Salvador Dali: painting the apocalypse of Perillos?

 

Life

The Spanish Surrealist painter Salvador Dali was born on May 11, 1904, in Figueres, in the district of Girona in Catalonia, just south of the Languedoc-Roussillon. Apart from spending time abroad, specifically in New York, Dali would remain anchored in this region.
Most of his early career was surrounded by controversy and “scandal and sensation”. By 1939, he had broken with the Surrealist movement, André Breton even dubbing Dali as “Avida Dollars” – an anagram of his name. Nevertheless, he would remain their most eccentric billboard; that same year, he made Dalí’s Declaration of Independence of the Imagination and the Rights of Man to His Own Madness, published in defence of his “Dream of Venus” exhibit for the New York World’s Fair.
Particularly after the Second World War, Dali would create a series of paintings that continue to enthral the masses. At best labelled eccentric, at worst a paranoid lunatic, Dali died of heart failure on January 23, 1989, in Figueres. The love of his life, Gala, had died seven years earlier.

Techniques

Dali was one of the figureheads of the Surrealist movement. To bring up images from his subconscious mind, Dalí induced hallucinatory states in himself by a process he described as “paranoiac critical.” His painting style matured with extraordinary rapidity, and from 1929 to 1937, he produced the paintings that made him the world’s best-known Surrealist artist.
By entering this “other dimension”, he depicted a dream world in which commonplace objects are juxtaposed, deformed, or otherwise metamorphosed in a bizarre and irrational fashion. Perhaps the most famous of these enigmatic images is “The Persistence of Memory”, painted in 1931, in which limp, melting watches rest in an eerily calm landscape. In the other dimension, time is of no relevance…
His interest in the enigma of the mind also brought him into contact with Sigmund Freud. The meetings occurred in 1938, when Freud was ailing in his London residence. Dali would draw numerous portraits of the father of psychiatry.

In the late 1930s, Dalí switched to painting in a more academic style under the influence of the Renaissance painter Raphael, and was expelled from the Surrealist movement. He lived in the United States first because of Franco’s regime, later because of the Second World War. During the period from 1950 to 1970, Dalí painted many works with religious themes, though he continued to explore erotic subjects, to represent childhood memories, and to use themes centring on his wife, Gala, whom he had met in Cadaquès in 1929.

Links to Perillos

The world of Dali seems far removed from the mystery of Perillos, but nothing is further from the truth. Dali stated he had a vision while inside the station of Perpignan, on September 19, 1963. “I had an example of a cosmogonic ecstasy, more powerful than the preceding ones. I had a precise vision of the constitution of the Universe.” Dali came to believe that the station of Perpignan was the centre of the universe; the universe would begin to converge from within this station.
For Dali, the station of Perpignan was the centre of his universe; uncomfortable with the administrative details the Spanish station of Figueres required, he opted to ship all his large canvases to the United States from the station of Perpignan. But that was not what Dali was hinting at.
The vision from 1963 was followed by a painting of the Station of Perpignan, which went on display on December 18, 1965, in New York. In the invitation sent out for the opening night of the exhibition, Dali repeated his claim that the station would be the location from where the universe would start to converge.

“Catastrophic writing”

The enigmatic statement of Dali came to the attention of Roger Michel Erasmy, who began to explore Dali’s strange world of hallucinations – an area where few had dared to go. Dali’s perception as a madman was augmented in 1984, when he apparently tried to commit suicide by setting his bed on fire. But all events surrounding Dali’s visions occurred before – and might have, together with the love for his dead wife, have contributed to an unsuccessful suicide attempt.
The theme of an enveloping catastrophe came to the forefront. There is the enigmatic “catastrophic writing”, written in a booklet on September 16, 1982, while he was at his castle Pubol.
His final “prophetic testament” was dictated to Antonio Pixtot, his most if perhaps only trusted ally at the time, on October 31, 1983. It contained catastrophic revelations, centred around four hallucinations Dali had experienced, apparently after the death of Gala, at the end of 1982.
In these hallucinations, the French mathematician René Thom appeared. Though he had only ever met the mathematician once, in his hallucinations, Thom apparently convinced Dali of an upcoming catastrophe. Intriguingly, Dali stated that the centre of this catastrophe, which he linked with the disappearance – or abduction – of Europe, would begin between Salses and Narbonne.

66600

It is clear that in Dali’s hallucinations, the region around Perpignan took on mythic proportions. Even in his early days, Dali must have been familiar with the legend of Babau, as he co-operated with Luis Bunuel on a series of movies, such as the Andalousian Dog and the Golden Age. A third scenario, labelled Babaouo, was never produced, but Dali must have known the origins of the legend. The legend of Babau originates in Rivesaltes, with a similar legend, about Babaos, being specifically linked with Perillos. In both cases, the hero of the story is the lord of Perillos, who successfully conquers the monster.
Erasmy himself became intrigued with the “coincidence” that Dali placed the end of the world as we know it in a region that is known for its Apocalyptic postcode: 66600, the region of Rivesaltes and Opoul-Perillos. Coincidence, or not?

It is known that Dali himself came to Opoul – there is currently no mechanism to find out whether he visited Perillos. The proof of his visit to Opoul can be found at the mayor’s office in Opoul, where he signed the visitors’ book with Dali’s usual extravagant display – his characteristic moustache alone made him stand out from anyone else.

The abduction of Europe

Following his hallucinatory visions in late 1982, Dali also drew the “Enlevement topologique d’Europe. Hommage à René Thom.” (Topological Abduction of Europe - Homage to René Thom) in 1983. The painting is oil on canvas, measuring 60 by 73 centimetres. It is one of his lesser known paintings, as most consider it nothing more but the desperate attempts of a man losing his sanctity, having already lost the ability to portray his thoughts in wonderful compositions on gigantic canvases.
At first sight, there is little to suggest the art critics have gotten it wrong. Erasmy, however, thought there might be more to this painting. For one, the name sits clearly within his series of visions which he had experienced. Secondly, the painting, in the bottom left corner, has a specific reference to René Thom, including a series of mathematical symbols.
The rest of the painting appears to be nothing more than two lines, against a grey background, and a cross. As Dali had stated that the abduction of Europe, the topic of the painting, would begin between Salses and Narbonne, Erasmy noted the similarity between the route of the A9/E15 motorway, between Salses and Narbonne, and the line to the right. The resemblance is indeed stunning. The smaller, lighter, line to the left coincides with a part of a smaller, yet important secondary road, the D611, between Tuchan and Durban-Corbières. With this in mind, the X – marking the spot? – falls on the territory of Perillos, whose lord so many decades before, Dali had come across in a screenplay.

The similarity between the A9/E15 is so stunning that Erasmy actually asked Pixtot whether Dali had painted with a map in hand. Pixtot stated he was present throughout, and that Dali had not used a map – but at the same time noted that the similarity was indeed stunning, if only because in his hallucinations, Dali had stated that “the spot” where Europe would be “abducted” was between Salses and Narbonne. If X does mark the spot, was Dali referring to Opoul-Perillos?

With thanks to Roger Michel Erasmy