Surrealist artist, author and provocateur Salvador Dalí finally made his way to India thanks to the curation by Christine Argillet, daughter of Pierre Argillet, Dalí’s publisher and lifelong friend. The exhibition ‘Dalí Comes to India’, held from February 7 to 13 at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, showcased nearly 200 of his artworks from the Argillet Collection. At the venue, Argillet spoke to Apeksha Priyadarshini about her cherished memories of and experiences with her father’s favourite artist. Where she said that Dalí was a very open-minded person. When he got married to Gala, in the late 20s, he went to eight different places of worship. He had this sense of universalism. In the mid-60s, he worked for Air India and made a fabulous ashtray with swans. When my father and I visited India in 1970, my father—an excellent photographer—returned from the tour with nearly 500 photos. Dalí said, “I’m very interested in India. I see a parallel between what westerners look for in their quest for the orient and what people of the orient seek in the West.”
He worked on some elements of destiny and fate, often representing yin yang and animals like cows, tigers and elephants. The elephants—common in Dalí’s works—are usually represented with very long legs and a ray that induces sleep or hypnosis. Dalí was interested in all kinds of spiritual quests—Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim. He saw all religions and their philosophies as a way to connect us and not separate us, which is very important in his work.
Reporter: Apeksha Priyadarshini
Camera: Vikram Sharma, Tribhuvan Tiwari
Editor: Ehraz Zaman
#SalvadorDali #DaliInIndia #Surrealism #PierreArgillet #DaliArt #IndiaHabitatCentre #ArtExhibition #India #Delhi #SurrealistArt
He worked on some elements of destiny and fate, often representing yin yang and animals like cows, tigers and elephants. The elephants—common in Dalí’s works—are usually represented with very long legs and a ray that induces sleep or hypnosis. Dalí was interested in all kinds of spiritual quests—Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim. He saw all religions and their philosophies as a way to connect us and not separate us, which is very important in his work.
Reporter: Apeksha Priyadarshini
Camera: Vikram Sharma, Tribhuvan Tiwari
Editor: Ehraz Zaman
#SalvadorDali #DaliInIndia #Surrealism #PierreArgillet #DaliArt #IndiaHabitatCentre #ArtExhibition #India #Delhi #SurrealistArt
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00:00That's the beauty with Dali, is that you are always surprised.
00:03There is always something that he did that I discovered.
00:08Would it be furniture, jewelry, art, films, writings, beautiful novels that he wrote.
00:16So it's a very eclectic and diverse talent that he had.
00:21Dali has always represented women in a beautiful way.
00:26Powerful, equal to men, free, liberated.
00:32And I would say that this was not common to all the surrealists.
00:37The position of Dali was quite stunning at his time.
00:42Very early on, when he was in Spain, he was a great friend of Luis Buñuel.
00:49And they did two films together, which are probably more Dalinian than Buñuel-esque at the time.
01:26Hello and welcome to Outlook Talks.
01:33I'm Apeksha.
01:34And we are here today with Christine Argillet,
01:37who is the curator of the collection of Dali's paintings and etchings that have come to India.
01:43And Christine's father, Per Argillet, had worked with Dali over nearly three decades.
01:50And we are seeing the paintings here from his collection.
01:54So welcome to Outlook Talks.
01:56Good afternoon, Apeksha.
01:57Good afternoon.
01:59First of all, we'd like to begin with talking about his fascination with India.
02:03Could you tell us a little bit about how and why Dali was fascinated with India?
02:08Well, I think that it comes from far.
02:11Dali was a very open-minded person.
02:16And just to tell you a little anecdote, when he was married to Gala in the late 20s,
02:22he went to eight different places of worship.
02:26Not only Christians, but all kinds of worship to be sure to be married.
02:32He had this sense of universalism.
02:36So in the mid-60s, yes, he worked for Air India and he did this fabulous ashtray with the swans.
02:46And then when my father and I went to India in 1970, my father was an excellent photographer
02:55and he came back with maybe 500 different photos from a big tour in India and Nepal.
03:01And Dali said, I'm very interested by this country.
03:06I see a parallel between what Westerners look for in this quest to the Orient
03:17and people who have the Orient for the West.
03:19But it was not the first time he was working on some elements of destiny, of fate,
03:28links with the Orient.
03:29He has often represented yin-yangs, all kinds of animals, sacred cows.
03:38He represented tigers.
03:40He represented elephants.
03:42And the elephants, which are very common in Dali's works, are usually represented with
03:49very long legs and with a ray that gives sleep and sometimes hypnosis.
03:57So we have an etching here, which is present, which is called hypnosis.
04:02And you have an elephant that brings this hypnosis.
04:06So Dali was very interested by all kinds of spiritual quests.
04:15I would say Buddhism, Hinduism, Arabic, Muslim quest and spirituality.
04:26So he has represented all that through the years.
04:31He was very open to all those elements.
04:35And he would see all the religions and the philosophies as a way to connect us
04:43and not a way to separate us, which is very important in this work.
04:49Yes.
04:51And can any of Indian artistic influences be seen in his work?
04:57Was there any Indian artist or artwork that also is reflected in his creations?
05:03Do you think that there is any sort of osmosis in that sense?
05:07I think it's more linked to the traditional Indian representation often.
05:14Then I must say that I don't know whose Indian artist he met,
05:21but I know that I see some connections, for instance, at the moment with Ghulam Muhammad Sheikh,
05:30who is a fabulous artist and who has this kind of fantasy background,
05:38this original way of perspective that Dali was looking at also.
05:44So I think there are many links, much more than maybe I know.
05:48And that's the beauty with Dali, is that you are always surprised.
05:53There is always something that he did that I discovered.
05:57Would it be furniture, jewelry, art, films, writings, beautiful novels that he wrote.
06:05So it's a very eclectic and diverse talent that he had.
06:11So could you tell us a little bit about his transitioning first from Impressionism to Surrealism
06:18and then also dabbling with Dadaism and Cubism.
06:23Could you tell us as to what was it that motivated these experimentations?
06:30So he was born in Spain in 1904 and he was extremely talented as a child.
06:39So he was lucky enough to have a father who was not in the art field, but who loved art,
06:48who would take him to exhibitions, etc.
06:51And immediately he started as a kid to have works on Impressionism,
06:59be interested rapidly on Goya, on Picasso, who was older than him.
07:07And when he was 17, he already exhibited with Picasso and Goya.
07:12So it's quite extraordinary to see this.
07:16But what pleased him in the Dada first and Surrealist movement is the freedom of thoughts.
07:28In Europe, we were coming after the First World War, where we had had tremendous deaths
07:34and people wanted to change things, to break the frames, to be very free.
07:41And he loved that idea.
07:43And going towards those, as you mentioned, those different movements,
07:48one after the other, was a way to find his path.
07:52So finally, Surrealism and the link with the dream was the most talking to him very early on.
08:03And Surrealism started in 1924 with André Breton.
08:09Yeah.
08:10Dalí took part of it.
08:12And then rapidly, André Breton was trying to frame Surrealism in certain things.
08:19And that was not corresponding to this movement that was very large and open.
08:26So Dalí, in a very famous moment, went to one of the meetings
08:33and came with maybe 20 different pullovers, one over the other.
08:38And each time André Breton was saying something very strict,
08:43Dalí would remove one of the pullovers.
08:46And then he removed the 20 pullovers.
08:49And then he left and he said,
08:52the movement is not for me, I want to stay free.
08:55So he's one of the famous Surrealists, but he separated from André Breton,
09:00like many other artists did after these years.
09:05But it took them longer.
09:06Dalí went free very fast.
09:11And so a lot of the artworks that have been showcased here feature women and women's bodies.
09:19Do you think there was any particular kind of interest that Dalí had for women's bodies?
09:24Well, he was a man.
09:26He had a wonderful, beautiful wife, Gala.
09:32She was very beautiful.
09:34And to the end, because she died before him and she was older than him,
09:41she was very athletic and very well read.
09:48It was a wonderful woman.
09:50I think it was his muse.
09:52She was also more than that.
09:54She was the structure in the house, the architecture of the house.
10:00She always said that Dalí was unable to take care of his material life,
10:06so she would take care of everything.
10:09And she was so important to him.
10:11And he said, without Gala, I wouldn't have been able to live.
10:16So she was very important.
10:18And it's her that we see in all those drawings.
10:23As far as I knew her, she's the one we see.
10:27The different women are always Gala in a different situation.
10:34So it's true.
10:35And something notable, especially for this period of time,
10:42Dalí has always represented women in a beautiful way,
10:46powerful, equal to men, free, liberated.
10:53And I would say that this was not common to all the surrealists.
10:57The position of Dalí was quite stunning at his time.
11:03And for this particular exhibition,
11:06why is it that only etchings have been taken, selected for this collection?
11:11I mean, were there other artworks and other kinds of artworks that were there?
11:16Why was it that this particular selection?
11:19Yeah, there is a reason for that.
11:22My father started as a journalist and a photographer,
11:26and he loved the black and white works.
11:29So he started to collect all those black and white drawings, etchings.
11:35And one day he went to these surrealist artists
11:39and asked them, commissioned them for illustrations of novels, of poems and so on.
11:47So it started very much with the black and white
11:50and the etchings are part of that.
11:53Yet some, maybe even I should say many of these etchings here
11:58have been coloured afterwards with a watercolour by Dalí.
12:02But the main idea was the graphic art.
12:08And it's why you see a lot of that.
12:11There are also watercolours that we have,
12:14original watercolours, tapestries,
12:18some paintings that have stayed at home for the moment.
12:22But what I wanted to show, especially here,
12:25was the hippie series and the link to India.
12:30So it's what motivated my choice.
12:34Yes. And could you give us some insights
12:38into the relationship that your father shared with Dalí?
12:42They had a very common way of seeing things.
12:46Not that my father was an artist, he was not.
12:49He was a great photographer, but he was not a painter.
12:52He had a love for art and I think that they were sharing a lot of books.
13:01They were going to theatre pieces together.
13:04My father would help Dalí create happenings in Paris
13:09and all this was more friendship
13:12than the work of a publisher with the artist.
13:17It was a very special way of working.
13:20And Dalí was very appreciative.
13:23And when my father would tell him,
13:25oh, you know this piece, Dalí would say,
13:29well, it's not for you, I know that.
13:31I'll give you another one.
13:32So it was always this kind of very flexible kind of relationship.
13:38Kind, elegant way of working.
13:42It was sometimes fabulous, sometimes very difficult
13:46because Dalí would request impossible things sometimes.
13:50Like, could you install a grand piano in an oak tree
13:55and have the pianist play while I paint?
13:58And that could never be done.
14:00There were things like that which were difficult,
14:03but they were also wonderful things.
14:06And elements which took place
14:10that would never have been thought before.
14:13So that was this kind of relationship,
14:16sometimes difficult moments,
14:19sometimes such an enthusiasm
14:22that my father let the other artists settle it
14:25and decide to work with Dalí in the 60s,
14:29in the period of time that we show here.
14:32And what are your most peculiar memories with Dalí?
14:40Like your early memories?
14:41You know, when I knew him particularly well,
14:44I was a child or a teenager.
14:46So my vision is due at that time of my life.
14:51I would say that he was always extremely kind.
14:56He was observing a lot of the people
14:59and often he would tell me,
15:02you put your foot this way, can you put it back that way?
15:07And he was looking at how I was turning,
15:11moving, smiling sometimes.
15:14And that was very kind of him.
15:16And that was, you know,
15:17to capture maybe what a candid child is doing naturally
15:24without thinking.
15:25And he was looking for this true, genuine kind of thing.
15:31But on another side, he was extremely kind
15:35and he would tell me when I was a kid,
15:37do you know how I can have my moustache move?
15:41So I would say, no, I don't know.
15:43So he would show me,
15:44he would take an old cologne moustache
15:48and then he would add some herbs.
15:51I don't know which herbs.
15:52And then he would put them
15:56and put a scotch tape on it for a couple of hours.
16:02And then the moustache was like that
16:04and he was doing this.
16:06And I didn't know how he could do that.
16:10And that was a lot of fun.
16:11One day I said to him,
16:13you know, my mother always complains.
16:16She doesn't dream.
16:19She doesn't sleep well, but she doesn't dream.
16:22And he was always speaking of dream.
16:25So he said to me, oh, I was maybe eight, eight years old.
16:29He said to me, you'll take this flower,
16:32put it on your mother's night bed
16:36and see what she says.
16:39And the next morning, I do it without my mother knowing.
16:43The next morning, my mother wakes up and she said,
16:46I don't know, it's maybe 10 years I didn't dream.
16:50This night I had a fabulous dream.
16:53So I went to Dali and I said, yeah, it works very well.
16:56So it was this kind of, you know,
16:59grandfather child attitude,
17:02which was extremely kind and charming.
17:07And at the same time,
17:08I had the chance to see him paint in his studio in Spain.
17:14So that was very extraordinary.
17:17He was extremely rapid.
17:19He was whistling and talking to people at the same time.
17:23And he was going very fast.
17:26That was surprising.
17:28So I remember that I had that pleasure to see him.
17:33And on an easel, he had always a small canvas
17:39with geometric shapes, only geometric.
17:43And people would wonder, what is that?
17:46What is this geometric shape?
17:48And Dali would say, well, I always work on the golden ratio.
17:53And I start my paintings with those lines
17:58and then I insert my work in it.
18:01So it's totally different of what we have here,
18:04which is like sketches, very spontaneous,
18:08direct, coming from his mind immediately.
18:13When the paintings that we know usually quite well
18:17by all the catalogs and exhibitions we saw
18:20are matured, well-reflected works
18:24that took a long time to create.
18:26This is more immediate.
18:29So it relates more to his direct impulse.
18:35And for that reason, it's complimentary, I would say.
18:39Yes.
18:40And how did your father and Dali chance upon meeting?
18:46How was their first encounter like?
18:49I think they met very early in the 30s
18:54at a Congress in Amsterdam.
18:57And my father was fascinated by the drawings of,
19:02as I said, the drawings of Dali,
19:05his capacity to draw like in the Italian Renaissance,
19:09he had a fabulous drawing.
19:11And they connected at that moment.
19:14And they wanted to do something together
19:17when the war happened.
19:19And Dali fled to New York for eight years.
19:23And my father found him much later in the late 50s.
19:28And it's when he decided to work on the Greek mythology,
19:33which is presented here.
19:35And that was not easy at the beginning
19:38because when my father was not there
19:41to take the copper plates to print them,
19:44Dali would sell them to somebody else.
19:47And my father was furious.
19:49And he would tell him,
19:50you know, Dali, you cannot do that.
19:52We have a contract.
19:53You cannot sell what he's precisely prepared
19:58for publications to somebody else.
20:01But Dali would say, oh, it doesn't matter.
20:03I'll do a better one for you.
20:05That was true.
20:06But my father was upset.
20:09And so he decided that all summers,
20:12we would go and spend July, August in Spain
20:16in the hotel in front of Dali's house.
20:19And so my father would get his plates immediately
20:24and have them ready for the publication.
20:26So it's how it slowly happened.
20:29And then my father had so much pleasure
20:32working with Dali that he left a little bit aside
20:35the other surrealists and worked extensively with Dali.
20:40So it's a very large collection of etchings.
20:45There are 200 different ones.
20:48And that stops in 1973 when Dali said,
20:52I don't want to etch anymore.
20:55And my father said, well, then in that case,
20:58we stopped the publications.
21:00They went on different things,
21:02but which were different.
21:04Yes.
21:05And since we're talking about the times of the war,
21:10Dali's political leanings have also been contentious.
21:13And there's been, you know,
21:16especially within the history of the surrealist movement.
21:18So what are your thoughts on that?
21:21So my talk on that is that first thing,
21:24Dali loved to shock the bourgeois.
21:27That was an immense pleasure for him to do that.
21:31So he wanted to create a reaction from people.
21:38And this reaction sometimes was stunning.
21:41So for instance, just before the Second World War,
21:46he made a painting where you see an old telephone handle over a plate.
21:56And in the plate, there is a small picture of Hitler.
21:59Right.
22:00And Dali represents this telephone with a line that is cut,
22:06a wire that is cut saying, well, it was 1937.
22:12He wouldn't see any possibility of dialogue with Hitler.
22:18Right.
22:19Some people interpreted it as a fascination for Hitler.
22:24No, it was not.
22:25He hated all that which was violent.
22:30He hated the bullfights in his country.
22:34He hated the war.
22:36He hated Hitler.
22:38But the way he was saying it was a way that was not always understood.
22:44And for instance, there was a moment when I was in his hotel in Paris.
22:51I was maybe 13, 14.
22:54And I remember I was with my father and there was a crowd in the suite
23:01because when Dali was in Paris, everybody was coming.
23:05And suddenly, in the middle of this crowd, the telephone rings
23:11and the secretary goes to the telephone and says to Dali,
23:14Dali, there is an old lady.
23:17She wants you, the concierge of the hotel,
23:20she wants you to sign a paper against the torture.
23:24And Dali said, oh, yeah, but not now.
23:27We are too many.
23:31Two minutes later, the telephone rings again and the secretary says,
23:35well, Dali, the concierge says the lady is old.
23:39She cannot come back.
23:40It's difficult for her.
23:42So Dali, who was a very kind person, says, well, have her come.
23:47Two minutes later, arrives an old lady, very strict like that.
23:52And she says, without saying hello or anything,
23:56Mr. Dali, I want you to sign my petition against torture.
24:02Everybody stops.
24:04And then Dali says, but madam, I'm absolutely sorry.
24:12I love torture.
24:14I love torture.
24:15And the lady goes and leaves.
24:18And the next day in the newspapers, Dali states that he loves torture.
24:23But everybody who was there knew that it was just a reaction to a stupid moment.
24:32But that was very badly taken.
24:35And that happened many times.
24:37And Dali was not understood for what he was.
24:41But he was absolutely not aware of the bad or the good he was doing sometimes,
24:52making statements that were badly interpreted on the first degree, I would say.
25:00So I just wanted to ask you that, do you think that if Dali were alive today,
25:06he would find the contemporary state of the world?
25:11Do you think he would find it surrealist?
25:13And is it like we are living in his understanding of reality?
25:17Do you think that that would be the case?
25:19I think that Dali would have always been interested by science techniques,
25:25which he was in his time.
25:27He had often scientists coming to his place.
25:31He was discussing with them.
25:33It's how he worked on the DNA.
25:36At his time, he worked on the DNA on many of his paintings.
25:42He was interested by the holograms already and worked on them at the end of his life.
25:50I'm sure he would have been very interested to see how we virtually work these days.
25:58He would have certainly made NFTs, tried NFTs, tried the AI to create something as a tool,
26:08because he would have seen it, I think, as a tool.
26:14I think he would have continued this process,
26:18which was a little bit Leonardo-esque to be at the same time in sciences and art.
26:25Okay.
26:26Politically, as I said to you, he was not understanding really well what was going on,
26:34but he had some main elements.
26:37He was extremely respectful of all cultures, all religions or non-religions.
26:44He was against the barbarism of the bullfights or what people had to do against animals.
26:57I think that most probably he would have found a way to express his ideas.
27:08I'm sure he would.
27:10I don't know how, but he was so creative.
27:12Yes.
27:14Just one last question about his penchant for cinema.
27:18Dali was really intrigued by cinema.
27:21What do you think drew him to the media?
27:24Very early on, when he was in Spain, he was a great friend of Luis Buñuel.
27:31They did two films together, which are probably more Dalinian than Buñuel-esque at the time.
27:38Then when he was in the US, yes, he worked with Hitchcock on Spellbound.
27:47I think he was fascinated by the succession of the images and the rhythm that it implies,
27:55the fact that it's bringing to life in that way.
28:01He cooperated also with Walt Disney for an animated film called Destiny,
28:11which is not very long, but has all the elements of Dali's paintings.
28:17He loved to paint on it.
28:20I heard that, because I live also in Los Angeles,
28:24that he created more than 2,000 or 3,000 drawings to prepare this animated film.
28:33He was passionate about it.
28:40All the drawings are made really page by page, image by image, by Dali.
28:47He was very enthusiastic always to do something new.
28:52I think the movement that you see in many of his works was something that was talking to him.
28:59Yes, very much so.
29:01Thank you so much.
29:02Thank you to you.
29:03Thank you, Abeccia.