The Dalí Legacy by Christopher Heath Brown and Jean-Pierre Isbouts
Review of The Dalí Legacy: How an Eccentric Genius Changed the Art World and Created a Lasting Legacy by Christopher Heath Brown and Jean-Pierre Isbouts
“Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.”
The Dali Legacy by Christopher Heath Brown and Jean-Pierre Isbouts (2021). Published by Apollo Publishers.
I’m going to admit, I have a major sin before I’ve even picked up this book. I’ve heard about the name Salvador Dali and the significance of his work, but I’ve never actually looked at a Dali painting nor did I know anything about him. I was looking through The New York Times for books to read and I saw that this memoir, which was a new release at the time, was a recommended read, and I was interested by the premise of who Dali was. Because I knew nothing, I felt like I came out of this book with a firmer grasp on Dali’s history as well as general art history.
Another reason I picked this up was that lately I’ve been picking up a lot of biographies about creatives and just plowing through them because I’m curious about the creative process in other human beings. I know my own creative process very well, but everyone gets inspiration through so many different ways and it’s fascinating. You’ll find a good chunk of these reviews on my blog here, since I’ve have review-writing encourages me to retain information about the content I’m consuming.
Anyways, let’s dive into this review!
Content
The beginning of the book focuses on the humble origins of his father, the notary, and how Dali’s family came to settle in the area. He was born in Catalonia, Spain, in 1904 and was quite close with his mother, who encouraged him and his more creative pursuits. But then his mother died when he was young because of uterine cancer, leaving him haunted by the legacy of the dead brother he was named after and the fact he was stuck with his overbearing father. It is this section in the book where we learn that Dali has left home for Barcelona to go to art school, which his father would’ve vehemently disagreed with, and has struck a penchant for being disobedient and against the status quo.
And, as we dive deeper into the book, this becomes the core of Dali’s work and personality. He intentionally wanted to be provocative to annoy his fellow Surrealists, who got so fed up with him and his ideologies that they basically exiled him from the main group of artists. The biography goes in detail about Dali did not care about politics at all, except maybe for his homeland of Catalonia, a volatile region of Spain, but would still beat to the drum with a fascination of Hitler, and would go to speak about politics in front of fellow Catalonians and would tailor his words to figure out how to get the audience riled. Dali wasn’t just an artist, he was a performer.
In regards to his art, we get nice, high-quality images of Dali’s paintings and the inspiration they came from sprinkled throughout the book, which is printed on such nice paper. I’d feel guilty if I dog-eared or even tore one of the pages in this book, especially after waiting almost two months on the waiting list to read it. I think this was really important though to include the images, because if you’re not familiar with the inspirations behind Dali’s work (for example, although he was quite out-there in his art, he actually had deep inspiration and roots in the Old Masters of the Renaissance), you go to see the exact painting Dali was riffing from side by side with the painting he ended up completing himself.
The book’s biggest argument is that Dali just didn’t complete all of these paintings on his own. His original paintings of notoriety, the erotic-based ones, might seem like they come out of nowhere, but we learn about Dali’s inspiration from Cubism, which is just emerging, as well as the Old Masters. We then see later in life, right before WWII is thrumming before his eyes, how Dali travels all the way to Italy to finally see the paintings he loved and cherished for most of his life in the flesh. The book also then compares how he changes his techniques in painting (e.g. usage of light, portraiture, etc.) to accommodate what he has learned from the masters.
I think what I liked best about this biography was that it wasn’t just a biography. When we’re dealing with the lives of creative people, it’s easy to forget about how their work is a part of their life, whether we don’t want to believe it or not. Sometimes you really can’t separate the art from the artist when it comes to the impact of it on their life. And that’s what needs to be taken into consideration with a biography of an artist or writer because of how deeply intertwined the notions are.
Overall Thoughts
I think it’s a good biography. It doesn’t read too dry, it’s interesting, and it’s digestable. The sections on each part of his life aren’t too long, which is good for me because I think I would’ve lost interest otherwise. I felt that I learned quite a bit about Dali, general art history, and about art as a medium more as well. I think it was also good that the writers chose to incorporate what the other Surrealists thought about Dali, because it showed how he was even alienated as an artist although adored by the masses. All in all, I think it’s a solid biography.
