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Lot Essay
Le Christ de Gala (Gala's Christ) is a large stereoscopic painting which Dalí painted as a gift for his wife Gala in 1978. For many years it hung in the bedroom of her home in the castle at Púbol where she spent the last years of her life.
The castle at Púbol was a summer retreat that Dalí had had built and decorated for Gala so that she could hide away and entertain her numerous lovers in privacy. Dalí - a keen masochist - delighted in the fact that he was only allowed through the gates of Púbol when in possession of a written invitation from his wife. Portraying a auburn-haired young man mystically suspended on a cross in the manner of Dalí's celebrated 1951 painting St John of the Cross, Le Christ de Gala is possibly a portrait of the actor Jeff Fenton - a frequent visitor to Púbol - who had played Christ in the film Jesus Christ Superstar and with whom Gala had been infatuated for many years.
At the same time, the painting is also an image of revelation and a Dalínean vision of transcendence over death. In his old age Dalí became increasingly preoccupied with his own mortality and with the scientific possibility of transcending death. Le Christ de Gala merges the Christian notion of the transcendence of death through Christ with Dalí's own experiments with optical effects as a path to the fourth dimension.
Ever since his early childhood, when a teacher had first shown him some stereoscopic slides, Dalí had been obsessed with the "magic" of optical effects. Following his experiments with holograms, Dalí began in the 1970s to paint a series of stereoscopic paintings. As in Le Christ de Gala, a stereoscopic painting consists of a pair of almost identical paintings - one painted from the view of the left eye, the other from the view of the right - which when viewed side by side with the use of angled mirrors, or ideally through special lenses, merge into a single three-dimensional image. For Dalí, the creation of a third dimensional image from a two dimensional one was a mystical act of transcendence and spiritual relevance as it established the scientific possibility of going another step further and escaping the third dimension while entering the mystic fourth. In his Ten Recipes for Immortality written in 1973, Dalí draws a clear parallel between stereoscopic painting and the Holy Trinity writing: "Binocular vision is the Trinity of transcendent physical perception. The Father, the right eye, The Son, the left eye and the Holy Ghost, the brain, the miracle of the tongue of fire, the luminous visual image having become incorruptible, pure spirit, Holy Ghost" (cited in R. Descharnes, Salvador Dalí, the Work, the Man, New York, 1984, p. 409).
Le Christ de Gala was executed in the same spirit as this stereoscopic "Recipe for Immortality". It is a gift from Dalí to Gala presenting a visionary three-dimensional image of a young good-looking Christ as a mystic medium of spiritual transcendence.
The castle at Púbol was a summer retreat that Dalí had had built and decorated for Gala so that she could hide away and entertain her numerous lovers in privacy. Dalí - a keen masochist - delighted in the fact that he was only allowed through the gates of Púbol when in possession of a written invitation from his wife. Portraying a auburn-haired young man mystically suspended on a cross in the manner of Dalí's celebrated 1951 painting St John of the Cross, Le Christ de Gala is possibly a portrait of the actor Jeff Fenton - a frequent visitor to Púbol - who had played Christ in the film Jesus Christ Superstar and with whom Gala had been infatuated for many years.
At the same time, the painting is also an image of revelation and a Dalínean vision of transcendence over death. In his old age Dalí became increasingly preoccupied with his own mortality and with the scientific possibility of transcending death. Le Christ de Gala merges the Christian notion of the transcendence of death through Christ with Dalí's own experiments with optical effects as a path to the fourth dimension.
Ever since his early childhood, when a teacher had first shown him some stereoscopic slides, Dalí had been obsessed with the "magic" of optical effects. Following his experiments with holograms, Dalí began in the 1970s to paint a series of stereoscopic paintings. As in Le Christ de Gala, a stereoscopic painting consists of a pair of almost identical paintings - one painted from the view of the left eye, the other from the view of the right - which when viewed side by side with the use of angled mirrors, or ideally through special lenses, merge into a single three-dimensional image. For Dalí, the creation of a third dimensional image from a two dimensional one was a mystical act of transcendence and spiritual relevance as it established the scientific possibility of going another step further and escaping the third dimension while entering the mystic fourth. In his Ten Recipes for Immortality written in 1973, Dalí draws a clear parallel between stereoscopic painting and the Holy Trinity writing: "Binocular vision is the Trinity of transcendent physical perception. The Father, the right eye, The Son, the left eye and the Holy Ghost, the brain, the miracle of the tongue of fire, the luminous visual image having become incorruptible, pure spirit, Holy Ghost" (cited in R. Descharnes, Salvador Dalí, the Work, the Man, New York, 1984, p. 409).
Le Christ de Gala was executed in the same spirit as this stereoscopic "Recipe for Immortality". It is a gift from Dalí to Gala presenting a visionary three-dimensional image of a young good-looking Christ as a mystic medium of spiritual transcendence.