Blogcritics The critical lens on today's culture & entertainment
From Freud's psychoanalysis and Einstein's theory of relativity, to the splitting of the atom, Salvador Dali was obsessed with the scientific discoveries of his time. Dali Dimension: Decoding the Mind of a Genius is a multiple award winning film that delves into the psyche of the most important Surrealist artist who ever lived.
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, First Marquis of Púbol (May 11, 1904 – January 23, 1989), was a Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain. He was a skilled draftsman and his painterly skills are often attributed to the influence of the Renaissance masters.
His best known work "The Persistence of Memory", also known as Soft Watches or Melting Clocks, was completed in 1931 and skyrocketed him to fame. Many felt that this was his interpretation of Einstein's theory of the relativity of time.
In the video Dali Dimension we are treated to a most wonderful interpretation of Dali, the artist and the man. Too many film examinations focus on the clownish aspect of his life and not his mind or his craftsmanship. To be sure, he was as eclectic as his paintings, but this DVD brings out the inner Dali — the man of science.
He was admired by those who knew him, especially from the world of science. J.D Watson, who together with Francis Crick discovered the structure of DNA, sent a letter to Dali, declaring that "the second brightest man in the world would like to meet the brightest."
In this 75 minute DVD we are taken into the realm that no other Dali depiction has taken us, into the scientific underpinnings of the artist's work and the mind that created them. It is narrated by Joseph Nuzzolo, the president of the Salvador Dali Society, who does a very good job of guiding us through the complex person that was Salvador Dali.
Throughout the video I was amazed how much Dali was into the science of the time and how he pursued meeting these men of science beginning with the gaining of an audience with Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis. He then became interested physics, math, and the atomic bomb beginning in the 1940s, meeting Einstein, Shroedinger, Heisenberg, and on to Watson in the 1960s.
One of the highlights of the film was when, in 1985, Dali gathered an unprecedented congress of scientists and researchers who convened at the Teatru-Museu Dali in Figueres, Spain to discuss various scientific theories and discoveries. Dali, who was too ill to attend directly, watched the proceedings via closed-circuit TV while sequestered in the Torre Galatea adjacent to the museum. Those gathered included Nobel Prize winners and other experts in the fields of science. You could see the awe and admiration these scientists had for the artist when they were allowed to visit with him. Keep in mind he was tethered to a feeding tube and very weak, but he still possessed a spryness of mind.
There are also a number of extras in which those close to Dali explore some of the aspect of his fascination. The topics include the origin of life, the golden mean, holography, antimatter, and the hypercube. All that I can say is do yourself a favor and see Dali Dimension: Decoding the Mind of a Genius.
