Product Description

The most thorough and ambitious biography of Salvador Dali ever written, a remarkable evocation of the outlandish personality, paranoia, and sexual torment lurking behind the nightmarish images that shook the world. Drawing on extensive original research and recently discovered sources, Ian Gibson presents a daringly original portrait of one of this century's most celebrated--and infamous--artists. He provides a full narrative of Dali's life as artist and as uninhibited exhibitionist, from his wild and troubled youth through his often rollickingly funny adventures in Paris, New York, and Hollywood to his poignant last years. Here is Dali fully revealed through his voluminous correspondence; his novel, poems, and essays; and interviews with some of those closest to him. The Shameful Life of Salvador Dali reexamines the roles of the two most important individuals in the artist's life: the Spanish playwright and author Federico Garca Lorca and the enigmatic, libidinous Gala, the Russian migr whose marriage Dali broke up and with whom he subsequently lived in unconsummated bliss and terror. This is a truly incandescent life of the surrealist artist who caught the imagination of the twentieth century. This enthralling narrative is augmented by a full discussion of Dali's most important works, with black-and-white illustrations of Dali's life and paintings reproduced at appropriate points in the text and more than thirty full-color reproductions.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #872443 in Books
• Published on: 1998-11-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 800 pages

Amazon.com Review
"The world will admire me. Perhaps I'll be despised and misunderstood, but I'll be a great genius, I'm certain of it."

At 16, Salvador Dali had already developed the remarkable ego and uncanny perception that would distinguish him as one of the most notorious artists of the 20th century. A self-proclaimed surrealist, an avant-garde exhibitionist, and a criticized commercialist with questionable political affiliations, Dali was anything but benign. Biographer Ian Gibson (Federico Garcia Lorca) argues that the modern master was motivated primarily by the very last thing anyone would suspect him of: a very deep sense of shame. Via the artist's correspondence, diary, and autobiography (The Secret Life of Salvador Dali), Gibson meticulously stitches together the wild characters and deep-dish details of Dali's life: a guilt-ridden childhood, feelings of sexual inadequacy ("...I discovered that my penis was small, pitiful and soft"), his love affairs with Lorca and sex-pot Gala and the real passion of his life, surrealism. Critical, fair, and lively, The Shameful Life of Salvador Dali digs beyond the escapades and outlandish façade to expose the very personal and vulnerable side of one of the world's most eccentric performers.

From Publishers Weekly
Salvador Dali's swan-dive from Surrealist visionary to pathetic self-parody surely constitutes one of this century's great case studies in career suicide. From roughly 1928 to the Spanish Civil War, Dali fused his myriad sexual compulsions and anxieties with a pathological desire to epater le bourgeois, creating a group of first-rate paintings (think limp watches) that withstood all the disasters to follow. Shame was central throughout Dali's career, according to Gibson. His white-hot creative steak of the late 1920s and early 1930s started when his father expelled him from the family for a painting consisting of the phrase "Sometimes I Spit for Pleasure on the Portrait of My Mother" scrawled over an outline of Jesus Christ. Dali's second and more lasting brush with shame, however, was less productive. He was excommunicated from the Surrealist movement by its "pope," Andre Breton (who anagrammatically dubbed him "Avida Dollars"), for excessive greed and ambivalence toward fascism. After this, Dali sunk as far and as fast as possible, marrying the charismatic but openly promiscuous Gala; treating art as nothing but a cash cow; and engaging in increasingly lame publicity stunts, sycophantic visits to dictators and popes and even a little cruelty to animals. Gibson has made the most of this promising but treacherous material: "Two thirds of this book are devoted to one third of Dali's life," that is, the more productive and less shameful part. Meticulously researched and compulsively readable, Gibson's narrative benefits from sturdy readings of the paintings and an in-depth knowledge of the artist's milieu, partially gained from his work on Lorca (Federico Garcia Lorca: A Life). And while the book's last third may make the reader wince and squirm, this response only demonstrates how effectively the biographer has evoked Dali's shameful decline. There are more than 30 full-color reproductions and illustrations.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Gibson, noted biographer of poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca (Federico Garcia Lorca: A Life, LJ 9/15/89), became interested in the life of Surrealist painter Salvador Dali because of the significant friendship between the two famous Spaniards. The resulting biography of Dali shows evidence of copious research but focuses as much on the sexual details of the painter's life as it does on his artwork. Gibson's central thesis is that Dali was motivated largely by sexual shame and selfishness. Scandal, duplicity, conflict, self-aggrandizement, feuds, and shifting alliances make up the bulk of this biography, notable for its decided lack of sympathy toward its subject. Because of Dali's celebrity and the sexual candor of Gibson's account, this work is likely to be widely noticed and discussed. It will also be of some value to scholars and specialists for its diligent research and many footnotes.
-?Kathryn Wekselman, Univ. of Cincinnati Lib., OH
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

I've Never Read A More Vivid Biography
Most biographies I've read, the opening chapters are a bore of mundane details of the person's childhood that are uninterestnig and nearly always read the same. In contrast, Ian Gibson's writing style is so lush, that even the detailed history of the Dali family before Salvador was born are compelling. Gibson gives you the feel of the Spanish countryside and the era in which Dali and his forefathers lived. Gibson is a careful biographer as well. Instead of taking Dali's own autobiography, "The Secret Life Of Salvador Dali," at face value, Gibson researches Dali's life and points out discrepencies and exaggerations of Dali writings. It led me to reread Dali's own writings and gave me further insight into the mind of the artist. I enjoyed reading about Dali's relationships with other painters (Surreal and otherwise), writers and poets such as Lorca, and his love of jazz. Far from a dry outline of a famous person's life, this book makes Dali come alive.

Unflatering Portrait of a Neurotic Genius
Well researched revisionist biography of one of the century's great artists. As the title implies, the author suggests that a key to understanding Dali is his feelings of shame. Dali suffered from almost paralizing bouts of shame as a child, and struggled (not always successfully) to work around or overcompensate for them. Those with a casual interest in Dali should start off with the artist's own "The Secret Life of Salvador Dali" for many insights and a more entertaining read. The "Shamefull Life" tries to find the story behind the story. My biggest objection to this book is Gibson's almost total dismissal of Dali's art after 1940, which I fear is a prejudice based more on politics than the Dali's art itself.

Like Dali's art, this bio takes effort but it's worth it
If you want to be spoon fed Freudian explanations about what Dali's paintings mean, look for something else. But if you want a richly detailed, absolutely readable biography of Dali, this is it. I can't wait to read Gibson's biography of Lorca, but for now, I'm savoring this one and I only wish it were longer.