Salvador DaliX (2008) / Self-Portrait – B&W photography on paper (30 x 40 cm).
I was always interested in the person of Salvador Dali. As a ‚provocateur‘ and surrealist per excellence he made several legendary interventions and performances which rarely were documented by fotos or film. They mainly exist as stories and legends. Through these stories I discovered many details about the sexual life of Salvador Dali: his initial trauma regarding sex due to his severe father who teached him the dangers of sex when he was only a child, showing him a book with pictures of male genitalia suffering from sexually transmitted diseases. This supposedly lead Dali to become ‚The great masturbator‘ in order to avoid intercourse. Then the trauma with his student friend – the writer Garcia Lorca – who presumably tried to rape him but did not succeed according to Dali. His relatively late discovery of various sexual pleasures with his wife and muse Gala and finally his passion for Amanda Lear, a transvestite and a popstar, with whom he had a long time relationship and helped financially to make a sex change operation. All these stories inspired me to start producing the ‚Salvador DaliX‘ paintings, as an ‚hommage‘ to Dali and as a challenge: to make paintings ‚Ã la Dali‘ under the identity of an obscure impostor called Salvador DaliX. This ‚X-rating‘ of Dali with a pseudonym reflects the already very erotic character of Dalis original oeuvre and hints at the numerous Dali forgeries existing on the market – many of them co-produced by Dali himself. I am interested in the idea of creating ‚problematic paintings‘. This started with the ‚Painting China Now‘ series that I made together with Ondrej Brody in 2007 and continues with a different purpose in the Salvador DaliX series. The Salvador DaliX paintings are based on pornographic photographs stolen from the internet, then manipulated with the computer and finally painted by ‚my assistants‘ in China: commercial painting companies who specialize in reproducing any picture you e-mail them. All the paintings are ‚original‘ oil on canvas – handmade of course. It seems that the ‚Made in China‘ stamp devaluates the commercial value of the paintings even more than the fact that they were painted by (a poor artists) assistants. At the same time many people admire paintings of famous contemporary artists that are produced by chinese, russian or eastern european assistants who paint for 10 US dollars an hour in New York, Berlin and London. The Salvador DaliX paintings refer to many contradictions and problematic aspects (conceptual, economical, political and visual) that I find interesting.
Kristofer Paetau
All Paintings: oil on canvas, 30 cm X 40 cm
Nice work although nobody will put these paintings on a wall 😉
Salvador Dali already made fantastic paintings that are far more erotic than these clumsy porn photoshop rip-offs, what’s the point of this work? No artistic merit or originality a usual in your other „artworks“.
Poor chinese slave painters they must have suffered to paint these horrible pictures…
what a buckettttt of shit.
what a waste ! please stop polution…
ghastly, don’t spam again
these paintings are terrible and hardly erotic. brings your entire art game down. you are bastardizing Dali’s name and his brilliant, artistic prowess. i trust his estate will serve you with cease and desist any second now – thank goodness. really terrible. please remove from this list.
bullshit like always, stop this low quality shit u call art! its spam! rediculous, any little child can make this! frustrations I guess!
What does this have to do with Dali?
Even if you rub your shit on Dali’s name, it will still stay shit.
That looks like my 4 year old daughters drawings!
this is rubbish.
and a waste of time.
get lost, and take your „art“ with you.
And stop using Dali’s name, it’s insulting.
maybe a vango type abstract erotica, interesting
hey.
you are getting an amazing amount of extremely funny comments!!!
nicenice. i specially like this one:
¨That looks like my 4 year old daughters drawings!¨
poor she!!
boris
🙂
I must say, I don’t really like it either. I liked some of your previous works a lot, but it’s always borderline.
This is just ridiculous. Or it’s the emperors clothes and I just don’t see it. X
Oh well, sex is always tabu….I don´t like your work, but really you are not the problem, the porn industrie and the „unhealthy“ sex craze is….it shifts attention towards the dark and „uggly side of sex“. But really, sex is so good. Maybe to some people excitement is exactly in the provocation of „the other“…
Lot´s of quotes…but…..there is not much to say in the end….maybe the artist just needs a good lay…all of us do…
A hippie comment to you:
All we need is love man, the rest comes with it…
There is no nice way to put it…your work sucks ass.
its suck as an ide
These works represent everything that is wrong with contemporary art. I love it!
Really like these works and your work in general – it takes Mark Kostabi to a more problematic and critical level. The commercialism bothers me even tho we all have to live, but this series, the China series, etc. – are brilliant; I only hope a catalog appears sometime and that it’s cheap enough that I can buy one.
– Alan Sondheim
nice works. they´re hilarious but the attitude reminds me of kippenberg. I like that.
I have been on your email list for some time. I am, as yet, unable to discern if your projects are truly authentic.. or if they are self-indulgent sexual experimentation and scatological fascination attempting to pose as high-brow contemporary art.
While I have, on occasion, been bemused by some of your pieces, I have never been touched, moved, or inspired by them. For me, that is the gold standard of true art, theater, or music.
I know you must work hard on all your projects, however, there is an underlying resonance to all your body of work. I say it is empty and nihilist.
Rather than just be critical, I’m going to lay down a challenge: You’ve pushed pretty hard in one direction here over the last few years. How about going, legitimately, in an entirely new direction?
Consider doing a series of triptychs (acrylic on Mylar) depicting various scenes from the life of Jesus during the so-called „lost years“.
The Bible loses track of him from the age of twelve until thirty, when his public ministry began. Did he stay at home and build furniture? Or, did he travel to the various power centers of his day (Egypt, India, Tibet) to learn from various spiritual masters?
The topic is extremely provocative and controversial, yet it’s an important artistic, intellectual, and religious question. This is elevating art, not debased. Are you capable of successfully creating a series like this?
Here’s a reference link for suggested subject matter and content purposes: http://reluctant-messenger.com/issa.htm
questo tipo di pittura mi incuriosisce molto .mi piace è una specie di Dali misto a Bacon
shit , feces, and the mold at the bottom of the sewers on shit is superior to every piece of shit you fucking spam me with… I even asked nicely twice before to not get your spam…..emailed a fellow curator connecting to the dali estate and holdings..this makes me smile …..they will be contacting you soon…appears that using his name is a major infringement…
Damn, there must be some sort of content filtering at your site. I’ve bee repeatedly trying to write a positive comment, but it just doens’t appear! What’s wrong with you, guys?! Never heard of such thing before!
Critic from Estonia
This was the most awful stuff I’ve seen in years. I just can’t believe how awful it is
Hello,
This is an excellent body of works reflecting on pornography. are these all on canvas ? what is the non digital resolution of these images. suresh pillai trikkan@gmail.com
I’m not against porn. Nevertheless I don’t find that distorting a porn photo on Photoshop and then tracing it with a paintbrush is *real* art, not even if a symbolic phallus pops out here and there.
Dalì used to portrait dreams, dreams are subtle messages from the inside.
Porn photos are way too explicit. I repeat: I’m not against them, but they’re good just for masturbation.
Stefano, Italy
Some of these are amusing – particularly the one with „members only“, and there are several I like. The top left reminds me of Princess Diana. The elephant one is good, but the one to the left of it has more in common with Gaughan than Dali IMHO. This is the problem I have: the soft morphology of them is not enough to make them appear as works by Dali. Many of them need a far greater dynamic range colours. More work required at the digital stage – less reliance on the smear/distortion tool.
About the use of studios in China: why not, it’s an interesting idea, and not necessarily exploitative – would be very wise to research such matters when choosing a Chinese studio to produce works in this way.
jwm-art.net
only time will tell if these paintings will be relegated to the dustbin or elevated to classic art…but i have my guess..
Alan Sondheim? Interesting… however, I disagree with what he says, as usual, if he is the Alan Sondheim I knew in the late ’70’s from upstate New York sort of. Anyways, this whole venture with Dali and porn is pretty bad, tasteless and childish. cheers
banal
how many of these comments do you write yourself?
I pity you; very cheap performance; it has nothing to do with Dali; shame on you to dare to compare yourself with a great artist.
The Beavis and Butthead of low art strike again!
really disgusting, i love it
thank you!
It is very interesting.
Sergey
sfmart@mail.ru
cool
I would do put these paintings on my walls.
(hello, it’s anne from paris)
una farsa absurda y que nesecita del nombre del pobre Dali para que alguien las mire
sin arte y sin etica
otra mierda de spam
Please consider displaying the critiques/comments alongside the work, should these ever see the inside of a gallery.
brody, brody, brody, …. cheap paintings worked with a cheaper photoshop effect. from a high dotated artist like you i hope we can expect somthing mor qualitative in the future! what the fuck is the link with dalí .. i supose the blurry effect! that´s all? dali was a sick patethic arsehole but in this relation even he is crying for compassion.
i hope also that you will mention in your memoires that you really are an artist and your artistic goal consisted in taking the piss out of your audience the whole life…:)
well at least you ever will find collectors who like and pay money for this shit, congratulations.
sex sells even for the xxx-harlekin brody … poor culture 🙂
Fantastic!!! Great digital paintings.I would like to have created this images. Great tribute to the Master of the Masters. Congratulations! William Monachesi
kind of cheap and disappointing. makes me think of flea market cartoons and beginner’s photoshop filtering.
yet, good luck. if someone enjoys this… lucky you.
lola
I want a filter to plug into squid proxy server to display all porn like this. „It’s art, mom“
Photoshop Twist Effect
Very bad, disgusting and immoral, simply trying to take advantage from a famous name. Please, do not touch the sacred name of art.
i love being a pervet and love to watch porn art like this when i get free time in hands.
http://www.xobuta.com
I didn’t know they still made Kai’s Power Goo software.
Did any of you fucking morons read the explanation? Your criticisms of this and defense of Dali are unwarranted and retarded. You may not like what you see, neither do I, but its like you have missed the entire point of this exercise. To be charitable, I suppose your reactions probably help in the examination of the concepts. Although if you do not want to sound like a moron you should have some understanding of what you are criticizing.
Wow, that’s my woman (or man) ! I like this comment above. But I also like the paintings, even though they might not be the best handicraft quality but this is not the point in this case. Nor are the paintings made by Jeff Koons‘ assistants any better. Even the infamous brothel paintings of Picabia are not especially good handicrafted paintings… There is so much bad „erotic“ art being made nowdays and so few „serious“ artists who risk themselves at this challenge so I think this is definitely a nice work…
Alicia Rios writes:
They are such incredibley surprising releasers of all sort of emotional and orgasmic emotions! beautifully painted and unequivocally provocative and arousing mixed feelings. my congratulations for an ultra erotic version of Dali´s universe full of his own cointradictions and surreal impact. I love them and could live with them.
Love daliniano,
Alicia Rios
Great stuff. I’ll buy them all. S. Pfroid
I‘ m according to ‚Critic from Estonia‘
Is there a positive-comment-filter ? If yes – great work !
Or is it just the Dali fans that are disgusted?
This work is not more offensive than Dali was in his days.
But in fact, Kais Power Tools are really cheesy.
That’s true provocation !
this is a once click in photoshop….and that is it…..and also was once a cool photo edit trick about 1997….this is not even worth commenting on
see if it works
I must admit the images I found unnerving – and not exaxtly my speed – pretty racey – however, the digital aspect and maniputaltion is brilliant and I consider a candidate of the new Digital Medium. (medium that’s been around for years…)
I would have to argue that has a daliesque quality with the MELTING hello
fucking bullshit work…
In which shop I can buy it? Is it really Dali? Could you spam this work to me?
Dear Kristofer and Brody, I found this work great in kontext of contemporary painting, both in basic concept and realisation too. Love your work, I wish I could have some at my place. D 🙂
Great art. Great reaction. Worst porn ever. Thank you!
I think You probably live in hell. I suppose it sucks.
This was the most ghastly paintings I’ve seen for years. How terrible.