres à Gala, 1924-1948, Gallimard, Paris, 1984, letter 7 (p. 385), letter 11 (p. 392). The letters sent by Paul Éluard to his muse, also include references to Gala’s dresses. See the letters 11 (p. 28), 12 (p. 30), 14 (p. 33) and 20 (p. 39).

3 Julien Levy, Memoir of an art gallery, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1977, p. 173.

4 For an-depth study of how Gala wants to project herself in the work of Dalí, see: Fiona Bradley, “Doubling and Dédoublement: Gala in Dalí”, Art History, vol. 17, no. 4, 12/1994, Oxford (UK), Cambridge (USA), p. 612-630 and Estrella de Diego, Gala Salvador Dalí. A Room of One’s Own in Púbol, Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, Barcelona, 2018.

5 Gala Dalí, interview published in “The New Look Is Old Hat to Dali — but ‘He Likes’”, Chronicle, 22/10/1947, San Francisco, CA.

“I have no wish to deprive fashion (and the ladies) of the added allure and charm of color, but I could perfectly well design a whole collection in black or white and express all my idea to my complete satisfaction.”9 The creation is complemented by a black, helmetshaped hat and gloves, as can be seen from the model worn by Noëlle and the cover of the Modes & Travaux magazine [CAT. 13, CAT. 15].

On the occasion of the 1950 Salvador Dalí exhibition in New York’s Carstairs Gallery photographer Marvin Koner immortalizes Gala — alongside the artist — in an haute couture creation signed off by Christian Dior [CAT. 14]. The elegance this design confers on Gala enhances her bust and cinches her waist, that disappears into the full skirt.

Presented as an evening dress with the name Musée du Louvre,7 this model is remarkable for its mother-of-pearl whiteness combined with exquisite black embroidered flowers and foliage, covered in silvery sequins, rocaille and sparkling cut- glass beads, the work of René Beque (Rébé) [CAT. 16].8 White and black, the favoured colours of the Dior brand and basis of this creation in particular, pinpoint the designer’s creative process [CAT. 12]. As Dior himself notes in his memoirs, his collections are born from sketches on paper. And the whole of this preliminary work constitutes the foundation of his future dresses, while fabrics and colours belong to a second stage of creation:

GALA WEARS DIOR

ability and revolutionizing of fashion design, an opportunity to forge her own image. By wearing Dior’s haute couture creation, Gala proclaims a new cult of femininity and she uses seduction, promoted by Dior,6 to project an image that at once attracts and repels all those who gaze at her.

29

While Dalí and Dior engage with new creative horizons, Gala embellishes her body and searches for a unique image for herself through the painter’s works, where she becomes model and muse, and shows off her taste in fashion in every single public appearance. From the moment she arrived in Paris in 1916, she had sought a way to project and construct herself through the way she dressed.2 That quest intensified in the Thirties, when Coco Chanel and Elsa Schiaparelli competed to dress her,3 intuiting that she — the muse of surrealism — was an unrivalled trendsetter. Jealous of her personal image, a narcissist and obsessed with detail, Gala chooses equally how she will be portrayed in Dalí’s work and how she will present herself to society in a modern, sophisticated manner.4 The transitions in the way she dresses interrogate and highlight her own personal contradictions while revealing a changing, metamorphic style.

That collection and the name chosen for this and other models represent Dior’s homage to Paris the capital of fashion, with a range of names that refer to the city’s monuments, buildings, streets, squares, neighbourhoods and emblematic parks. The designer himself declares that “fashion is breathed in with the very air of Paris”10 and Gala selects this museum-piece for the event at the Carstairs Gallery, thus projecting a spell-binding femininity and style of her own. The muse attracts the gazes of the visitors to an exhibition where she is the star work in the show, personified in The Madonna of Portlligat [CAT. NO. P 660], a painting that Dalí exhibits here in public for the first time.

Gala displays her liking for Dior’s haute couture in another stellar item in his collection, a red coat, the colour of poppies [CAT. 21].11 She is photographed in this garment by Ricard Sans — next

6 Ilya Parkins, “Christian Dior and the Aesthetics of Femininity”, Athenaeum Review, 25/7/2019, University of Dallas, Texas, TX. Consult on line: https://athenaeumreview.org/review/ christian-dior-and-the-aesthetics-of-femininity/ [consulted: 29/10/2019].

9 Christian Dior, Christian Dior and I, E. P. Dutton & Company INC., New York, 1957, p. 99.

7 Programme of the 1949 springsummer haute couture collection, the Trompel’œil line, Collection Dior Héritage, París. The Musée du Louvre creation corresponds to model number 95 in the collection.

11 Programme, op.cit., Trompe-l’œil line: The Saint-Ouen coat corresponds to model number 150 of the collection.

8 René Beque, known as Rébé, worked for Maison Dior designing embroidery and brocades for many of its creations.

10 Christian Dior, Christian Dior and I, op. cit., p. 39.

The Sans double-exposure print highlights the fine way the costume hangs and moves, the flow of the fabric and svelteness the coat lends Gala’s body. If we compare archive photos and its present state, we can see that Gala’s model was later modified, since the pockets of the bust, that overshadowed and gave volume to the bosom in a Trompe-l’œil effect, and the collar lapels were removed from the ensemble. The waist was also broadened with the

12 Ibidem.

13 Ibidem.

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Baptized Saint-Ouen, no doubt in reference to the Paris neighbourhood of that name, it is another example of what Dior wanted to express in his new collection: “The aim of the line […] is to bring to the silhouette the correctives necessary to release the entire value of the fabric, unleash the suppleness of the body and allow it complete freedom of movement” [CAT. 17].12 As shown in the model worn by Sylvie Hirsch and Hélène Korniloff in magazines and photos of the time, “the bust is filled out at the expense of a straightforward skirt with no obvious pockets”,13 heightening the roundness of the hips and accentuating and diminishing the waist [CAT. 18, CAT. 19].

In 1931 Paul Éluard had dedicated a poem to Gala in which he imagined her wearing a red coat and black stockings, in lines where the eroticisation bestowed on the colours and the subversion of images between the nude female body and the adorning dress reveal a desire to see the dreamt of body.14 Gala may also have been aware of the views of Dior himself, who in The Little Dictionary of Fashion refers to the importance of having a red coat as a must in the feminine wardrobe: “In winter, I think a red coat is very nice because it is such a warm-looking colour; and if most of your frocks and suits are in neutral shades a red coat will go very well with them.”15 The two Dior models in Gala’s wardrobe are part of the Trompe-l’œil haute couture exhibition inaugurated on 8 February 1949 in Paris with a conceptual focus inscribed in artistic terminology.

Dior is mainly searching for the effect of illusion in his pieces through the texture of fabrics and defining presence of particular volumes and shapes. The use of an artistic term to denote his

14 “Woman with whom I have lived / Woman with whom I live / Woman with whom I shall live / Always the same / You need a red coat / Red gloves a red mask / And black stockings / Reasons proofs / To see you all naked / Pure nudity O adornment adorned / Breasts O my heart”. Translated from: Paul Éluard, Lettres à Gala, 1924-1948, op. cit., p. 137. The poem titled, Par une nuit nouvelle, is part of a letter that Éluard writes to Gala around February 1931.

15 Christian Dior, The Little Dictionary of Fashion: A Guide to Dress Sense for Every Woman, V&A Publishing, London, 2017, p. 96.

GALA WEARS DIOR

addition of a small black belt, so that the constraints on that part of the body and the volume given to the hips disappear.

to Dalí — in the intimate setting of their house in Portlligat in 1951 [CAT. 20].

collection is proof of the passion for the arts that marked his youth and guides his future professional career. The designer tries to ensure his creations emulate different artifices within artistic creation,16 an intention close to the concept Dalí had explored years earlier in his surrealist paintings through double images, the foundation of his paranoidcritical method.

In the programme for the Trompel’œil collection reference is made to its two founding principles: “one, the various effects from pockets and low neck-lines that give the bust relief and substance while respecting the natural slope of the shoulders; the other, that grants the body its line and brings a necessary breadth and movement to the skirt.”17 Using artisanal techniques, Dior manufactures pieces that emphasize surface through the use of embroidery and lace, lapels and pockets, that serve to endow the bust and chest with more volume, reinforce the silhouette and achieve artistic effects in the various creations.18 These details that offer the gaze a premeditated illusion recall the ingenious, decorative and functional “pocket-drawers” that Elsa Schiaparelli, in collaboration with Salvador Dalí,19 had inserted in the creations presented at

16 Richard Martin, Harold Koda, Christian Dior, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1996, p. 44. Available on line at: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/metpublications/Christian_Dior [consulted: 13/01/2020].

17 Spring-summer 1949 haute couture collection programme, Trompe-l’œil line, Collection Dior Héritage, París.

18 Richard Martin, Harold Koda, Christian Dior, op. cit., p. 43-44.

19 The artist had also collaborated with this designer on The Skeleton Dress in the Circus collection (1938), where bones become the ornamental feature via the illusion the use of fabrics creates. An example of this model is preserved in London’s Victoria & Albert Museum.

It is worth recalling that at the time the artist is being influenced by new artistic tendencies in America, pop art,

20 Salvador Dalí, “Las opiniones de Salvador Dalí”, Panorama, year VIII, no. 206, 06-12/04/1971, Buenos Aires, p. 37.

21 Marc Bohan was the artistic director of Maison Dior for the years 1961-1986. His time at Maison Dior is renowned for the chic style that characterized the Sixties. For Bohan, following Dior, the feminine body was also the foundation for his sculpting of the feminine body. In his style, Bohan lengthened silhouettes and refined body lines, thus defining a dynamic femininity freed of restraints. With his idea of skirts with biascut and dropped waists and natural shoulders, what would later be known as the Slim Look was born, Christian Dior Mag: https://www.dior. com/diormag/en_hk/article/dior-marc-bohan [consulted: 29/11/2019]. For an in-depth study of Marc Bohan’s years as director of Maison Dior see: Dior by Marc Bohan, 1961-1986, Assouline, Paris, 2018.

22 Translated from: Salvador Dalí, “Las opiniones de Salvador Dalí», op. cit. p. 37.

23 Ibidem.

24 Ibidem.

op art and hyperrealism, that make a considerable impact on his work in the Sixties and Seventies.25 Dalí implicitly suggests this garment on Gala’s body stimulates his creativity and that it will be a real technical challenge to paint.

The work was never painted, though Dalí did work on it as is evident from the photograph taken by Marc Lacroix in Portlligat. Gala, wearing that creation, poses in front of the easel while the artist makes his first notes before beginning work on the painting he has anticipated [CAT. 22].26 It is likely that Gala felt a real weakness for this Dior dress, in which she was photographed again by Lacroix, this time in the Piano Room in her castle in Púbol [CAT. 23]. One of the few the muse allowed to be taken in that private space, this photograph was used to illustrate the fiftieth anniversary issue of Vogue magazine, in a rare reportages for which she agreed to open up and share that intimate backdrop [CAT. 24].27

GALA WEARS DIOR

Gala felt attracted by Dior’s designs from the beginning of his career as a designer and continued to show confidence in him years after his death in 1957. During 1970, and on the occasion of Christmas Eve,20 Gala gleamed in a new Maison Dior creation in a period when it was directed

by Marc Bohan [CAT. 25].21 Dalí describes this piece as “a lamé dress made up of tiny, many-coloured scales. The most difficult thing in the world to paint”,22 and he expresses his desire to paint Gala, the being he loves most,23 wearing this dress, in what would have to be “the world’s most expensive painting”.24 The model, a two-piece dress comprising an ankle-length skirt and matching blouse with an orientalising pattern, is striking for what its tones and transparencies bring to the body. The illusion the gold lamé evokes for the eye, with its glitter and mix of lilacs, oranges, pinks and greens, gives Gala a fun, playful air that most assuredly captivated Dalí and triggered his creativity.

31

the 1936-1937 winter collection. Gala had showed off one of these models on a visit to the Coliseum in Rome around 1936.

on his mind and the public’s, and thus becoming true muses and collaborators.

By constructing her own personal image where she can find and express herself, Gala is reflected in the ephemeral mirror of Dior’s fashion and seeks in his dresses not so much the woman she would like to be as the woman she truly is.29 In this way, she asserts herself in her own style, selecting the clothes that most favour her, in a pure act of self-knowledge. At the same time, Gala, Dalí’s muse and tireless collaborator, is reflected in the mirror of his work that also enables her to transform herself into a genuine work of art.

Dior once declared that “clients who know how to choose are the couturier’s antennae.”28 For the designer, these clients are the ones who discern the models that will set trends and inspire his next collection, etching themselves

25 For an in-depth exploration of Dalí’s work in this period and the way he is influenced

by American art of the Sixties and Seventies, see the articles by Estrella de Diego (“The history of art as told by the new masters”) and Torsten Otte (“Salvador Dalí and Pop Art: encounters with Andy Warhol and beyond”) in Dalí. Une histoire de la peinture, Grimaldi Forum, Éditions Hazan, Monaco, Paris, 2019, p. 102-117 and p. 118-131.

26 According to Marc Lacroix, this Dior dress endows Gala with a siren’s look, no doubt because of the fabric’s coloured scales and the pose she adopts in front of the easel. See: Dalí, Lacroix, Gala: the privilege of intimacy, Fundación Eugenio Granell, Santiago de Compostela, 2000, p. 29, 109.

27 The first time this photograph is used to illustrate an article in the 1971 special issue of Vogue entirely curated by Dalí to celebrate its fiftieth anniversary, Le Vogué de Salvador Dalí, “Numéro du cinquantenaire 1921/1971 réalisé par Salvador Dalí”, Vogue, no. 522, 12/1971 – 01/1972, Paris, p. 176-177. In June, a photograph from the same series appears in the Italian magazine Bolaffiarte: Salvador Dalí, Michel Conil Lacoste, “Dalí, il genio delirante”, year 3, no. 21, 30/6/1972, Turin, p. 54-67.

28 Christian Dior, “Christian Dior : Je suis couturier”, Elle, no. 298, 24/09/1951, p. 29.

29 Ibidem.

“How did you come to meet your friends? I should answer that since we come from quite different backgrounds we met purely by chance, or rather in obedience to those mysterious laws which Goethe called elective affinities.”1 — christian dior

DALÍ / DIOR AFFINITIES IN ART AND FASHION 1 Christian Dior, Christian Dior and I, E. P. Dutton & Company INC., New York, 1957, p. 227.

FIG. 1

2 Dave Hoff, Salvador Dalí, “Surrealist Creates ‘New’ Look In Reverse”, Oakland Tribune, 21/10/1947, Oakland, CA, p. 14. According to Bettina Ballard, Dior’s Paris residence had works by artists including Dalí on display on the red velvet walls above the fireplace. See: Bettina Ballard, In My Fashion, Séguier, Paris, 2016, p. 338.

FIG. 2

FIG. 3

Sketch for Dalí dress, autumn-winter 1949-1950 collection, Milieu du siècle line 1949. Collection Dior Héritage, Paris

Christian Dior. Dalí dress, autumn-winter 1949-1950 collection, Milieu du siècle line. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

fashion. The affinities between Dalí and Dior reveal the influences established between these two creative worlds, that occupy an important space in the work and lives of both artists.

for his creations: in 1938, in one of his contributions as fashion illustrator for Le Figaro newspaper, he included a variety of designs inspired by and named after the painters Goya, Manet, Velázquez, Chardin and Winterhalter [FIG. 1].5 In this new collection, Dior once more dedicates some of his models to diverse mid-century artists, the most prominent, apart from Dalí, being Derain, Matisse, Braque, Picasso and Bérard.6

Christian Dior presents the Dalí model in the autumn-winter 1949-1950 haute couture collection Milieu du siècle [FIG. 2, FIG. 3].3 This collection is based on the models’ inner geometry in a style that sets out to reflect and represent their era4 and modern, mid-century life. It too reflects the artistic baggage Dior had collected in his youth. In fact, it isn’t the first time that the designer has had recourse to art and artists to find titles

3 Programme of the autumn-winter 1949-1950 haute couture collection, Milieu du siècle line. Collection Dior Héritage, Paris.

This creation corresponds to number 51 in the collection. An example of the Dalí model is now in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and is the one we reproduce in this catalogue. Link: https://www.metmuseum. org/art/collection/search/83745 [consulted: 07/11/2019]. For detailed information on this creation and the collection it belongs to, see: Richard Martin, Harold Koda, Christian Dior, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1996, p. 43-44 i p. 60-61. Available on line at: https:// www.metmuseum.org/art/metpublications/ Christian_Dior [consulted: 13/01/2020].

4 Ibidem.

DALÍ / DIOR. AFFINITIES IN ART AND FASHION

The mutual admiration that Dior and Dalí expressed in their professional and personal careers is reflected in some of their best work. In 1947 Dalí, who had already pronounced on Dior’s new revolution, echoes the fascination the designer feels for his paintings: “Christian Dior is the French designer who is an extraordinary admirer of my canvases.”2 Perhaps that is why in 1949 Dior decides to create a model named after the artist for his new collection, once again showing his admiration for the painter. In turn, Dalí paints a portrait of Berthe David-Weill in 1952 wearing a magnificent Dior creation, demonstrating his sensitivity towards

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Christian Dior designs published in Le Figaro, 02/06/1938, Paris. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris

The Dalí model presented in the collection programme as a semievening ensemble7 is notable for the two lapels along the bust-line that give volume to the profile and emphasize

5 “Les pages féminines du Figaro”, Le Figaro, year 113, no. 153, 02/06/1938, Paris, p. 2, 6-7. It is interesting to note that in respect of these designs Dior isn’t inspired by contemporary artists like Dalí and the surrealists but by painters from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, which indicates the direction his style will take in 1947 when he returns to the tradition and styles of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries.

6 Programme of the autumn-winter 1949-1950 haute couture collection, Milieu du siècle line. Collection Dior Héritage, Paris.

Christian Bérard was the close friend of the designer who in 1947 entrusted him with most of the decoration of his Paris first shop at 30, Avenue Montaigne.

7 According to the collection programme, the intention was to emphasize the importance of semi-evening creations that better fit the needs of modern life.

Although this pattern is totally dissimilar to Dalí’s style, its references to nature

8 Christian Dior, Christian Dior and I, op. cit., p. 97: “The dress and the mannequin are often as inseparable as the dress and the material”.

9 Christian Dior, Christian Dior and I, op. cit., p. 244.

10 Dave Hoff, Salvador Dalí, “Surrealist Creates ‘New’ Look In Reverse”, op. cit., p. 14.

11 Cécile Clare, “Les neuf sources d’inspiration de Christian Dior”, Ce Soir, year 13, no. 2446, 28/08/1949, Paris, p. 2.

12 Programme Milieu du siècle, op. cit.

13 Ibidem.

Dior’s stylistic corpus is scattered with references to art, as is evident in the Dalí creation and many others.

This is reflected in the titles of his creations, the choice of patterns, the definition of colours and the selection of jewels accompanying the collection.

Similarly in the hand programmes we find patterns and colours inspired by the cave paintings in the Dordogne16 and materials that evoke Van Gogh’s sunflowers and Renoir and Dutch painter’s impressionist fields of flowers.17 Vermeer’s blue impregnates the fabrics, and pearls in the shape of pears — in an allusion to Girl with a Pearl Earring — are recommended for evening wear.18

14 Salvador Dalí, “Total camouflage for total war”, Esquire, vol. XVIII, no. 2, 08/1942, New York, NY, p. 64-66, 130. Among other issues, the artist touches on psychological camouflage as regards the creation of invisible images and the interplay of double images reflected in his paintings, as well as the way some insects mimic one another in the natural world.

In Dalí’s case, fashion is also a constant in his work and can be charted through numerous artistic projects where, on specific occasions, he seems to want to pay homage to Dior. In 1952 Mrs Berthe David-Weill commissions him to paint her portrait and poses for Dalí in a Dior dress known as Tourterelle (Turtledove), in which she will be immortalized for posterity19 [FIG. 4, FIG. 5]. Quite unawares, Dalí and Dior enjoy another rendezvous in the Portrait of Berthe David-Weill [CAT. NO. P 582].

DALÍ / DIOR. AFFINITIES IN ART AND FASHION

and the effects achieved on the fabric could suggest a degree of camouflage that is certainly present in Dalí’s work through the interplay of double images.14 In an article published in Flair magazine in 1953, the painter again spotlights his ability to anticipate, when he foresees that subsequently female fashion will be guided by the mimesis of woman in nature: «leaf-women, stick-women, autumnal-wood-women. [...]. Women who will disappear into the trees, who will disintegrate on a patch of moss, and whose silhouette will be of thorns tender as roses — roses transparent as a Lalique dragonfly wing».15 This new leaf-woman, autumnal-wood-woman that the artist prophesies in fashion seems already to be suggested and predicted in the patterns of the creation bearing his name, with the material that becomes part of the body hosting it.

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the low neck-line, while the back is left bare. Dior plays with the fabrics in order to expose and cover the female body in his wish to enhance the silhouette and make body and material a seamless unit.8 For the designer, who had openly expressed his vocation as an architect, a dress is an ephemeral, architectural item that puts into relief the proportions of the female body.9 Dalí also veers towards the same idea two years earlier when he refers to the symbiosis between body and dress: “A woman in dress should be contrary to the nude, but instead the dress shows exactly the body.”10 The eroticism conferred on the female body and clothes that both Dior and Dalí create, projects an optical illusion around their forms in a desire to accentuate the invisible and make it visible. The model inspired by shirt styles in vogue during the birth of surrealism,11 follows an oblique line, like many fabrics in this collection.12 The patterns are striking for the autumnal tones of the intricately embroidered gold and bronze foliage that overlays and contrasts with the black satin background. The belt emphasizes the waist and gathers in the skirt, which is noteworthy for its central pleat and side pockets, “set low enough to reinforce the suppleness of the bust and deliberately affecting the shape of a croissant.”13 The ensemble is rounded off with a mink coat lined in the same pattern.

From the end of the Forties, Dalí redoubled his efforts in the portrait genre and depicted many high society celebrities. According to the painter, “my aim was to establish a rapport of fatality between each of the different personalities” in order to constitute “the sum of the mediumistic and iconographic volume that each person represented was capable of releasing in my mind”.20 In most of these paintings, the landscape had become the characteristic background, thus perpetuating one of the painter’s most admired and coveted elements from the Twenties. Similarly, on this occasion landscape is completely relegated to the background in order to focus all attention on the woman portrayed and her features. Sitting solemnly and looking out at the spectator, she is located in a becalmed ambience. Only three thorn-less roses and a carpet with flower motifs in the lower left corner adorn the composition with a backdrop covered in blacks and browns.

15 Salvador Dalí, “Salvador Dali’s mimicry in nature”, Flair, Annual 1953, Chicago, IL, p. 206.

For the artist, a symptom of this prophecy is the presence of butterflies in the Paris collections. In fact, two years before, in 1951, Dior presented the haute couture collection L’Ovale with patterns inspired by colours and designs “seen through the microscope of iridescent butterfly wings” as well as a “quilted frock” embroidered with “dragonflies and insects drawn from nature”.

Programme of the spring-summer 1951 haute couture L’Ovale collection, Naturelle line. See: Hommage à Christian Dior: 1947-1957, Musée des Arts de la Mode, 1986, Paris, p. 157. In 1953 Dalí enters a designer competition with Woman of the future in New York’s Roxy Theatre, with a design that transforms model Toni Hollingsworth into a butterfly, that was immortalized by photographer Philippe Halsman.

Curiously, Dior also sought out in the Tourterelle dress and other creations from the autumn-winter 1948-1949 Ailée collection, a winged effect achieved in this model via the rocaille treatment of the surface and the pleats of the materials.22 The designer was intent

DALÍ / DIOR. AFFINITIES IN ART AND FASHION

53

In this composition, Dalí captures the sumptuous beauty of the Dior dress which he places absolute centre stage in minute painterly work that seeks to make it palpable to the eye. With a palette of tones that extend from iridescent blues to pale mauves, the artist demonstrates once more his technical skill in the way he recreates the garment. The materials, linked in the interplay of their sinuous lines, confer a spatial volume on the dress, in which Mrs David-Weill seems to be poised as weightlessly as the roses accompanying her. This floating effect that Dalí captures in the dress and grants the woman portrayed is similar to the ones we see in works like The Madonna of Portlligat [CAT. NO. P 660], one of the paintings that best reflects the nuclear mystical phase in which the artist is immersed at the time.21 Indeed, a number of parallel features can be found between these two paintings, since the roses surrounding Mrs David-Weill are also present at the feet of The Madonna of Portlligat. And the exploding atom — represented by a circumference surrounded by four architectural elements in the centre of the bench — also seems to be suggested by the golden shapes of the cover of the book Mrs David-Weill is holding on her lap.

FIG. 4

Christian Dior. Tourterelle dress, autumnwinter 1948 haute couture collection, Ailée line replacement version for Berthe David-Weill, 1957.

The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Donation by Mrs. Pierre David-Weill, 1975 FIG. 5

Salvador Dalí. Portrait of Berthe David-Weill, 1952.

The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, New York. Berthe David-Weill bequest, 1986

16 Programme of L’Ovale, op. cit. See: Hommage à Christian Dior: 1947-1957, op. cit, p. 157. The French province of the Dordogne preserves several examples of cave paintings in a variety of sheltered locations. Dior is also inspired by the paintings in Ariège, specifically in the Masd’Azil cave, the title of one of the creations in this collection. For these models see: Intramontabili eleganze. Dior a Venezia nell’Archivio Cameraphoto, Antiga edizioni, Venice, 2019, p. 44-45, 48, 57, 69, 72, 84, 86-87.

19 The Tourterelle model corresponds to number 127 in the autumn-winter 1948-1949 haute couture collection, Ailée line. The Portrait of Berthe David-Weill is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Link: https://www. metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/141404 [consulted: 13/01/2020].

17 Programme of the spring-summer 1953 haute couture collection, Tulipe line. See: Hommage à Christian Dior: 1947-1957, op. cit., p. 169.

21 A year earlier, in 1951, Dalí had published his Manifeste mystique [Mystical manifesto] in Paris with Michel Tapié and Robert Godet, that marks the beginning of Dalí’s nuclear mystical phase.

18 Programme of the autumn-winter 1954-1955 haute couture collection, H line. See: Hommage à Christian Dior: 1947-1957, op. cit., p. 181.

20 Salvador Dalí, “Dali to the reader”, Dalí, Galleries of M. Knoedler and Company, Inc., New York, 1943, p. 9.

22 The collection programme quotes: “The new collection is presented under the sign of WINGS. See: Programme of the autumn-winter 1948-1949 haute couture collection, Ailée line.

Collection Dior Héritage, Paris.

on granting the silhouette a maximum carefree youthfulness with a cut to the bust that accentuates its lines. It seems that Mrs David-Weill was particularly fond of this dress, since the model that ended up in New York’s Metropolitan Museum is a new version that Dior made exclusively for her in 1957, shortly before his premature death.23 The flowerwoman, into which Dior had transformed the female body is concretized in this creation and in Dalí’s painting, where Mrs David-Weill, with the two leaves blooming from her neck, seems to metamorphose into another rose around her. On this occasion, as is reflected in this magnificent portrait, the supposedly transient nature of fashion is preserved in the eternity of art and, here, in the work by Dalí.

The dialogues pursued by Dalí and Dior in art and fashion show yet again that the arts do not live in isolation from one another, but rather that synergies generated in the same context influence the thought and work of artists coexisting in that space. The inseparable links between one field and the other in the work of these two pioneering talents is reflected in some of their finest creations, exemplifying creative abilities that transcend the general lines of art and fashion in the twentieth century.

By erecting their work on such solid foundations, Dalí and Dior thus made art and fashion the success and raison d’être of their lives and became two great creators of dreams that endure in our memories.

23 Fred Ferretti, “Party Troupers’ Night Out”, New York Times, 02/12/1983, New York, NY, p. B12. The model now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and that we reproduce in this catalogue is a later 1957 version of the original model from the 1948 collection. This should not be seen as an isolated practice but as a common development, since many clients ordered haute couture items from previous collections for their wardrobes. Perhaps this might explain the different tonality between the present version of the model and the one painted by Dalí in the portrait. For more information on the model and the collection, see: Richard Martin and Harold Koda, Christian Dior, op. cit., p. 27, 200-201.

Centre for Dalinian Studies

BEA CRESPO

THE BALL OF THE CENTURY

Aspiring to become legendary, the act draws on the support and enthusiasm of the most prestigious fashion houses and designers of the moment, who will devote months to making the disguises the guests must wear especially for the occasion. Their host’s instructions are quite clear. Nothing must disrupt the harmony of a perfect recreation: that night the world must rejuvenate itself precisely by two hundred years.3 In pursuit of this journey in time back to the Venetian Settecento,4 the guests had to think through every detail of

2 An seventeenth-century baroque palace situated by the broad Cannaregio Canal that takes its name from the Labias, a family of rich Catalan merchants, famous for centuries for their sumptuous, extravagant parties. In 1948 it was purchased by Carlos de Beistegui, who invests three years and significant amounts of finance in restoring its original splendour.

3 Laura Bergagna, “Miliardi in maschera”, Tempo, year XIII, no. 37, 15/09/1951, Milan, p. 30-35.

4 Though the eighteenth century is critical for a Republic of Venice that is already in political, economic and social decline, in the arts it is scaling insuperable heights, as demonstrated

by Giambattista Tiepolo’s magnificent frescoes that adorn the interior of the Palazzo Labia, where the masked ball called by Carlos de Beistegui takes place.

THE BALL OF THE CENTURY

56

— salvador dalí

1 Salvador Dalí, André Parinaud, The Unspeakable Confessions of Salvador Dalí, William Morrow, New York, 1976, p. 270-271.

their costumes and stage-managing of their entourages. That is why many put themselves in the hands of artists with a recognized track-record like Nina Ricci and Cristóbal Balenciaga.5 Other designers, like Jacques Fath or Christian Dior, are at once creators and actors in the spectacle: as well as imagining disguises for various guests, they themselves also assume leading roles in the festivities.

On 3 September 1951 one of the most memorable, mythical events of the last century took place in Venice. Its mastermind, the eccentric multimillionaire, art collector and interior designer Don Carlos de Beistegui y de Yturbe, gathers in the Palazzo Labia2 the crème de la crème of high society and leading celebrities of the day in an act heralded as “The ball of the century”. Aristocrats, politicians, captains of industry, film actors, renowned photographers, fashion designers, artists and others guests come from around the world are set to be the star witnesses of a night that promises to make history [CAT. 26]. Gala, Dalí and Dior, with their entrance to the ball disguised as Venetian giants will also contribute to ensuring that is so.

“On the evening of the prestigious Bestéguy [sic] ball in Venice, I was in a fever of excitement. [...] I had asked Christian Dior to make me a disguise as a seven-meter-tall giant so I could look down on everyone else. The city was in transports, and my success so great that, twenty years later, I still dream of it some nights…” 1

The soirée is conceived as a once-ina-lifetime theatrical performance. It begins with the arrival of the gondolas and launches of the guests at the Palazzo Labia [CAT. 34], under the enthusiastic gaze of hundreds of Venetians. It continues with the welcoming of the different “embassies”6 by Carlos de Beistegui, who acts as a procurator of the Republic of Venice from the top of a marble staircase, wearing thick-soled boots that considerably boost his height. Then follow the dazzling entrances by guests and their retinues in the great central hall,7 where Boris Kochno8 is responsible for orchestrating the different stage-sets competing to be the most ostentatious and original at the party. And culminates in the Marquis de Cuevas’s ballet and popular Venetian entertainments for the delectation of all present. The ball proper can now begin [FIG. 1].

5 The Mozartian dress worn for occasion

by North American multi-millionaire and socialite Barbara Hutton is attributed to Cristóbal Balenciaga, Hutton being one of his most loyal clients.

6 As his guests come from many different countries, Beistegui suggests they act as ambassadors from remote countries to the Republic of Venice that he himself represents.

7 Also known as the Tiepolo Room, a reference to Giambattista Tiepolo (Venice, 1696 - Madrid, 1770), and his sequence of pictures featuring Antonio and Cleopatra that decorate the palace and stand out because of their exquisite colour and light and the elegant theatricality of the episodes represented.

8 Boris Kochno, writer and librettist, linked to the last phase of Diaghelev’s Ballets Russes. Acquainted with the Dalís from the early Thirties.

9 The relevant work, in this instance, is the painting The Meeting of Cleopatra and Anthony (1746-1747) by Giambattista Tiepolo, that adorns one of the Palazzo Labia’s main spaces. Cooper commissions Oliver Messel, the legendary English fashion, stage and interior designer, and Cecil Beaton, photographer and fashion designer, to create Cleopatra’s magnificent dress, with its swooping neckline and blue brocade, that she shows off in the company of Baron Alfred de Cabrol, her Mark Anthony.

10 Arturo López-Willshaw, a South American millionaire, member of Parisian high society and close friend of the Dalís.

11 Daisy Fellowes, wealthy French heiress of the Singer sewing-machine company, minor novelist and poet, editor-in-chief of the French edition of Harper’s Bazaar. Renowned in high society for her risqué style of dress; she is one of the first women, with Gala, to wear the Shoe-hat created in 1937 by Elsa Schiaparelli in collaboration with Salvador Dalí.

12 “18th-Century Venice recreated for a great ball”, Vogue, 15/10/1951, Greenwich, p. 94. The individual carrying the parasol in the photograph is James Caffery.

to the musical accompaniment of a piece from Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orpheus and Euridice. On the other, Salvador Dalí and Christian Dior, with their memorable entrance as Venetian giants represent one of the climaxes of the soirée. Alexandre Serebriakoff14 is charged with immortalizing the scene [CAT. 40]: six giants — that include Gala, Dalí, interior designer Victor Grandpierre15 and Marie-Louise

13 Leonor Fini, an artist of Argentine extraction, who moves in surrealist circles. In 1932 she exhibits for the first time in Paris at the Jacques Bonjean Gallery. Christian Dior is commissioned to select works by the young painter. See: Dior, le bal des artistes, Artlys, Versailles, 2011, p. 52.

14 Alexandre Serebriakoff, artist and designer of Russian extraction, specializing in the portrayal of interiors.

15 Victor Grandpierre, with Georges Geffroy, are Christian Dior’s outstanding designers.

THE BALL OF THE CENTURY

Artists ensure there is mystery and originality. On the one hand, Leonor Fini13 — enigmatic and fatale — walks into the Tiepolo Room disguised as a black angel

FIG. 1

«Le Bal de Venise», Paris Match, no. 130, 15/09/1951, Paris.

Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí collection. Centre for Dalinian Studies

57

Of the twenty or so entrances enacted that night over almost two hours, some like the one led by the British socialite Lady Diana Cooper and her cortege are considered to be genuine tableaux vivants.9 Others dazzle in luxurious and exotic choreographed sets, as is the case of the embassy of China headed

by Arturo López-Willshaw10 and his wife, Patricia López-Huici, dressed in sumptuous ensembles created by the House of Nina Ricci. French designer Jacques Fath and his wife Geneviève are also much applauded for their costume disguises as Roi Soleil and Queen of the Night. But nobody can rival Daisy Fellowes for elegance and sophistication.11 Her daring yellow, leopard-patterned dress, designed

by Christian Dior, and famous Hindu necklace from the Cartier Tutti Frutti collection, with her aristocratic poise, guarantee her triumph as the queen of Africa. Her entrance into the majestic hall is greeted and admired wildly by those present, who include Cecil Beaton, who doesn’t miss the opportunity to photograph her with the Tiepolo frescoes as a backcloth.12

Bousquet16 and a big-head, embodied

by Christian Dior — make up that unnerving masquerade [CAT. 33].

The airily elegant disguises, made for the occasion by Maison Dior, are the fruit of a collaboration between the artist and the French fashion designer, who can count on Gala as an intermediary17 and with rising star Pierre Cardin who sees to their manufacture. The designs, with

16 Marie-Louise Bousquet, fashion editor at Harper’s Bazaar in Paris.

17 Even though Salvador Dalí in Diary of a genius attributes to Gala and Christian Dior the designs of the disguises (see: Salvador Dalí, Diary of a genius, Doubleday, New York, 1965, p. 182), no documentary evidence exists in this regard. Conversely, the letter that Christian Dior’s secretary, A. M. Ramet, sends to Gala on 28 July 1951 confirms the latter’s role as the link between Dalí and Maison Dior, Figueres, Centre for Dalinian Studies, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, NR 40132.

Salvador Dalí, for his part, exults in a papier mâché mask that Fabrizio Clerici21 deems to be a genuine work of art. In an unpublished piece from 1989, the Italian refers to his encounter with the artist in the course of the party and states his surprise at the simplicity of Dalí’s costume — now stripped of its outer layer —, that he perceives to be a beautiful provocation in the context of the luxury and ostentation surrounding the whole event. According to Clerici, there is a single detail that redeems the artist from that asceticism that jars

18 Antoni Pitxot, Montse Aguer, The Dalí Theatre-Museum. Figueres, Fundació GalaSalvador Dalí, Triangle Postals, Figueres, 2016, p. 125. It is very likely that they reprise elements from the Goya-inspired wardrobe created by Dalí for The Three-Cornered Hat ballet premiered at New York’s Ziegfeld Theater 24 April 1949.

Some of those designs are reproduced in Dalí il·lustrador: Salvador Dalí, 1904-1989, Govern d’Andorra, Ministeri de Turisme i Cultura, Andorra, 2001, p. 210-215 and Dalí Monumental, Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, São Paulo, 1998, p. 255-265.

19 This part of the costume, in the case of the giants, is supported by an inner structure giving them a height of almost three metres.

20 Barbara Jeauffroy-Mairet, “L’Entrée des géants”, in Dior, le bal des artistes, Artlys, Versailles, 2011, p. 46-47.

THE BALL OF THE CENTURY

58

their characters in tricorns pulled tightly down, blanched faces and neatly laced garments, signal clear connections to the Spanish theatrical tradition.18 The apparent simplicity of the garments conceal their double function: while the outer layer allows those concerned to make a spectacular entrance to the ball [CAT. 27, CAT. 32, CAT. 39], the under layer,19 consisting in a silvered tunic made of fluted material, with large turned hems and white lapels, provides a more practical garment with which to enjoy the party in comfort.20 This simpler second layer is complemented by individualized adornments such as foulards, tricornes, wigs, flowers and masks of different formats. Dior and Bousquet, for example, opt for a mask that goes back to the pharaohs of ancient Egypt [CAT. 36, CAT. 37], while Gala chooses an elegant mask made of feathers with black lace edging [CAT. 38].

FIG. 2

Salvador Dalí dress, Christian Dior spring-summer 2018 haute couture collection by Maria Grazia Chiuri. Collection Dior Héritage, Paris

rather in his respect: the flimsy mask with ashen, pales hues covering his face [CAT. 35].22 According to some sources, Dalí recognized his appearance wasn’t particularly outrageous the afternoon before the soirée, and walked around Venice searching for large ants he wanted to attach to his mask to give it more piquancy.23 In the end, however,

21 Fabrizio Clerici, Italian painter, stage designer and architect. He collaborates with Dalí on the stage set for Rosalinda o Come vi piace, that receives its premiere at Rome’s Teatro Eliseo in 1948, directed by Luchino Visconti. He is attributed with designing the costume for the Messenger from the Moon worn by Countess Marina Cicogna.

22 Fabrizio Clerici, unpublished text Tre incontri con Salvador Dalí, 1989, Rome, Fabrizio Clerici Archive.

23 “Au bal du siècle Beistegui a été sifflé”, Paris-Presse, 05/09/1951, Paris.

the ants become part of another Dalí detail we learn about thanks to the testimony of Pierre Cardin. After working almost a year making the disguises for Beistegui’s ball, the designer was yet to receive his most way-out commission: “My friend Salvador Dalí told me: ‘Pierre, I need a handful of ants.’ […] It wasn’t easy finding those little insects in the centre of Venice, so I had to go out into the countryside. When I returned with a box full of them, Dalí put them in some double-lensed spectacles and spent the night with those little beasties wandering anxiously around his gaze.”24 It isn’t clear if Salvador Dalí personally goes in search of the ants; what we do know for sure — lots of photos capture the moment [CAT. 28, CAT. 29, CAT. 30, CAT. 31, CAT. 33] —, is that on the afternoon before the ball, the artist with Gala, Dior and the rest of his retinue go on an amusing passacaglia along the city’s streets.

Following a tradition of Catalan popular culture,25 the giants conceived by Dalí and Dior appropriate the public space and parade among the Venetians, thus participating in the festive atmosphere accompanying the staging of the ball.

Carlos de Beistegui, on the suggestion of the mayor of Venice, also takes the trouble to involve the poorer classes in his poet’s dream and organizes a party well supplied with drink, food, music and entertainment on the piazza Campo San Geremia, adjacent to the Palazzo Labia. Even so, the spectacle of pomp and elegance that dazzles

24 Vera Bercovitz, “Yo quería sacar mis creaciones a la calle, celebrities y princesas me daban igual”, Vanity Fair, 06/12/2015. Available at: https://www.revistavanityfair.es/la-revista/ articulos/entrevista-pierre-cardin-biografia/21617 [consulted: 27/11/2019].

25 Carme Ruiz, “L’empremta de l’Empordà i la cultura catalana en l’obra de Salvador Dalí”.

Paper given at the Dalí Theatre-Museum, Figueres, 27/11/2014. The author analyses different popular and traditional elements within Dalí’s work and demonstrates how the artist uses them in a series of festive acts in which he is the focal point.

To a degree, Carlos de Beistegui’s ball, and Christian Dior’s New Look, can be interpreted as a reaction against a period marked out by the darkness of the Second World War and the subsequent social and economic fallout. No doubt with his initiative Beistegui was turning his back on the ugliness of the immediate post-war period in order to see himself reflected in an ideal of beauty and splendour that had been lost long ago. By evoking a night in the eighteenth century, the eccentric millionaire wanted to help his friends forget all the anguish, worries and dangers of a world in constant flux. And, in Christian Dior’s case, he succeeded.

In his autobiography the designer refers to the ball as the most fantastic evening he had ever experienced: “The splendor of the costumes rivaled the rich attire of the figures in the Tiepolo frescoes on the walls. An enormous crowd gathered around the palace, and its acclamations

26 Christian Dior, Christian Dior and I, E. P. Dutton & Company INC., New York, 1957, p. 56-57.

27 Barbara Jeauffroy-Mairet, “Fêtes et bals costumes”, op. cit., p. 51.

THE BALL OF THE CENTURY

59

the Venetian capital is not without its share of polemics. Unlike the majority of Venetians — who want to be seduced by the magic of another era and to forget an Italy still scarred by the ravages of war, — the Church and the Communist Party consider the event to be an unnecessary waste of money and wanton display of frivolity and ostentation. Some media join in the criticism, like Paris-Presse, France-soir and Libération, who don’t manage to gain entry to the private party and rack up their vitriol against its mastermind.

FIG. 3

Robert Whitaker. Portrait of Salvador Dalí, 1967.

Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí collection.

Centre for Dalinian Studies

have. Parties like this are genuine works of art.” For sure, Dior isn’t unaware of the criticisms such events can trigger, but he believes they are desirable and necessary “because they produce an authentic sense of popular enjoyment”.26 Given the passion Dior professes for big parties and masked balls27, the influence still exercised by the Beistegui ball on Maison Dior is no chance thing.

The brand, together with the Venetian Heritage Foundation, has just organized (May 2019) a Tiepolo Ball in the very same Palazzo Labia that hosted the event of the century almost seventy years before. In this way Maison Dior recalls a lost era when festivities of that nature formed part of the history of couturier workshops. Similarly, designer Maria Grazia Chiuri, the brand’s current creative director, includes in her SpringSummer 2018 season28 the Salvador Dalí model [FIG. 2], clearly inspired by the costumes Dalí and Dior conceived for the “The ball of the century” and the cowboy aesthetic the artist displays on his return from the United States and throughout the Fifties and Sixties [FIG. 3].

mingled with the greetings of the guests.

The magic of an Italian midsummer night held us in its timeless spell.” And he continues: “How can the extravagance of big parties be justified? In an age when it is fashionable to affect scorn for luxury and large-scale festivities I shall not disguise the fact that the Bestegui Ball is a memory which I am proud to

The Beistegui ball also casts a long shadow over the work of Dalí. For over twenty years the artist preserved in his Portlligat workshop the disguises of the two giants that Christian Dior had sent to him soon after the ball was held.29 From then on the costumes and different elements they comprise become recurrent features in Salvador

28 The collection, shown at the Musée Rodin in Paris January 2018, pays homage to the artist Leonor Fini and surrealist art in general and demonstrates the wonderful ways that art and fashion can converge.

29 Telegram from Christian Dior to Salvador Dalí, 08/10/1951, Figueres, Centre for Dalinian Studies, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, NR 40189.

FIG. 4

Juan Gyenes. Salvador Dalí in Portlligat with Gala’s mask, ca. 1951. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí collection. Centre for Dalinian Studies

FIG. 5

Francesc Català-Roca. Salvador Dalí in his Portlligat workshop with the disguises for the giants in the background, ca. 1954.

Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí collection.

Centre for Dalinian Studies

FIG. 6

of the presenting of the Province of Girona’s Gold Medal to Salvador Dalí.

The mysterious image captured by Oriol Maspons and Julio Ubiña reflects one of the stellar moments of that celebration, when the Milky Way of the house in Portlligat,30 transformed into a Dalí catwalk, welcomes the parade of the extravagant giants [CAT. 41].

The memories of that day and the Beistegui ball often surface in Dalí’s imagination and are present in his autobiographical writing, as in Diary of a genius (1964) or The Unspeakable confessions of Salvador Dalí (1973).

30 This is a white, limestone path, running parallel with the sea, that leads to a half-hidden small cove known as Platja d’En Sisó, where Dalí and Gala liked to swim. See: Antoni Pitxot, Montse Aguer i Teixidor, Salvador Dalí House-Museum: Portlligat-Cadaqués, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Triangle Postals, Figueres, 2008, p. 45.

THE BALL OF THE CENTURY

Dalí’s iconography. Pieces like the silvery tunic or Gala’s mask acquire a notorious centrality in the photographic sessions Brassaï, Juan Gyenes and Charles H. Hewitt devote to the artist in the Fifties [FIG. 4]. As for the giants, they often appear motionless in images showing the artist in his studio, as can be appreciated in Francesc Català-Roca’s photograph [FIG. 5]. Similarly, their festive, ludic nature means they are destined to accompany Dalí in different events the aim of which is to render homage to his figure. This is the case of the act organized in Portlligat on the afternoon of 28 August 1960 on the occasion

60

Installation of the giants from Carlos de Beistegui’s ball in the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres

It is hardly strange then that if during the Seventies the artist decides to integrate the giants — the material prompts to those memories — in his last great work, the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres.

Conceived as a theatre of memory,31 the museum concretises Dalí’s thought and universe, that are expressed through the works and installations that give shape it.

By the use of elements like the giants of Venice — transformed into lamp-holders and placed at the centre of the spiral stairs — Dalí invokes the art of memory and opens a window between spectator and key events in his life and his times.

[FIG. 6].

31 A reference to the Theatre of Memory conceived in the Renaissance by Venetian humanist and hermetist Giulio Camillo.

See: Ignacio Gómez de Liaño, Dalí, Polígrafa, Barcelona, 1983, p. 6-7.

CATALOGUE LIST The pieces marked with an asterisk are exhibited as reproductions.

The items included in the THE BALL OF THE CENTURY section are shown in audio-visual format in the exhibition.

A PASSION FOR ART

CAT. 01 *

Handwritten note from Christian Dior to Salvador Dalí ca. 1950 Blue ink on a Christian Dior card 8 x 10.5 cm

CAT. 03

CAT. 06

CAT. 09

Advertisement from the Pierre Colle gallery, Formes : revue internationale des arts plastiques, no. XXVI-XXVII, 1932, Paris 27.1 x 22 cm

Invitation to the Exposition surréaliste, Pierre Colle gallery, Paris, 1933 13.8 x 10.8 cm

Exposition Salvador Dali catalogue, Pierre Colle gallery, Paris, 1933 15 x 11.9 cm

NR 35179

NR 30549

NR 75106

NR 75231

CAT. 04

Exposition Salvador Dali catalogue, Pierre Colle gallery, Paris, 1932 15.5 x 24.1 cm

CAT. 10 *

NR 30548 CAT. 07

Exposition surréaliste catalogue, Pierre Colle gallery, Paris, 1933 13 x 10.8 cm CAT. 02

Salvador Dalí painting Automatic Beginning of a Portrait of Gala and Portrait of Gala with Lobster in his Parisian apartment ca. 1933 AFP

NR 35586

Advertisement from the Pierre Colle gallery, Formes : revue internationale des arts plastiques, no. XIX, 11/1931, Paris 27.1 x 22 cm NR 75166

CAT. 11 CAT. 08 *

Man Ray View of the Exposition surréaliste in the Pierre Colle gallery 1933 Period copy 12.1 x 16.8 cm

CAT. 05 *

Salvador Dalí Paranoiac Metamorphosis of Gala’s Face 1932 Ink and pencil on paper 29 x 21 cm

NR 10966

NI 0500

81

Salvador Dalí Automatic Beginning of a Portrait of Gala ca. 1933 Oil on plywood panel 14 x 16.2 cm NI 0035

THE KINGDOM OF FASHION

CAT. 12 *

Sketch for the Musée du Louvre dress, spring-summer 1949 haute couture collection, Trompe-l’œil line 1949 Collection Dior Héritage, Paris

CAT. 17 *

CAT. 15 *

Sketch for the Saint-Ouen coat, spring-summer 1949 haute couture collection, Trompe-l’œil line 1949 Collection Dior Héritage, Paris

Front cover, Modes & Travaux, year 31, no. 583, 01/07/1949, Paris 29.2 x 19.7 cm NR 75445

CAT. 20 *

Ricardo Sans Double-exposure of Salvador Dalí and Gala on the terrace at Portlligat 1951 Period copy 24.3 x 17.9 cm NR 5545

CAT. 18 * CAT. 13 *

Willy Maywald Noëlle posing in the Musée du Louvre dress, Christian Dior spring-summer 1949 haute couture collection, Trompe-l’œil line 1949 Association Willy Maywald

Front cover, Elle, Numéro Spécial, no. 172, 15/03/1949, Paris 30.7 x 23.5 cm

CAT. 16

NR 75356

Christian Dior Musée du Louvre dress, spring-summer 1949 haute couture collection, Trompe-l’œil line 1949 Fluted cloth, artificial silk, embroidery, wool threads, silver sequins, rocaille and sparkling cut-glass beads 120 x 35 x 65 cm

CAT. 21

Christian Dior Saint-Ouen coat, spring-summer 1949 haute couture collection, Trompe-l’œil line 1949 Fluted cloth, taffeta lining, silk and trimmings 123 x 39 x 50 cm

NI P1366 / P1100

NI P0560

CAT. 14 *

Marvin Koner Gala and Salvador Dalí at the Salvador Dalí exhibition in the Carstairs Gallery, New York 1950 Period copy 16 x 24.4 cm

CAT. 19 *

Willy Maywald Hélène Korniloff posing in the Saint-Ouen coat, spring-summer 1949 haute couture collection, Trompe-l’œil line 1949 Association Willy Maywald

NR 4792

82

THE KINGDOM OF FASHION

THE BALL OF THE CENTURY

CAT. 29

CAT. 26

Invitation to the ball given

by Carlos de Beistegui in the Palazzo Labia, Venice 1951 18,5 x 17.7 cm

CAT. 22 *

Marc Lacroix Salvador Dalí painting Gala in Portlligat ca. 1971 Period copy 29.7 x 22,9 cm NR 45519

Paul Radkai Salvador Dalí and Christian Dior disguised as giant and big-head respectively parading through the streets of Venice 1951 Period copy 22 x 34 cm NR 6644

NR 37258 CAT. 25

Christian Dior - Boutique Ensemble comprising a blouse and long lamé skirt imprinted with cashmere motifs ca. 1970 Lamé, silk taffeta lining 135 x 35 x 45 cm NI P0207

CAT. 30

CAT. 27

Karen Radkai Gala and Salvador Dalí in dresses designed by Dior for Carlos de Beistegui’s ball in Venice 1951 Period copy 27.4 x 26.8 cm

CAT. 23 *

Marc Lacroix Gala in the Piano Room in Púbol castle ca. 1971 Period copy 30 x 23 cm

Pierre Perottino Parade of giants designed

by Dior along the streets of Venice 1951 Period copy 19 x 18 cm NR 8302

NR 6737

NR 10918

CAT. 24 *

Le Vogué de Salvador Dalí Vogue, “Numéro du cinquantenaire 1921/1971 réalisé par Salvador Dalí”, no. 522, 12/1971 – 01/1972, Paris 31.5 x 24 cm

CAT. 28

CAT. 31

Fabrizio Clerici Christian Dior disguised as a big-head parading through the streets of Venice 1951 Eros Renzetti Archive

Karen Radkai Parade of giants designed

by Dior along the streets of Venice 1951 Period copy 27.2 x 26.9 cm NR 6645

NR 26489

83

THE BALL OF THE CENTURY

CAT. 38

CAT. 32

Karen Radkai Disguise designed for Carlos de Beistegui’s ball in Venice 1951 Period copy 26.9 x 26.8 cm

Pierre Perottino Victor Grandpierre, Gala and other guests in creations designed by Dior for Carlos de Beistegui’s ball in Venice 1951 Collection Dior Héritage, Paris

CAT. 35

Pierre Perottino Salvador Dalí disguised for Carlos de Beistegui’s ball in Venice 1951 Collection Dior Héritage, Paris

NR 6640

CAT. 41

Oriol Maspons / Julio Ubiña Parade of giants along the Milky Way of the Portlligat house 1960 Period copy 23 x 15.8 cm NR 5476

CAT. 36 CAT. 33

Karen Radkai Parade of giants designed

by Dior along the streets of Venice 1951 Period copy 27.3 x 26.3 cm

Pierre Perottino Christian Dior, Le Fantôme du doge [The Phantom of the Doge] 1951 Collection Dior Héritage, Paris

CAT. 39

Robert Doisneau Disguises designed by Dior for Carlos de Beistegui’s ball in the Palazzo Labia, Venice 1951 Robert Doisneau / GAMMA-RAPHO

NR 6736

CAT. 34

Salvador Dalí, Christian Dior, Victor Grandpierre, Gala and other guests arriving at the Palazzo Labia in Venice 1951 Archivi Farabola

CAT. 37

Pierre Perottino Christian Dior and Marie-Louise Bousquet, Les statues [The statues] 1951 Collection Dior Héritage, Paris CAT. 40

Alexandre Serebriakoff The giants entering Carlos de Beistegui’s ball in the Palazzo Labia, Venice 1951

84

EXHIBITION

CATALOGUE

COPYRIGHTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Scientific Director Montse Aguer

Publishers Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí

Artworks and texts by Salvador Dalí: © Salvador Dalí, Fundació GalaSalvador Dalí, Figueres, 2020

Christian Dior Couture

Curators Bea Crespo Clara Silvestre

Authors Montse Aguer Joana Bonet Bea Crespo Clara Silvestre

Coordinator the Gala Dalí Púbol Castle House-Museum Jordi Artigas Design Pep Canaleta, 3carme33 Graphics Alex Gifreu Preventive conservation Elisenda Aragonés Irene Civil Laura Feliz Josep Maria Guillamet Assembly Roger Ferré Ferran Ortega Registrar Rosa Aguer Communications Imma Parada Web and Social Networks Cinzia Azzini Insurance AON Gil y Carvajal, S.A. Barcelona

Documentation Centre for Dalinian Studies Laura Bartolomé Núria Casals Fiona Mata Rosa Maria Maurell Lucia Moni Carme Ruiz Coordination Bea Crespo Clara Silvestre Rights management Mercedes Aznar Design Alex Gifreu Photography Gasull Fotografia, S.L. Editing and Translating of Texts Catalan and Spanish: la correccional (serveis textuals) English: Peter Bush French: Marielle Lemarchand

Texts: Their authors Image of Gala and Salvador Dalí: Image rights of Gala and Salvador Dalí reserved. Fundació GalaSalvador Dalí, Figueres, 2020

Luz Morata Garcia, fabric restorer Carmen Masdeu Costa, fabric restorer Chantal Ferreux, Bibliothèque historique de la Ville de Paris

AFP: p. 10, 20, 81 Bibliothèque nationale de France: p. 51 André Caillet: p. 9 Francesc Català-Roca © F. CatalàRoca / Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, 2020: p. 60 Photo by Fabrizio Clerici, courtesy of Eros Renzetti Archive: p. 64, 83 © Alexandre Serebriakoff, VEGAP, Girona, 2020. DEA / G. DAGLI ORTI / De Agostini / Getty Images: p. 54, 77, 84 Collection Dior Héritage, París: p. 13, 25, 32, 38, 51, 58, 73, 74, 82, 84 Robert Doisneau / GAMMA RAPHO: p. 76, 84 © Jean Chevalier / ELLE: p. 39, 82 Archivi Farabola: p. 70-71, 84 © Juan Gyenes, VEGAP, Girona, 2020: p. 60 © Laziz Hamani: p. 51, 53 Marvin Koner: p. 34-35, 82

Printed by Gràfiques Trema Print run 50 copies DL GI-183-2020 First edition, March 2020

© Marc Lacroix 1971 - Salvador Dalí painting Gala in Portlligat: p. 44, 83 © Marc Lacroix 1971 - Gala in the Piano Room in Púbol castle: p. 45, 83 © Lacroix, Marc / Vogue, Paris: p. 46-47, 83 © Man Ray Trust, VEGAP, Girona, 2020: p. 18-19, 81 © O. Maspons / Fundació GalaSalvador Dalí, Figueres, 2020: p. 79, 84 © Association Willy Maywald / ADAGP, 2019: p. 27, 33, 40, 82 © 2020. Image copyright The Metropolitan Museum of Art / Art Resource / Scala, Florence: p. 53 Modes & Travaux © Photo Pierre Perrotino - Droits réservés: p. 66, 72, 75, 83, 84 Karen Radkai Estate: p. 62-63, 65, 67, 68, 69, 83, 84 © Willy Rizzo@archives Paris Match: p. 57 Ricardo Sans Condeminas © Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, 2020: p. 22, 41, 82 Robert Whitaker © Fundació GalaSalvador Dalí, Figueres, 2020: p. 59

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