Happy Veterans Day

Here's to all those who fight for freedom.

Posters by Everett Johnson.

Dali & the Mystique of Hitler

While Dali was part of surrealism early on, i feel that he was at heart a pop artist. This has more to do with his intention, as opposed to the actual appearance of his work. Apparently, surrealism came complete with a political agenda, which Dali, as a bonafide eccentric butted heads with constantly. Contrary to political agendas & philosophical ideologies, life & art are about exploration, & this means exploration anywhere. I found an interesting article on "my studios" concerning more of Dali's exploration of Hitler & the consequences of his actions.

Born in Figueras, Spain, Dalí first studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Madrid and was influenced by metaphysical painters de Chirco and Carra while there. He equally admired the meticulous realism of the Pre-Raphaelites and French 19th century painters, he began to blend their conceptual styles and techniques.

Dalí transformed the definition of Surrealism, expressing the unconscious process of thought, dream,and associated realities through his paintings and drawings. An eccentric and masterful Surrealist in painting and in life, Dalí wrote his diary two years before entering art school in the early 1920's: "Perhaps I'll be despised and misunderstood... but I'll be a great genius."

Throughout his life, Dalí cultivated eccentric and a predisposition towards narcissistic exhibitionism, claimimg his creative energies were derived from it. The spectrum of imagery from fantastic to nightmarish visions which Dalí produced are the supreme evidence of these idiosyncrasies.

An excerpt from Dali by Robert Descharnes
"Furthermore, I saw Hitler as a masochist obsessed with the idee fixe of starting a war and losing it in heroic style. In a word, he was preparing for one of those actes gratuits which were then highly approved of by our group. My persistence in seeing the mystique of Hitler from a Surrealist point of view and my obstinacy in trying to endow the sadistic element in Surrealism with a religious meaning (both exacerbated by my method of paranoiac-critical analysis, which threatened to destroy automatism and its inherent narcissism) led to a number of wrangles and occasional rows with Breton and his friends. The latter, incidentally, began to waver between the boss and me in a way that alarmed him."

In fact they had long gone beyond mere dispute. Contrary to Dali's wishes, the Surrealists remained devoted to Breton, their iron-fisted leader whose every order had to be obeyed. When required to appear before the group, Dali showed up with a thermometer in his mouth, claiming he felt ill. He was supposedly suffering from a bout of 'flu, and was well wrapped up in a pullover and scarf. While Breton reeled off his accusations, Dali kept checking his temperature. When it was his turn for a counter-attack, he began to remove his clothing article by article. To the accompaniment of this striptease, he read out an address he had composed previously, in which he urged his friends to understand that his obsession with Hitler was strictly paranoiac and at heart apolitical, and that he could not be a Nazi "because if Hitler were ever to conquer Europe, he would do away with hysterics of my kind, as had already happened in Germany, where they were treated as Entartete (degenerates). In any case, the effeminate and manifestly crackpot part I had cast Hitler in would suffice for the Nazis to damn me as an iconoclast. Similarly, my increased fanaticism, which had been heightened by Hitler's chasing Freud and Linste in out of Germany, showed that Hitler interested me purely as a locus tor my own mania and because he struck me as having an unequalled diaster value. " Was it his fault if he dreamt about Hitler or Millet's Angelus? When Dali came to the passage where he announced, "In my opinion, Hitler has four testicles and six foreskins," Breton shouted: "Are you going to keep getting on our nerves much longer with your Hitler!" And Dali, to general amusement, replied: "... if I dream tonight that you and I are making love, I shall paint our best positions in the greatest of detail first thing in the morning." Breton froze and, pipe clenched between his teeth, murmured angrily: "I wouldn't advise it, my friend." It was a confrontation that once again pointed up the two men's rivalry and power struggle. Which of them was going to come out on top?

Following his confrontation, Dali was given a short-lived reprieve, but then notified of his expulsion. "Since Dali had repeatedly been guilty of counter-revolutionary activity involving the celebration of fascism under Hitler, the undersigned propose ... that he be considered a fascist element and excluded from the Surrealist movement and opposed with all possible means." After he had been expelled, Dali continued to participate in Surrealist exhibitions; after all, the movement needed Dali's magnetic hold on the public, as Breton well knew. Thus in 1936 Dali made his appearance at the New Burlington Galleries in London wearing a diving suit - to illustrate the thesis stated in his lecture concerning art's function of revealing the depths of the subconscious. At one point he appeared to be suffocating in it - and a panting Dali was hastily freed of his suit and helmet, to the enthusiastic applause of the audience, who supposed it was all a well-rehearsed act.

Mussolini Monday - birdhouse edition

An article in Creative Review showcases the work of artists Bruce Gilchrist and Jo Joelson, who have made a series of animal houses based on a selection of infamous dictators' palaces. Above you see their interpretation of Mussolini's Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana.

Degenerate Art by Salvador Dali

Painting by Salvador Dali, "Hitler Masturbating".
Article from the great Dali House blog.
The Deux Magots cafe in Paris’ Montparnasse district was a favoured meeting spot for the surrealists, so it may have been there where they held a mock trial to consider Dali’s crimes against the movement in 1934. He was, after a brief reprieve, expelled from the group. The members had taken offence at Dali’s “The Enigma of William Tell”, an unflattering portrait of Lenin, shown above, as well as his commercial flair, Andre Breton famously twisting his name into the anagram “Avida Dollars”. Breton called him a self-confessed racist who supported the fascists in Spain, Italy and Germany. Breton had seen Dali’s arrival in Paris six years earlier as just what the surrealists needed. They were by then already running dry of ideas. But Breton and Aragon saw themselves as sophisticates in charge of a motley amalgam of foreign buffoons, including the original “Andalucian dogs”, Dali and Luis Bunuel. Dali in particular oozed warped pathologies, and his surrealism, it’s been noted, “was dangerously total”. Dali, Robert Descharnes and Gilles Neret wrote in their biography, “enjoyed pomp and ritual, so he actually preferred monarchies to totalitarian regimes; the political Left was too drab and prosaic. To the surrealists he confessed, ‘Very rich people have always impressed me; very poor people, like the fishermen of Port Lligat, have likewise impressed me; average people, not at all.’ He regretted that the surrealists were attracting ‘a whole fauna of misfit and unwashed petty bourgeois’.” As to the Fuhrer, they quoted him further: “Whenever I started to paint the leather strap that crossed from his belt to his shoulder, the softness of that Hitler flesh packed under his military tunic transported me into a sustaining and Wagnerian ecstasy that set my heart pounding, an extremely rare state of excitement that I did not even experience during the act of love. “On the one hand,” Dali said another time with a completely straight face, “I had society, politely astonished that I was going somewhere that they could not go, and on the other hand, the surrealists. I was always off to where the rest couldn’t go. Snobbery consists in going to places that others are excluded from — which produces a feeling of inferiority in the others. In all human relations there is a way of achieving complete mastery of a situation. That was my policy where surrealism was concerned.” At right is the cartoonish “Hitler Masturbating”. Dali challenged Breton to convene the group for an emergency meeting “at which the mystique of Hitler shall be debated”. Dali showed up with a thermometer in his mouth, claiming he felt ill. While Breton reeled off his accusations, Dali kept checking his temperature. When it was his turn, he began to remove his clothing piece by piece, while reciting a prepared speech in which he explained that his obsession with Hitler was at heart apolitical, and that he could not be a Nazi “because if Hitler were ever to conquer Europe, he would do away with hysterics of my kind, as had already happened in Germany”. On yet another occasion he admitted that he saw Hitler as a masochist determined to start a war and lose it in heroic style. From Dali’s point of view, the surrealists’ leftist politics was dull and doomed. “Marxism is shit, the last of Christian shit,” he declared, and to be sure, communism served only to handcuff their imagination. Dali once made an armchair studded with glass vials containing milk — Aragon pointed out that there were too many starving children in the world to justify such a waste.

Hitler Kaput!

This movie (a Russian musical parody of Hitler's last days) is apparently not available on DVD in America, which is too damn bad, because it looks hilarious.

Guardian article from last year.

Hitler's Toilet

From Roadside America
Florence, New Jersey
Adolf Hitler -- is there anything we don't we know about this megalomaniac? Thousands of books, millions of Web pages, and countless grueling hours of derivative cable TV programming have led us to believe that no secrets are left to reveal about madman Adolf. But precious little has been written about his toilet. Hitler's dreams of world conquest were thwarted; his toilet was his only throne. Who knows how many of the Fuhrer's half-baked schemes were hatched on his hopper? Yet this priceless artifact is not displayed behind velvet ropes in some big city toilet museum. It is instead still on the job, flushing strong and steady, in the quiet Delaware River town of Florence, New Jersey. The late King of Toilet Seat Arts once painted Hitler on a toilet seat, but probably never dreamed that his work could have graced a suitable bowl in America. Hitler's toilet came from his private yacht, Aviso Grille, which wound up in a New Jersey junkyard in the early 1950s. "The ship had to be destroyed," recalled local resident and historian Dick Glass. "The government wasn't going to allow it to be set up as some kind of memorial for Adolf." Torn apart for scrap, the yacht's various pieces were scattered among the people of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The toilet was purchased by Sam Carlani, who wanted it for a bathroom he was building in his auto repair shop in Florence. That was in 1952. It's been there ever since. Greg Kohfeldt, the garage's current owner, welcomes visitors when he isn't busy and accepts his toilet's fame with gracious bafflement. He'd much rather be known for his repair work than his toilet, which has been here since before he was born. "It's not something to be proud of, but it exists," he told us. "I use it to go to the bathroom." The bathroom occupies a back corner of the garage bay. Formerly white walls are stained with decades of splatter and man-grease. The floor's condition is unmentionable. A cardboard box, filled with magazines, serves as a library. Greg repeatedly referred to his relic as "a working toilet," and it's easy to see why. It's encrusted as only a toilet can be that is never, ever, used by women. "I'm not a good housekeeper," Greg admitted. "It's not pristine or anything." Looking at the toilet, one can't help but wonder whether sinister Hitler DNA is festering beneath its crusty layers -- but what genetic researcher would want to attempt the extraction? That raises the question: is this really Hitler's toilet? The Aviso Grille was 443 feet long, the world's largest private boat at the time. It probably had many toilets. "Was it out of his bathroom? I don't know," said Greg, perhaps looking for a way to lower expectations. Dick Glass took a broader view. "It was still Hitler's property," he said. "He owned it all!" Even if Hitler never used the toilet for its intended purpose, the dictator was notoriously prone to seasickness. There's a chance that Hitler threw up into this toilet. Greg doesn't want to sell the toilet ("If I put it up for sale, I don't have anything to use.") but for years he's floated the idea that he would give the toilet to anyone who would buy him a new bathroom. It's a humbling lesson in real-world Hitler economics; apparently no one has ever valued Hitler's toilet at the price of a half-bath. We hope that no one ever will. Hitler booty-fans can already see his staff car in Illinois, and his dog tags (supposedly) in Missouri, and his typewriter and beer steins elsewhere. But the most craptacular relic of history's most infamous maniac seems best right where it is, in an obscure corner of a state that Hitler might have used as a beachhead if he could have calmed his queasy stomach. Fascist tool? Not this Deutschland dumper. Hitler's toilet is on the job, serving sons of freedom with every flush.

If i'm ever having what i call "Hitler's Block" i just type Hitler + a random word into my search engine & see what comes up. In this case, i looked for Hitler & Toilet. Fantastic!

Hitler cartoon

Found on the internet, artist unknown.