COMMENT: We appreciate the outstanding Art Essay from the month of Magnificat.net.
Santiago
El Grande (1957)
Salvador Dali (1904-1989),
The Beaverbrook Art Gallery,
Gift of the Sir James Dunn Foundation,
Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada.
IN 1941 the artist Salvador Dali
made an announcement that was as confounding to the art world as Paul's conversion
on the road to Damascus had been to ancient Judaism. Dali called it his "last
scandal", and it was a formal declaration that henceforth he would engage in
"classical painting". The world-famous Surrealist had long been noted
for his provocative evocations of an irrational dream world, and, like Saul, Dali
had been an approving cloak bearer for a movement that had taken great delight in
ridiculing the Church. But now as he struggled with the prospect of
returning to the faith of his Spanish childhood and grounding his work in the
traditional iconography of Catholicism, this enfant terrible of the counter-culture
was willing to be seen as an outcast and a traitor to the movement he had
helped form.
While the style of his art remained basically the same, its content changed
radically. In the next twenty years many of his noted masterpieces were works
that reverently extolled Christ and the Virgin Mary, saints, sacraments and the
Second Vatican Council. His detractors dismissed this turn of events as just
another opportunity for the self-promoting artist to gain fame and fortune. But
in an address to students at the Sorbonne in Paris, Dai declared that since
modern artists had come to believe in nothing, then their art basically
amounted to nothing. In essence, art had lost its soul!
Santiago El Grande of 1957 is one of Deli's post-war religious masterpieces. It represents the
Apostle James the Greater astride a white charger triumphantly holding aloft a
crucifix that is an artistic reference to another masterpiece he created six
years earlier, Christ of Saint John of the Cross. In order to interpret
the painting, one must know the legendary details of this patron saint of Spain
and understand the exalted place he holds in Spanish myth and history.
While James the Greater was the brother of John the Apostle and is
mentioned frequently in the Gospels, the story of his life after Christ's
Ascension is rooted in legend and lore. According to the Spaniards, Saint James
(Santiago in Spanish) was having great difficulty preaching the Gospel in the
Iberian Peninsula. On 2nd January in the year 40 AD he knelt and prayed for
guidance on the shore of the Ebro River. Our Lady appeared to him seated atop
a pillar. To aid his mission she ordered that a church be built on the site. To
this day many venerate it as the oldest church dedicated to Mary in all of
Christendom. Returning to Jerusalem, James suffered martyrdom and was beheaded
by order of King Herod Agrippa in 44 AD. His remains were taken back to Spain
and buried, but were lost when Muslim forces invaded the Iberian Peninsula and
kept its Christian population in subjugation for centuries. As the Spaniards
periodically rose up to battle their conquerors, there were visions of the saint
on a white horse ready to lead them to victory. In this guise he became known
as "Santiago Matamoro", or Saint James the Moor-Slayer, brandishing a
sword and carrying a white banner on which was emblazoned a red cross. By the ninth
century Santiago's remains were recovered and venerated at Compostela in
northern Spain. The fervour surrounding his cult gave rise to a network of
important pilgrimage routes across Western Europe that elevated Compostela to the
level of Jerusalem and Rome as a destination for the faithful.
Dali's
painting portrays a mystical vision. Santiago is perched atop a rampant white
steed with a network of rib vaults fanning outward from a single column lodged
at the horse's hind legs. The column
recalls the pillar on which the Virgin appeared to Saint James and encouraged
his mission. The rib vaulting represents the pilgrimage routes splayed across
Europe, with Compostela as their terminus point. This architectural canopy is
derived from the Church of the Jacobins in Toulouse, one of the many stopping
points on the road to Compostela. Designed by the Dominicans in 1230, it bears
the nickname given to them in France, the 'Jacobins" due to the fact that
their major house in Paris was located on the rue Saint Jacques, a starting
point for French pilgrims making their way to the shrine in Spain.
Instead of a
banner or sword, Dali's Apostle holds aloft the corpus of Christ whose radiant
pose approximates the shape of the sword-like cross of Saint James, the emblem
of Spain's highest military order. In fact "Santiago" became a battle
cry for Spaniards who retook their homeland from the invaders. A halo of eleven
cockle shells surrounds the saint at the intersections of the ribbing, with a
twelfth shell strapped to the horse's chest, This shell became an attribute for
Saint James as it is a useful tool for pilgrims.
The frenetic
design of the ribbing coupled with the nuclear cloud from which the horse
springs reveals Dali's own conviction that the discovery of the atomic nature
of the universe could prove the very existence of God. Dali saw himself as the
first painter to combine science with religious belief. He preached a theory of
"nuclear mysticism", issuing his own Mystic Manifesto in 1951. Even the
tendons in the horse's neck create the shape of an angel that Dali repeats in
the azure sky. yet despite the exalted ideas that underscore his painting and
the nationalistic fervour it enshrines, the artist personalised the canvas by rendering
a miniscule self-portrait at the bottom of the localised landscape and shrouded
his wife Gala in prayerful repose. The dirty bare foot of the Apostle James becomes
the symbol of Everyman, representing all the millions of perambulating pilgrims
who have walked the dusty road to Compostela over the past one thousand years. It
was modelled on Dali's own foot. Without shame, the artist liked to point out, "I
have very saintly feet!"
Father Michael Morris, O.P.
Professor, Dominican School
of Philosophy and Theology, Berkeley, CA.
To view this masterpiece in greater detail visit:
www.magnificat.com
Note: the atomic cloud mass is a sweetly painted
jasmine flower – a symbol of purity and harmony
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