Dalí’s Fascism; Lacan’s Paranoia

In this: publication
By this: publisher
In this Subject: Arts (General)
By this author: Greely R.A.

Author: Greely R.A.

Source: Art History, Volume 24, Number 4, September 2001 , pp. 465-492(28)

Buy & download fulltext article:

Price: $48.00 plus tax (Refund Policy)

Abstract:

In February 1934 Breton summoned Salvador Dalí before a Surrealist ‘court’ on charges of Nazi sympathizing. In Breton’s mind, Dalí’s fascination with Hitler threatened to bring about the ‘ruin of Surrealism’ by exposing the ideological flaws in existing Surrealist attempts to distinguish between right-wing and left-wing politics in relation to aesthetic production. To Breton’s dismay, Dalí seemed to take literally Breton’s call in the First Surrealist Manifesto to produce works ‘outside all aesthetic or moral preoccupations‘. Yet in directing Surrealist attention to Hitler, I argue, Dalí analysed the ‘hitlerian phenomenon‘ as an apocalyptic symptom of the alienation and auto-aggression afflicting bourgeois society. In so doing, he relied heavily upon a dialogue he had struck up with Jacques Lacan concerning paranoia – what Lacan termed ‘autopunition‘, and their relationship to the fascist persona.

Document Type: Original article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-8365.00278

Publication date: 2001-09-01