Salvador Dali: A Spanish-born artist distinctive for his surrealist painting and outrageous behavior. Dali’s bizarre sense of style, self-aggrandizing books, and his paranoia-critical method of consciousness set him apart from all other artists of the 20th Century. He used the verist painting style, and juxtaposing ordinary objects into surreal assemblages, often featuring clever optical illusions, ingenious titles, and self-referential meanings. (See: “The Metamorphosis of Narcissus” painted by Dali in 1937, where a rock formation takes on a very human form). He obsessively repeated particular subject matter in extreme detail to the point of aggrandization. It created images where the every day had a frightful edge (See “The Persistence of Memory” painted by Dali in 1931, one of his most famous works, where common ants are disturbingly grouped).
Utilizing psychoanalysis as a springboard, he confounded the viewing public. His definitive and often shocking public presence was a component of his Art. Sexuality and psychosis are figured into his Art (See “Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate,” where his wife, Gala, is painted nude). He was fascinated with the occult (See “Dali’s Tarot Cards,” of which I have an original set). He characteristically utilized themes from the dream-like world of the subconscious (the definition of surrealism). However, his non-conformity, even among the Avant-Garde, gives him the status of a giant among giants.
The paranoia-critical method was something I personally explored as an art student. Having developed something that I would call a workable knowledge of the paranoia-critical method through repeated reading of Dali’s books, I extrapolated my consciousness method through Dali’s highly detailed descriptions. While in this rarified state, I used sound in the environment and experiences in my awareness as catalysts to form “criticism” of me. In my conscious mind, an overheard snippet of conversation, what’s on the radio and TV, a car blowing its horn or revving its engine, a bird chirping, or the precise way a flag waved in the breeze becomes essential.
The stimuli become motivators for severe behavior and extreme mindfulness. To be within such a heightened state of sensing your surroundings energizes you. When all this information is a commentary on you, and you have become what you believe to be the infinite center of the universe—you reach a sense of overwhelming paranoia. That is if you are doing it correctly. You think there is the responsibility to do everything flawlessly, or people will “call you on it.” One must train oneself to believe that people are talking about you and “know” things about you that they have no way of knowing. You must also “convince yourself” that a bird or a TV commercial has “deigned” to comment on YOU. At the same time, it is vital to retain your sanity. It is a difficult path, walking between madness and reason, symbology, and insignificance. The line often blurs.
Salvador Dali had only one great love in his life, Gala, a Russian aristocrat. She was with the poet Paul Eluard when she and Dali met, but they instantly recognized each other as soul mates. After Eluard, Gala became Dali’s woman for the rest of their lives. Dali painted her many times (see “Galatea of the Spheres,” a portrait that shows Gala in a highly technical arrangement as well as exemplifying Dali’s “nuclear” style). They were high society aristocrats in New York, Spain, and Paris for many years. When Gala died, Dali went into seclusion that lasted ten years.
Matta: another of my favorite 20th-century artists is the surrealist Roberto Sebastian Matta Echaurren, Chilean-born. He joined the surrealist movement in Paris later than most but was instantly recognized as a highly skilled kindred soul. At the end of World War II, Matta helped bridge the gap between the School of Paris (the center of the Art world for the past several hundred years) and the School of New York. History looks at Matta not only as an accomplished painter but as a unifying force behind early New York Abstract Expressionism. He had connections to Jackson Pollack, Willem De Kooning, Mark Rothko, Arshile Gorky, and many others who were to become giants in American Art.
He called his early paintings “Psychological Morphologies” and also “Inscapes.” He began studying architecture but discovered he loved painting more. He achieved his best early images in a unique way: Matta dragged paint-soaked bits of cloth across the canvas, then embellished the patterns left behind (see “The Earth is a Man” 1942, and “Disasters of Mysticism” 1942). The resulting abstractions illuminated unimaginable three-dimensional spaces and displayed a depth of field in stunning colors. Matta was also an expert at form, configuring unique shapes with contrasting shadows for definition.
Late in his career (1945-60), Matta’s figurative style was initially panned by many Art Critics (see “A Grave Situation” and “Rosenburg Jury” 1952). Eventually, the art world acknowledged Matta’s place as an accomplished master of 20th century Art. I have always found Matta’s late work to be highly creative and disturbing at a primal level. Matta’s later works have an intensity evident in any of the greatest surreal works, although the paintings may not be as iconoclastic as the greatest surrealist paintings.
I spoke with Matta when I was an Art student at Denver University. I called him up at his home in New York after using the yellow pages to find him. He said he didn’t have time to talk, but he was very polite. I feel a connection to him because of this. Just hearing his voice was a special brush with greatness.
Vincent Van Gogh: The best-loved Artist of the modern era. Yes, He painted in the 1800s, but no one appreciated his work until the 20th Century, so I classify him as a contemporary painter. “Starry Night” (1889—painted from the view out a window of a mental hospital) is one of the most recognizable “modern” (post-impressionist if you must) paintings of all time. He was indeed crazy; he did life in all the wrong ways, leaving him no choice but to become an artist. He didn’t start painting until he was 27—but in the ten years before his death by suicide, he painted over 900 pictures (about two a week). He felt that creating a painting should be rapid, to capture an image with integrity and immediacy.
He wanted to make a School of painting in the South of France because of the location’s “incredible light.” Paul Gauguin went to visit him there, paid for by Vincent’s brother, Theo. Gauguin and Vincent had a tumultuous relationship, and when Gauguin left, Vincent cut off his ear with a razor. Vincent was hospitalized for mental evaluation repeatedly, but he undeniably painted some of the most intensely rendered images of all time. In the nine weeks Vincent and Gauguin lived together Vincent painted 36 canvases, and Gauguin painted 21.
Looking at a reproduction of a Van Gogh in a book or on a poster is almost meaningless. The texture of his paintings is endlessly revealing because, up close, you can feel the genuine novelty and ingenious nature of his tortured brushwork and palette knife action on the canvas. There is no other artist in history so misunderstood, so unrecognized in his lifetime than Van Gogh.
Fortunately, his brother Theo, an art dealer in Paris, supported him. Vincent eventually died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. When Vincent shot himself, he died in Theo’s arms.
Picasso: he is the master of 20th-Century Art. His father was an art instructor in Barcelona, so Picasso began training as an artist at seven. He painted his first pictures at nine and entered the Beaux-Arts Academy at thirteen, where his father taught. By then, Picasso could paint realistic portraits and landscapes so well that he quickly outgrew the notion of painting realistically at all or even attending art school.
Moving into his Blue Period (1901-1904), he painted keenly observed scenes of poverty, and his Rose Period (1904-06), where he painted circus performers. Following that, he painted a group of prostitutes, called “Les Demoiselles D’Avignon,” influenced by Asian, Oceanic, and African Art (which were part of the Parisian culture of time due to French Empire-Building). The painting was a precursor to Analytic and synthetic cubism. But Picasso didn’t stay cubist for long. He painted a strangely graceful figurative series in his “neoclassic period,” where blocky giant, “thick’ forms render the human shape (1920-1930). He changed girlfriends and wives often in his life and started painting in an “expressionistic” style. His “Weeping Woman” (1937) is a good example, and although he was a great humanist, Picasso was known to be a cruel person to his girlfriend, various wives, and family.
His sculpture and line drawings exemplify his genius. His casts of simple objects changed the mundane into incredible forms. Due to the ideal way he handled the glazes, his pottery was outstanding. And his masterpiece, “Guernica,” is one of the most significant statements against the futility of war ever painted.
Jean-Michel Basquiat: American artist who lived a brief life cut short by a heroin overdose; he began in New York in the 1980s as a graffiti artist known by the tag SAMO. By the time he was 22, his Art was exhibited by top museums and galleries. His “Untitled” has sold at auction for more than any other American Artist: $110 million.
Why is Basquiat so well thought of? His drawing and marks are simultaneously refined and “Primitive.” That is combined with his sharp wit, making much of his work pure genius. He moved in the circles of the Neo-expressionists and the Hip Hop culture in the 1980s; it honed his expression into a characteristic directness unseen in any other artist.