Style Imitating Art: The Hallucinogenic Toreador by Salvador Dalí

About Style Imitating Art

Style Imitating Art is hosted by Salazar of 14 Shades of Grey, Terri of MeadowTree Style, and Shelbee of Shelbee on the Edge. Style Imitating Art challenges us to draw style inspiration from pieces of art. Every other Monday, one of the hosts, acting as curator, selects an inspiration image that they will each post on their blogs. The following Monday, each host shares her art inspired outfit. Participants are invited to submit their art inspired outfits to the curator by 10:00 p.m. EST on the Tuesday following the hosts’ art inspired outfit posts. The following day, Wednesday, the curator will share all of the submissions on her blog.

You don’t have to be a blogger to join! You are invited to share your images on Instagram or other social media platforms. Just be sure to tag Salazar, Terri, and Shelbee or use #TeamLOTSStyle and #StyleImitatingArt so the hosts know you have joined. Go have some fun in your closets and join the SIA challenge next week!

The Inspiration Artwork

The inspiration artwork was curated by me. You can read why I chose this specific piece as my inspiration artwork here.

The Hallucinogenic Toreador by Salvador Dalí (Oil on Canvas, 1969-1970)

About the Artist: Salvador Dalí

Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol, was born on May 11, 1904, in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain, to Salvador Luca Rafael Aniceto Dalí Cusí, a middle class lawyer and notary, and his wife, Felipa Domènech Ferrés. Nine months prior to his birth, on August 1, 1903, his older brother, who was also named Salvador, passed away from gastroenteritis at the age of 21 months.

Throughout his lifetime, Dalí was haunted by the idea of his dead brother. He mythologized him in his writings and art with images of his older brother reappearing in his later works including his 1963 Portrait of My Dead Brother. He also had a sister three years his junior named Anna Maria who published a book about her brother in 1949 titled Dalí as Seen by His Sister.

Dalí’s father was an anti-clerical atheist and a Catalan federalist with a very strict disciplinary approach. However, Dalí’s mother tempered her husband’s severity while encouraging her son’s artistic endeavors. In 1916, Dalí attended the Municipal Drawing School at Figueres and also discovered modern painting on a summer vacation with Spanish artist Ramon Pichot and his family to Cadaqués that same year. The following year, his father organized an exhibition of his charcoal drawings to be displayed in the family home. His first public exhibition happened in 1918 at the Municipal Theatre in Figueres. Early in 1921, Pichot introduced Dalí to Futurism while later that same year his uncle, bookshop owner Anselm Domènech, began supplying him with books and magazines on Cubism and contemporary art.

On February 6, 1921, Dalí suffered the greatest blow he had ever experienced in his 16 years of life when his mother passed away from uterine cancer. He has said of his mother’s death, “I worshipped her… I could not resign myself to the loss of a being on whom I counted to make invisible the unavoidable blemishes of my soul.” After his mother’s death, Dalí’s father married his wife’s sister which was never resented because Dalí had a great love and respect for his aunt.

In 1922, Dalí moved to Madrid to attend the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts where he quickly garnered attention as an eccentric dandy, standing just under 5’8” (172 cm) tall and donning long hair and sideburns while dressing in the style of late 19th century English aesthetes. Dalí made his first trip to Paris in 1926 where he met Pablo Picasso whom he highly revered. Much to Dalí’s pleasure, Picasso had already heard positive reports about his works from fellow Surrealist artists.

In August 1929, Dalí met his lifelong muse and future wife, Elena Ivanovna Diakonova, more simply known as Gala. She was a Russian immigrant, 10 years older than Dalí, and married to Surrealist poet Paul Éluard at the time she met Dalí. An affair quickly started between Dalí and Gala and they moved in together later that same year. Despite the break up of Gala’s marriage, she and Éluard remained close friends even after she and Dalí were married in a civil ceremony in 1934. Due to Gala’s divorce, a papal dispensation was required for them to be married in a Catholic church which didn’t happen until 1958 when they finally were wed in a church as Gala had wanted.

Dalí expressed a phobia of female genitalia and was a virgin at the time he met Gala. Around this time, Gala also discovered that she had uterine fibroids and eventually underwent a full hysterectomy in 1936. All of this resulted in a childless marriage as well as an ethically non monogamous relationship whereby Dalí encouraged Gala’s extramarital affairs to satiate her strong libido as well as to fulfill his candaulistic fantasies. In the months leading up to her death, Gala battled severe influenza which caused dementia and led to her eventual death at the age of 87 on June 10, 1982.

After Gala’s death, Dalí moved from Figueres to the castle in Púbol where he had her body interred. In 1982, King Juan Carlos bestowed on Dalí the title of Marqués de Dalí de Púbol which was intended as a hereditary title, but Dalí changed it to a life-only title in 1983. That same year was when he created his supposed final painting, The Swallow’s Tail, before beginning his dark descent into depression which worsened exponentially in the early part of 1984.

In July 1986, he required a pacemaker implant and in November 1988, he was admitted to the hospital with heart failure. On the morning of January 23, 1989, Salvador Dalí died of cardiac arrest at the age of 84. His body was buried in the crypt below the stage of his Theatre-Museum in Figueres which is located just 450 meters (1,480 feet) from the house where he was born.

On June 26, 2017, a Madrid judge ordered Dalí’s body to be exhumed for purposes of DNA testing for a paternity suit. The exhumation took place on July 20, 2017, despite attempts to overturn the order, and conclusively proved that Dalí was not related to the claimant. The claimant subsequently appealed the DNA results and he appeal was dismissed by a Spanish court on May 18, 2020.

About the Art: The Hallucinogenic Toreador

The Hallucinogenic Toreador is a 1969-1970 oil on canvas painting measuring 157 inches x 118 inches (398.8 cm × 299.7 cm or approximately 13 feet x 10 feet…that is a big painting y’all).

Dalí first conceived of the idea for this painting while he was in an art supply store in 1968. He noticed on a box of Venus pencils that the face of a toreador seemed to appear in the body of the Venus image. He used that idea of the double images and repetitive imagery of the Venus de Milo in this painting to make the shadows of one image form the features of the other.

The green skirt on the left Venus turns into the matador’s necktie while the white skirt becomes his shirt. As your eye travels up the figure, Venus’s abdomen becomes the toreador’s chin, her waist becomes his mouth, and her left breast turns into his nose. There is a pink arch forming the top of his head with the arena turning into his hat. The matador has a tear in his eye for the bull that appears at the nape of Venus’ neck and the red skirt on the right Venus becomes the bullfighter’s cape. 

The upper left corner of the painting shows a representational portrait of Gala surrounded by yellow and donning a frown to show her disdain for the sport of bullfighting. The toreador himself appears again in the yellow outlined figure raising his arms in dedication of the bull to Dalí’s wife.

Just below the toreador’s red cape, the rocky terrain of Cape Creus can be seen and off to the left the image of the dying bull appears to emerge from a translucent bay with a large housefly as its eye. The images of the horseflies repeat throughout the painting as well as the repeating Venus which appears 28 times. The young boy in the lower right corner dressed in a sailor suit is believed to represent Dalí as a child.

The Hallucinogenic Toreador is currently on exhibit in the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Resources/References

• Salvador Dalí: Wikipedia
• Gala Dalí: Wikipedia
• The Hallucinogenic Toreador: Wikipedia
• The Hallucinogenic Toreador: Artwork Details

About My Outfit Inspired by The Hallucinogenic Toreador

I chose this artwork with absolutely no idea how I would style an outfit to represent it. My eye was continuously drawn to the two prominent images of the Venus statues in the red and green skirts as well as the little cluster of colored dots that appear just above the dying bull’s head. These two features had me focusing on the colors red and green, a polka dot print, and some sort of Grecian style dress or skirt.

After staring at the painting for a few more days, the repeating images of the horseflies and the roses on and around the red skirt also started jumping out to me. And then the whole idea of a matador outfit became fairly prominent in my brainstorming process as well.

The first dress that I had in mind was this olive green high low dress but then I couldn’t find a way to incorporate red with it. I recently bought this beautiful red Swiss dot maxi dress that I haven’t yet had occasion to wear so I decided to go with the red dress instead. I added an olive green kimono which very serendipitously features some floral embroidery that resembles roses although I don’t think they are roses.

This style of dress tends to always look better on me with a belt which provided the perfect opportunity to incorporate some dots to reflect the ones above the bull’s head. My red and white beaded earrings also resemble dots and help to anchor the print of the scarf. I originally tried the green neck scarf around my waist which looked really cool but the dotted scarf was not working all that well around my neck. I wanted to tie the scarf like a necktie to imitate the bullfighter’s tie and the green ribbon scarf just worked better for that purpose.

Taking inspiration from Salazar’s amazing brooch collection, I added my twin fly pins that my sweet sister gave to me many years ago because we both share a love of vintage brooches. I love that I have two of them to mimic the repeating images of horseflies in the painting. Since the fabric of my dress and kimono are both too delicate to support the weight of the brooches, I stuck them directly on my necktie instead.

I chose these velvet ballet flats in a Mary Jane style because they were the closest thing I have to matador shoes. And a black beret seemed similar enough to a toreador hat because why in the world would I own a hat like that? I have a lot of hats, but a bullfighting one really has no place in my wardrobe!

And there you have it…my Hallucinogenic Toreador outfit. This might have been the most challenging prompt for me so far and I’m the one who picked it. I do love the final result, however, I am really looking forward to wearing this dress with a wide black belt and cowgirl boots.

Be sure to check out Salazar’s interpretation of the painting as well as Terri’s take on it. If you want to join us to be featured in my gallery post on Wednesday, please send me your photos by Tuesday night at 10:00 p.m. EST.

Keeping it on the edge,

Shelbee

Linking up with these Fabulous Link Parties.

Outfit Details: Dress-Torrid / Kimono-Charlotte Russe / Beret-TJ Maxx / Shoes-DSW / Brooches-Gift from my sister / Earrings-Thrifted / Scarves-Old