Beginning with this Monday, we will bring you a very rare and informative weekly editorial. These editorials are intended to give a glimpse behind the veil of the film and allow you to hear from Victor Marzowicz-Velasquez, a recruited blogger, who is very knowledgeable in the area in which Little Ashes surrounds itself.

To launch this new series, an introduction of sorts is required thus re-introducing the characters who are exemplified in the film. In addition, this preface overviews the relationships between Dalí, Lorca and Buñuel.

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 Ever since the Renaissance, people have wanted their artists to be heroes, so it seems rather natural that most of what we have heard so far about Salvador Dalí, Luis Buñuel and Federico Garcia Lorca has been positive. But, to mangle Ginsberg, this is the story where the three greatest artistic minds of their generation came together to all but destroy one another.

I'll be frank and admit I believe only one of these three deserves the title "hero:" Lorca. As I also strongly believe young people need to hear more stories of truly courageous and honorable gay men, it is my intention to focus on him in this series of articles, but I want to start off balancing the record by telling you some less savory things about the other two that have yet to be mentioned here.

The simplest way I can put it is this: Dalí was all brain, Buñuel was the all muscle, and Lorca was all heart. Sounds like they should have completed one another, right? Unfortunately, two of the three were cowards, and what should have been a cosmic triumph turns into a bloodbath.

Someone wise once told me, "Just because somebody's a great artist doesn't mean he can't also be an absolute monster." No truer words could be spoken of Buñuel. He was the macho jock of the three, the boxer with a neck almost as thick as his head. Buñuel tells us, in his autobiography, that back at the Residencia de Estudiantes, where he lived alongside Lorca and Dalí during their university days, that one of his favorite ways to pass an evening was gay bashing, and the way he went about it was nothing if not creative. He used to dress up in full-drag - sexy dress, make-up, wig and stiletto heels - in order to lure hapless gay men into isolated areas where his thug buddies would be lying in wait, and then the bunch of them would pounce on their victim and beat him unconscious.

I don't want to claim Buñuel was gay. I no more want to view him as "one of ours" than he would. But, when you add his bragging about this kind of bizarre, premeditated, homophobic brutality to his overwhelming misogyny, physical over-compensation and fetishism, it seems clear we're looking at a man not at all at peace with himself. He and Lorca had been best friends, until the poet's relationship with Dali revealed him as gay, and suddenly Lorca could do nothing right. His copious letters to friends during this period indicate he felt Dalí was "the real man" of the two, and he was intent on "saving him," no matter what it might take, all the while bad-mouthing his former best friend in completely sub-human terms.

Lorca described Dalí in one of his poems as "that dark child who wanted to cut out his heart on the high seas," and so he would. When Lorca died, he took the best part of Dalí's character with him, leaving the painter an empty, avaricious, perverse, self-servingly cruel caricature who enjoyed nothing more than to brag about his own weakness, impotence, cuckoldry and masochism. When Lorca was assassinated on the orders of Francisco Franco as virtually the first shot of the Spanish Civil War, Dalí appalled everyone by shouting "¡Ole!" and becoming an outspoken supporter of Franco's regime, sending "El Caudillo" effusive telegrams of praise every time another mass purge of dissenting artists and intellectuals came to the light of day.

Dalí stopped painting in 1940. Taking a tip from Walt Disney, Dali hired the finest commercial artists money could buy to churn out production line "authentic Dalí masterpieces" in his "secret factory." At first, he supervised this process and signed the products himself. By the sixties, he was signing thousands of blank sheets of paper every morning, and others were adding his name to the paintings. By the time he died, there were 679 "authentic Dalí signatures" recognized by the art industry, only one of which had come from his own hand.

Next time, I'll start telling you about the only one of these three great artists who was also a great man: Federico García Lorca.

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Read the complete collection of Victor's Editorial Series:

Anda Jaleo

The Censorship of Lorca

Childhood Memories

Lorca AKA Capdepón

How to Get a Law Degree Without Trying

Rehearsing Death

The Gypsy Ballads

Poet in New York, Part 1

King of Harlem

Double-Vision in Vermont

The Seemingly Tragic Tale of Little Stanton and Mary Hogan

The Divine Dalí’s Hole

Wall Street Comes Tumbling Down

Ode to Walt Whitman

Lorca Sings for Salty Seamen

Cry to Rome

Theatrical Revolution

Lorca Gone Wilde!

Robert and Were Really in Love!

Will the Real Putrefacto Please Stand Up?

The Puppet Tugs Its Pull

La Barraca

Three Breakthrough Plays of Feminine Oppression

Rafael Rodríguez Rapún and Sonnets of Dark Love

Death of a Poet

Comments

Niki D

0

 

 

Recently I went to see Little Ashes and have been obsessed with Dali and Lorca's relationship ever since. Prior to the movie, I was absolutely in love with Dali's work (I still am). After the movie I found myself cursing his name. To think of what a big coward he was by not allowing himself to be with Lorca saddens me. It's sad because I've always thought of his works as risk taking and daring; taking it to the next level. It's obvious that it only masks his internal sexual struggles as well as his own insecurities. Lorca was so sweet and he loved Dali with all of his being and Dali didn't deserve the love Lorca had to give. Dali the coward not Dali the great! Urg!!!

Moving forward, I stumbled upon this article and found myself wanting to give this writer a great big THANK YOU because this was dead on. I plan on reading the other articles. Thank you again.

Thursday 02 July 2009, 21:21

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