Art historians are turning to TikTok in an attempt to write off surrealist icon Salvador Dalí, more than three decades after his death.
Dalí, a Spanish artist known for making bizarre images such as The persistence of Memory (1931), was long revered for his contributions to modern art after joining the Surrealists in the late 1920s.
The first such video to appear on TikTok, published in September 2021 by @That_Art_History_Girl, provided four reasons why Dalí was “problematic”.
“He was fascinated by Hitler. As a child, he pushed his friend off a 15ft bridge and ate cherries while they were injured,” she said in her video.
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Dalí himself confirmed the incident in his 1942 autobiography, The secret life of Salvador Dalí, in which he noted that he was a five-year-old child living at the time in a village near Barcelona.
“Throughout the afternoon, basins stained with blood were brought down from the room where the child, seriously injured in the head, was going to have to stay in bed for a week”, writes Dalí. “The continual back and forth and general commotion the house was thrown into put me in a delightfully hallucinatory mood.”
In her video, @That_Art_History_Girl also noted that Dalí as a child kicked his three-year-old sister in the head, saying he thought it was a bullet. This was also confirmed by Dalí in his autobiography.
“He committed a fraud by flooding the market with his signature. He signed paper that counterfeiters could use to print imitations and make money,” she added.
The TikTok account @SarahDipity1 largely echoes these points in his own video about a year later and delved into additional concerns about Dalí in more detail.
“The fact that this guy is still being taught as an art hero is beyond me. We should start with the bad and work our way there as a problematic artist,” Sarah said in her video.
@sarahdipity1 Ruin artists for people, who else did you love that could be spoiled for people? #art #artist #fineart #the history of art ♬ original sound – Sarah H
In her video, Sarah added that Dalí “was a sadist, a masochist and a fascist”, who had once been called a “disgusting human being” by George Orwell. in a magazine from Dalí’s autobiography.
“In his twenties, he actually had a phobia of female genitalia and so he was afraid of all women for a long time. And he was also obsessed with himself in a literal sense,” Sarah said. one day a woman complimented him on the beauty of her feet and he stomped on her and he had to be taken off her because she was bleeding.”
Sarah also pointed to a 1948 photo from a collaboration between Dalí and photographer Phillippe Halsman, in which three cats are seen flying through the air as water is splashed on them.
“This photo took 28 takes, which wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for three live cats and real buckets of water,” Sarah said. “They basically tortured these cats for 28 takes until Salvador Dalí was happy with the end result.”
Philippe Halsman, Dali Atomicus (1948). Photo: Library of Congress.
His request was confirmed by Halsman’s daughter, Irene Halsman in an interview with Time in 2016. Irene helped her father and Dalí as a child by throwing the cats in the air for them to photograph.
“Dalí said, ‘I have an idea. Let’s take a duck and put dynamite in its behind and blow it up. And my dad said, ‘Oh, you can’t do that. You’re in America. You could be arrested,” Irene Halsman said of where the three cats idea came from.
Sarah, in her video, noted that “worst of all” was “Dali’s obsession with Hitler”. Dalí produced several works during his career on the Nazi leader, including Hitler masturbates (1973) and Hitler’s Riddle (1939).
“Ironically, Hitler probably wouldn’t have liked him very much because he admitted he used to imagine Hitler as a woman and he was turned on by him and maybe that was a bit too gay for Hitler,” Sarah said in her video.
“Dalí belonged to the group of surrealist artists who were generally known for their leftist views, who actually expelled Dalí because he was so ferociously fascist.”
In her video, Sarah added, “The next part gets a little spicy. He was also a recognized necrophiliac. In his autobiography, Dalí devoted an entire passage to the discussion of “necrophiliac impulses”.
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“He was incredibly messed up. His older brother, also named Salvador, died nine months before he was born. His parents convinced him he was the reincarnation of his dead brother,” the @human_history_on_durgs account said. added on TikTok. “As a child, he deliberately threw himself down the stairs.”
Some TikTokers pushed back on viewers who said the art should be separate from the artist.
“I’ll tell you exactly why you can’t. Here’s a bit of Art Theory 101. When a person creates a work of art, it’s the culmination of their whole life and experience,” said TikToker @cloudgorl. in a video.
“I cannot stress this enough. A painting is not just a pretty painting. There are reasons for doing things even though we may not know it. Salvador Dalí was a violent man, fascist and sexist, and it shows in his works.
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