Salvador Dalí, Study for the dream sequence in 'Spellbound' 1945. Private Collection © Salvador Dalí. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, DACS, 2007

Rose Shillito explores the surreal world of Salvador Dalí at Tate Modern

A new groundbreaking exhibition explores the symbiotic relationship between the paintings and films of Salvador Dalí and gives us a unique opportunity to see how cinema influenced the work of one of the greatest painters of the 20th century.

Dalí & Film runs from June 1 to September 9 2007 at London’s Tate Modern, and brings together more than 100 works from collections around the world, including more than 50 paintings alongside Dalí’s major film projects such as Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog, 1929), L’Age d’or (The Golden Age, 1930), Spellbound (1945) and Destino (1946).

This unprecedented exhibition traces Dalí’s life-long love of cinema and reveals the huge impact that developments in film-making had upon his work. It shows how Dalí embraced the new medium, seeing in it the wide-ranging possibilities to not only explore his own imagination through the moving image but also to bring his visionary concepts to a wider audience.

Salvador Dalí, Un Chien Andalou, 1929 © Salvador Dalí. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, DACS, 2007

Un Chien Andalou and L’Age d’Or were the products of Dalí’s first collaboration with filmmaker Luis Buñuel. The projects gave him with the perfect vehicles in which to experiment with his new ideas based around Sigmund Freud’s theories of the subconscious and the interplay between the rational and irrational.

The opening scene of Un Chien Andalou, in which a man (Buñuel) cuts open a women’s eye, remains as shocking today as it was to audiences then. For Dalí, subsequent imagery, such as rotting donkeys and a hand infested with ants, had particular associations with sex and death – the two key cornerstones of Freud’s philosophy. The film was lauded a great success, with André Breton, the leader of the Surrealists, declaring: “It is a Surrealist film”. Incidentally, Dalí also features in the film – as a priest.

The Accommodations of Desire (1929) was painted between the writing of Un Chien Andalou and its public release. The shared imagery includes an infestation of ants that suggests both decay and, because of its shape, a woman’s pubic hair.

L’Age d’Or represents a much darker and more threatening vision from Dalí, and opens with a fight between two scorpions. The tension in the film reflects the unease felt by the Surrealists towards the growing threat of the political right in Europe at the time. Upon seeing early screenings, neo-Nazis rioted in protest at the film’s blatant attack upon conservative values – resulting in a 50-year ban for the film in France.

Salvador Dalí, The Persistence of Memory, 1931. Museum of Modern Art, New York. © Salvador Dalí. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, DACS, 2007

The subversive vein and the preoccupation with anxiety around mortality that run through both of these films reverberate through The Persistance of Memory (1931). Here, the dark, ominous foreground and motif of the melted watch – which was to become one of Dalí’s major trademarks – convey a brooding concern with death that is linked to the final sequence of Un Chien Andalou.

Incidentally, this is the first time in almost 30 years that the tiny yet impressive Persistence painting has been shown in the UK – an unmissable opportunity to see one of the most enduring and instantly recognisable works in the history of modern art.

Salvador Dalí, Salvador Dalí on the set of the film Spellbound. © Source: BFI Image Rights of Salvador Dalí reserved. Fundación Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, 2007

Dalí’s interest in films was by now well and truly ignited, and when he moved to New York he set his sights on cracking Hollywood. Perhaps his most famous foray into film remains the seminal dream sequence commissioned by Alfred Hitchcock for his psychological thriller, Spellbound.

The dream recounted by Gregory Peck for analysis by Ingrid Bergman – with its distorted perceptions, eerie landscapes and faceless tormentor – remains one of the most powerful depictions of the subconscious ever seen in the medium of film. The image of the eye returns here, again being slashed by a man with a pair of scissors; other disembodied eyes watch the chaotic action from their position on top of plant stalks.

Salvador Dalí, Large Head of Greek God, design for the Walt Disney film Destino, 1946 © Salvador Dalí. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, DACS, 2007

After seeing his work with Hitchcock, Walt Disney asked Dalí to collaborate with him on an animated film. Dalí immediately set to work with gusto on Destino in 1946, allowing his imagination full rein. Unfortunately, the project was soon abandoned possibly because of the controversial nature of much of Dalí’s imagery.

In another first for the curators, the exhibition includes the debut showing of Destino in the UK since its completion in 2003. There’s also a wall full of Dalí’s original storyboard drawings, showing the progression of his ideas from desk to screen.

Perhaps one of the most remarkable works in the exhibition and one which clearly demonstrates the way paintings and film influence each other in Dalí’s work is Morning Ossification of the Cypress (1934). This bizarre image of a horse statue leaping out of the top of a cypress tree, with no evidence of the land to be seen to ground the composition, recalls the panning shots in cinema but has no precedents in painting. Clearly, Dalí was feeding interesting cinematic techniques back into his work to push the boundaries of reality and perception.

What this fascinating exhibition reveals is a man overflowing with imaginative ideas and creativity who embraced film as a vehicle to push the boundaries of expression. Dalí saw the potential of film as an art form with popular appeal and in it the possibility of revealing something about reality and existence in a new and dynamic way.