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Dalí – Freud: An Obsession
"Freud's cranium is a snail! His brain is in the form of a spiral--to be extracted with a needle!" -Salvador Dalí On July 19, 1938, Spanish painter Salvador Dalí (1904-89) traveled to the London home of Sigmund Freud, who had just arrived in the UK after escaping Nazi-occupied Vienna. Dalí brought with him a painting, The Metamorphosis of Narcissus , and a magazine article he had written on paranoia. This emissary of Surrealism had long hoped to meet Freud; he had read translations of Freud's writings since the early 1920s and had studied them extensively. He asked their mutual friend, the Austrian author Stefan Zweig, to arrange the meeting.
This famous encounter of two legends is the basis of this beautiful volume, bound in imitation red leather and featuring foldout plates of Dalí's work. Dalí - An Obsession explores how the Surrealist was inspired by and used Freud's theories to generate his compositions. A great variety of Dalí's oeuvre is surveyed in this book, including his paintings, sculptures, photographs, films, books, magazines, letters and other documents. In addition, this volume explores his encounters with other artists, such as Federico García Lorca, Luis Buñuel and Santiago Ramón y Cajal. Dalí - An Obsession also crucially examines how psychoanalysis helped Dalí process his complex childhood and use it in his paintings.
This famous encounter of two legends is the basis of this beautiful volume, bound in imitation red leather and featuring foldout plates of Dalí's work. Dalí - An Obsession explores how the Surrealist was inspired by and used Freud's theories to generate his compositions. A great variety of Dalí's oeuvre is surveyed in this book, including his paintings, sculptures, photographs, films, books, magazines, letters and other documents. In addition, this volume explores his encounters with other artists, such as Federico García Lorca, Luis Buñuel and Santiago Ramón y Cajal. Dalí - An Obsession also crucially examines how psychoanalysis helped Dalí process his complex childhood and use it in his paintings.
332 pages, Hardcover
Published June 7, 2022
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
September 19, 2024
This book as an object is beautiful! The reproductions are also.
Quite an easy read, unfortunately a real disappointment (but hardcore fans of Dali I believe will enjoy maybe) for example as parts of texts are copy & pasted word for word at different places. Repetition of material is throughout, the essays are apparently written by different people but all speak in the same tone & most go back over the same material (maybe they all got the same brief not aware of the others). One essay felt like 70% name dropping like a dull encyclopedia entry, with nothing learned. If edited it would be a proper publication (Freud isn't really part of the book tbh).
Quite an easy read, unfortunately a real disappointment (but hardcore fans of Dali I believe will enjoy maybe) for example as parts of texts are copy & pasted word for word at different places. Repetition of material is throughout, the essays are apparently written by different people but all speak in the same tone & most go back over the same material (maybe they all got the same brief not aware of the others). One essay felt like 70% name dropping like a dull encyclopedia entry, with nothing learned. If edited it would be a proper publication (Freud isn't really part of the book tbh).
Displaying 1 of 1 review