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.