SALVADOR DALÍ

(1904-1989)

Visage féminin pour l'hologramme 'Submarine Fisherman'

Footnotes

The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Nicolas Descharnes.

Provenance
Dr. Maury P. Leibovitz Collection, Connecticut (possibly acquired directly from the artist through M. Knoedler & Co., circa 1972).
Private collection, US, UK and Greece (by descent from the above in 1992).
Private collection, UK (by descent from the above).

Exhibited
New York, M. Knoedler & Co., Holograms Conceived by Dalí, 7 April - 13 May 1972 (as part of the hologram installation titled 'Submarine Fisherman').

Literature
S. & L. Lissack, Dalí in Holographic Space, Charleston, 2013 (illustrated p. 12; illustrated pp. 18 & 23 as part of the hologram installation titled 'Submarine Fisherman').
S. Lissack, 'Dalí in Holographic Space, Salvador Dalí's contributions to art holograms', in Spie. The international society for optics and photonics, online article, January 2014 (illustrated as part of the hologram installation titled 'Submarine Fisherman').

Salvador Dalí's enthusiasm for holography was proudly declared in his introduction to the catalogue for the important 1972 Knoedler Gallery exhibition dedicated to his holographic exploration: 'all artists have been concerned with three-dimensional reality since the time of Velázquez, and in modern times, the analytic cubism of Picasso tried again to capture the three dimensions of Velázquez. Now with the genius of Gabor, the possibility of a new Renaissance in art has been realized with the use of holography. The doors have been opened for me into a new house of creation' (Dalí quoted in Exh. cat., Holograms Conceived by Dalí, New York, 1972, p. 1).

This interest started in the late 1940s with the discovery by British-Hungarian scientist, Dr. Dennis Gabor, that a three-dimensional image could be recorded on a two-dimensional space. It took several years and a few technical advancements before holograms finally took the shape they have today: a transparent photographic plate which has recorded a phenomenon of diffraction of light of a three-dimensional object. Then, when illuminated at a certain angle by a beam of light, the plate reproduces a relief image of the photographed object. This major discovery earned Dennis Gabor the 1971 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Coincidentally, that year also marked Dalí's introduction to holography, when South African artist Selwyn Lissack approached him at the St. Regis Hotel in New York. Lissack recalls Dalí's immediate enthusiasm for the medium and what seemed like the endless possibilities it created, with laser lights now becoming the artist's brush. The hotel suite at the St. Regis became Lissack and Dalí's impromptu studio office as 'Dalí was thrilled with the notion of working with a medium which gave him the ability to create beyond the confines of linear space' (S. Lissack, 'Dalí in Holographic Space', in SPIE. The international society for optics and photonics, online article, 1 January 2014).

The present work, Visage féminin pour l'hologramme 'Submarine Fisherman', is part of Dalí's second holographic work, executed under the guidance of Selwyn Lissack: Submarine Fisherman. It consisted of a holographic installation mixing different media: first, a holographic plate of a diver was isolated in a metallic box with laser. This was then incorporated within another larger box which had a separate source of lighting shining onto a transparency of Pablo Picasso's masterpiece, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. This second box projected the image around the hologram – contained within the first box - like stained glass. Finally, Dalí painted an oil portrait of a Catalan girl on a glass plate – the present work – which he superimposed over the holographic plate.

The multi-layered result showed the portrait of the Catalan girl projected over the hologram of a diver in the sea, superimposed on the reproduction of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. The superposition of the oil portrait and the hologram was measured by Dalí so that the nose of the girl would coincide with the elbow of the diver in the holographic image projected. Dalí thus produced a three-dimensional image while mixing media and merging artistic and scientific dimensions, at the crossroads of painting, sculpture, and photography. Selwyn Lissack, who witnessed the creation of Submarine Fisherman, recalls that he 'stood mesmerized as Dalí created a perfect merging of three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional plane' (S. & L. Lissack, Dalí in Holographic Space, Charleston, 2013, p. 23).

Dalí's choice of imagery for the final hologram was no coincidence and the individual images each have their own importance. Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon depicts prostitutes in a Spanish brothel on Avignon Street in Barcelona, and Dalí's Catalonian face is thought to be one of the young girls, her visage certainly reminiscent in appearance to the figures in Picasso's work, with her abstracted features and Cubist appearance. For Dalí, the underwater world, with its deep and dark waters, was the place of all buried secrets and a perfect metaphor for the human subconscious. As such, the diver is projected onto the Picasso, which we can interpret as a materialisation of the deeply buried sexual desire in the human psyche. This interpretation is further confirmed by the luscious red lips which recall Dalí's lifelong obsession with Mae West, a sex-symbol and an often recurring motif in his oeuvre.

Visage féminin pour l'hologramme 'Submarine Fisherman' is an extremely rare piece, as Dalí only ever conceived of six other holograms. Thus, creating a new way of painting using light and technology and contributing to a new artistic paradigm, Dalí's process recalled the Renaissance geniuses who had been revolutionising painting with camera obscuras. The Nobel Laureate Dr. Gabor himself saw in Dalí, 'a genius [...], creating a new art of which old, great painters may have dreamed, but which could only be realized by combining art with the most modern technology' (Gabor quoted in Exh. cat., Holograms Conceived by Dalí, New York, 1972, p. 2).