Painting Gallery #19

Note: a painting with a highlighted title includes an analysis.
Crucifixion ('Corpus Hypercubus'), 1954
• oil on canvas
• 194.5 x 124 cm
• Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
    When disembarking from the steamship America in Le Havre on March 27, 1953, on his return from New York, Dalí announced to the reporters gathered around him that he was going to paint a picture he himself termed as sensational: an exploding Christ, nuclear and hypercubic. He said that it would be the first picture painted with a classical technique and an academic formula but actually composed of cubic elements. To a reporter who asked him why he wanted to depict Christ exploding, he replied, "I don't know yet. First I have ideas, I explain them later. This picture will be the great metaphysical work of my summer."
    It was at the end of spring in 1953 in Port Lligat that Dalí began this work, but it is dated 1954, the year in which it was finished and then exhibited in the month of December at the Carstairs Gallery in New York. The painting may be regarded as one of the most significant of his religious oils in the classical style, along with The Madonna of Port Lligat, Christ of Saint John of the Cross, and The Last Supper, which is in the National Gallery in Washington, D.C.
    "Metaphysical, transcendent cubism" is the way that Dalí defines his picture, of which he says: "It is based entirely on the Treatise on Cubic Form by Juan de Herrera, Philip II's architect, builder of the Escorial Palace; it is a treatise inspired by Ars Magna of the Catalonian philosopher and alchemist, Raymond Lulle. The cross is formed by an octahedral hypercube. The number nine is identifiable and becomes especially consubstantial with the body of Christ. The extremely noble figure of Gala is the perfect union of the development of the hypercubic octahedron on the human level of the cube. She is depicted in front of the Bay of Port Lligat. The most noble beings were painted by Velazquez and Zurbaran; I only approach nobility while painting Gala, and nobility can only be inspired by the human being."
    Crucifixion is a stunning work that successfully combines elements of Dalí's Nuclear Mysticism with his return to his Catholic heritage during this time. In this work, Dalí is giving us a crucifixion in the age of modern science, completing his theme started in Christ of St. John of the Cross.
    Of particular note is the stunning athleticism with which the crucified savior is represented. Even the nail holes in the palms and feet are not present, as Salvador shows us his perfect redemption. The cross itself, an eight sided octahedral cube, represents the possible theoretical reflection of a separate 4-dimensional world. Dalí's fascination with mathematics is incorporated with his return to his Catholic faith in later life. This union represents Dalí's assertion that the two seemingly diametrically opposed worlds of faith and science CAN coexist.
    Six feet in height, this painting can be considered one of the 18 Masterworks, so named by Mr. Reynolds Morse. Gala Dalí stares up at the crucifixion as a reverent witness, wrapped in gold and white robes, standing on a large chessboard, while the familiar outline of the mountains of Catalonia recede into the distance.
Rhinocerotic Disintegration of Illissus of Phidias, 1954
• oil on canvas
• 100 x 129.5 cm
• donation by Dalí to Spain
    Painted during Dalí's corpuscular period, this is one of the pictures in which the artist used rhinoceros' horns in suspension to form a part or the entire figure of his subject, as in Raphaelesque Head Exploding of 1951, Paranoiac-Critical Study of Vermeer's Lacemaker of 1954-55, or Young Virgin Auto-Sodomized by Her Own Chastity. The Illisos was begun in Port Lligat during the summer of 1953 at the same time that Dalí was working on the Crucifixion (Corpus Hybercubus), now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York. In his Le Journal d'un genie, Dalí has given a detailed account of his day-to-day progress on these two works, describing how he managed to overcome his fear of undertaking certain surfaces of the canvas, which seemed to come from his neurotic fear of not having any testicles and of always keeping his teeth too tightly clenched. He conquered this fear one afternoon by attacking two completely different things: the torso and the testicles of Illisos. The care he devoted every day to this picture must be regarded as the strenuous work of a painter who knows how to seek mastery by doing a still life at the same time that he controls the atmosphere and the rendering of a work of his imagination, such as Crucifixion (Corpus Hybercubus). As a respite from the tension demanded by his work on the Crucifixion, he did the Illisos in his studio, using as a model a plaster replica of this marvelous sculpture by Phidias, originally found on the west pediment of the Parthenon and today in the British Museum in London.
    The mythological figure is depicted in suspension in the middle of the Bay of Cadaqués, where one glimpses in the background the rock called Cucurucuc which stands at the entrance to the bay. The underpart of the water is treated the same as in two other paintings, the first one dated 1950 and entitled Dalí at the Age of Six When He Believed Himself to Be a Young Girl, Lifting with Extreme Precaution the Skin of the Water to Observe a Dog Sleeping in the Shadow of the Sea, and the second from 1963: Hercules Lifts the Skin if the Sea and Stops Venus for an Instant from Waking Love.