[lbo-talk] Dali's trial

[wrobert at uci.edu]

However, it's notable that Breton was able to have a long term working
relationship with Bataille, despite his exploration of transgression and
sexuality.  The difference once again tends to come down to the fact that
Bataille never used his name to endorse fascist regimes.

               robert wood

P.S. This isn't a criticism of Dali's art by the way.  But a story from
Bunuel has always put the man in a special place of contempt for me. 
Bunuel was in the states after the collapse of the Spanish republic, and
was broke.  He wrote to Dali to borrow some cash to pay the rent.  Dali's
response was to say that he never lent money to friends, and in addition,
he was glad that Franco won.  This was stated after Lorca was murdered.
>
> I think it was mostly that Dali's surrealism extended into the moral realm
> (both sexually and otherwise). Such as his famous burning of the bread
> (which was later, however, IIRC).
>
>
> --- On Thu, 6/11/09, Dennis Claxton <ddclaxton at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>> From: Dennis Claxton <ddclaxton at earthlink.net>
>> Subject: [lbo-talk] Dali's trial
>> To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>> Date: Thursday, June 11, 2009, 3:02 PM
>> An interesting Dali site with lots of
>> background.  This post, much longer than what I've
>> clipped here,  includes an image of the painting that
>> so bothered Breton.  Looks like Breton's fear of cock
>> might have been the real trigger to throw Dali out:
>>
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> [Breton] had seen Dali’s arrival in Paris six years
>> earlier as just what the surrealists needed. They were by
>> then already running dry of ideas. But Breton and Louis
>> Aragon saw themselves as sophisticates in charge of a motley
>> amalgam of foreign buffoons, including the original
>> “Andalusian dogs”, Dali and Luis Bunuel. Dali in
>> particular oozed warped pathologies, and his surrealism,
>> it’s been noted, “was dangerously total”.
>>
>> “The Enigma of William Tell” so infuriated Breton that
>> on February 2 he’d sought to destroy it at the Exposition
>> du Cinquantenaire in the Salon des Indépendants at the
>> Grand Palais, a show the other surrealists boycotted, but it
>> was hung beyond his reach.
>>
>> Dali challenged Breton to convene the group for an
>> emergency meeting “at which the mystique of Hitler shall
>> be debated”, and Breton scheduled the duel for four days
>> later.
>>
>> Dali showed up with a thermometer in his mouth, claiming he
>> felt ill, and while Breton reeled off his accusations, Dali
>> kept checking his temperature.
>>
>> When it was his turn to present his case, he began to
>> remove his clothing piece by piece, while reciting a
>> prepared speech in which he explained that his obsession
>> with Hitler was at heart apolitical, and that he could not
>> be a Nazi “because if Hitler were ever to conquer Europe,
>> he would do away with hysterics of my kind, as had already
>> happened in Germany”.
>>
>> [...]
>>
>>
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