Review ‘Dalí: Disruption and Devotion’: Meet Dalí at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston | arts

It is easy to think that Salvador Dalí is strange. The mustachioed Spanish artist, born in 1904, exists in pop culture as a strange figure who defied rationalism. This image makes it easy to see his work as separate from the mainstream of art history. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston challenges this narrative with its current exhibition, “Dalí: Disruption and Devotion.” This collection places Dalí in context and shows the artist’s connections with different artistic genres. Through juxtaposition and careful academic framing, the exhibition successfully helps the public get to know Dalí on a deeper level.

The exhibition first places the viewer in front of the small but powerful “The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory,” a classically surreal work that fuses a landscape with melting clocks, a fish, and floating geometric objects. As the title suggests, the painting reacts to Dalí’s most famous work, “The Persistence of Memory”. The dominance of this piece on the opening wall reminds the visitor of the most recognizable version of Dalí, but the text that presents the exhibition warns that we must see his work as part, rather than unique, of the rest of the history of art. As the introductory text says, Dalí “broke the old to make it new”. This thought is echoed throughout the exhibition.

Most of the galleries show how Dalí’s idiosyncratic style developed from a variety of influences. The first section, “Fantasy and Nightmare”, explains how the demons and monsters present in his own work inspired the history of European art, especially Dutch art of the 16th century. Along with this comparison, the text explains how Dalí also fostered relationships with his contemporaries, highlighting his connection with the surrealist group and his entry and expulsion from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando. The clash of one of the artist’s first surrealist paintings, “The First Days of Spring,” with a variety of Dutch images is at first jarring. However, the text on the wall invites the viewer to sit with the art and reflect on the similarities between the different styles.

The exhibition continues to explore the past in later galleries, looking at Dalí’s homages to Spanish artists and European thought throughout his career. Some of these comparisons are quite straightforward. His imminent “Velázquez Painting the Infanta Margarita with the Lights and Shadows of Her Own Glory,” placed next to a study in Velázquez’s studio of the infanta María Teresa in question, shows how his art reflected the greatest paintings in Spanish history. The text accompanying these works underlines the artist’s reverence for Velázquez. Other displays explore how Dalí pushed back against accepted modes of rational thought and vision. For example, the description of “Slave Market with the Missing Bust of Voltaire” explains Dalí’s distaste for Voltaire’s focus on realism and rationality. This gallery shows that Dalí’s paintings were as much about his dialogue with art history as about his break with artistic conventions.

After these comparisons, a timeline in authentic Dalí fashion catches the viewer off guard in its organization from right to left. The timeline leads to a gallery that illuminates a lesser-known aspect of the artist’s life: his relationship with Catholicism, which flourished in the 1950s.

Dalí’s images of religious scenes depart from his irreverent and sometimes grotesque style and are of a touching tenderness. For example, the chalk drawing “Christ in Perspective” literally asks the viewer to reflect on Jesus Christ from a new angle. This section concludes with the approximation of “The Ecumenical Council,” which is nearly 10 feet tall. In the corner of this angelic piece, a self-portrait shows Dalí painting the heavenly scene before him. Through this painting, the viewer is overwhelmed by Dalí’s vision of Catholicism and its wonders. While his iconic surrealist style is still on display, the subject overwhelms his singular wit and Dalí is cast in a humble new light.

The last section of the exhibition is the simplest, which is a little disappointing after the previous range of detailed comparative works. Even so, the final gallery, which captures Dalí’s relationship with “Inexorable Time”, seems poignant as it also narrates the end of the artist’s life. A series of works that grapple with death and time – including the surrealist classic “Old Age, Adolescence, Childhood (The Three Ages)” – show that these themes followed Dalí throughout his life. The most powerful part of this final room is its concluding text, which quotes Dalí himself: “My audience must not know whether I am faking or speaking seriously; and likewise, I don’t have to know either…” This note allows visitors to reflect for a moment on everything they’ve learned, and decide for themselves which version of Dalí they’ve seen the most.

As a whole, the exhibition humanizes Dalí by showing how artistic and religious influences transformed his work. The MFA draws on its deep collection to show how the artist found inspiration in 16th-century still lifes, French philosophy, Spanish Golden Age paintings, and religion. “Dalí: Disruption and Devotion” is a study in how to properly contextualize an artist, and may offer those hesitant to embrace surrealism a way to decode the method behind Dalí’s organized madness.

“Dalí: Disruption and Devotion” is on view through December 1, 2024 at the MFA’s Lois B. and Michael K. Torf Gallery.

—You can contact writer Hannah E. Gadway at [email protected].