Read Online Maniac Eyeball by Salvador Dalí - Free Book Online Page B

great masters. The fact is, the teachers knew nothing of the essential, and their approach was empirical and vulgar. They taught the absence of rules, while my highest ambition was to learn the laws of the art of painting. I was furious with them. The only one who escaped in my eyes was José Moreno Carbonero, one of the oldest ones, who had solid métier and faultless professional conscientiousness. But the pupils laughed at him, at his coat, the black pearl stickpin he wore in his tie. and his white gloves. His skill was unmatched, but no sooner did he turn his back than the little upstarts erased his corrections, which in fact reflected the gifts of a true master.
    I preferred to keep apart from that bunch of loafers and idiots, and go on with my Cubist experiments. One of my paintings led to my making contact with my new friends. Within the Residence, there was a sort of segregation based on intellectual snobbery. Around Federico García Lorca, Luis Buñuel, and Eugenio Montès, a small avant-garde literary and artistic group had taken shape. One of its members, Pepin Bello, passing down the corridor one day, peeked through the open door of my cell-like room and saw the Cubist canvas on the easel I was working at. He imparted this news to the others who had thought I was backward-looking and were happily surprised at my avant-gardism. They would have been even more surprised, had they known that it was out of a concern for better understanding of representation and realism, of the exact science of drawing, and for research in perspective, that I was indulging in this manner, and not out of any drive toward abstraction or provocation. They made me one of them.
     
    How Does Dalí Remember That Period?
    My attire, since my arrival, had acquired a waterproof cape that came down to my heels, and a broad-brimmed hat. Wearing gaiters and hair down to my shoulders, and my huge ascot tie, I never went unnoticed. My friends were all Beau Brummels, in the finest manner of English dandyism. They came from some of the best families of Spain, but their admiration was undivided and their friendship total. My words and ideas intrigued them, and quickly became the group’s gospel. They adopted my revolt against the faculty, with its demagogic pedagogy that was thirty years behind the times, teaching Impressionism when Cubism was fashionable, while disregarding all true tradition. With them, and through them, I first heard the expression that was to be so successful – and make me so, at the same time – “It’s Dalínian.”
    But I quickly wearied of their flattery and their open-mouthed speeches. The fact is, very few of them were worth my attention and I would very soon have left a great distance between me and all of them, except for Lorca, whose personality and gifts truly impressed me, but they did reveal a world to me that I was unaware of: that of the pleasure born of alcohol, orgy, music, and painting the town a bit of an off-color red.
    It was at the Crystal Palace, one of Madrid’s most elegant tearooms, that I got my baptism of fire. Our entry, with me at their head in my painter-anarchist’s uniform, made quite a little sensation. To the point that in later similar circumstances, my friends, led by Bruñel, were generally turned into bodyguards, and forced to fight it out. This time, there was no disturbance, but for the first time I saw what might be termed an elegant lady, plucked eyebrows, armpits bluish and devoid of hair, and gown and jewels of greatest luxury; and I had only one idea left: to please her. So, I decided forthwith to return my outfit to the wardrobe department. I thanked my friends for their fortitude, and to their great consternation, for they enjoyed the game and found it a magnificent opportunity for provocation, decided that I too would be a Beau Brummel, whom women might be interested in. Once more, they mistook my intentions and thought I was acting this way out of friendship.
    As I was