Original subtitles

For the past thousand years, the Crucifixion has dominated Christian art, an icon of suffering

and a promise of salvation.

Even in the increasingly secular society of the 20th century, the Crucifixion gave rise

to one unforgettable image.

It is a fantastic virtuoso piece.

It is a wonderful painting that actually seduces you into it because it's such a powerful

image of the crucified Christ in the modern day.

We seem to see Christ soaring towards us above the earth.

I don't think there's ever been a space represented like that, in which you go in and you sort

of whoosh out.

There's this sort of arcing sense of that cross coming towards you.

Its painter was not a conventional religious figure or a conventional anything.

In life, he was world famous for his antics and at work for his cheerful use of blasphemy,

masturbation and excrement.

Yet many Christians today are profoundly moved by his vision.

The picture achieved something that no other 20th century religious painting has achieved.

It's become an image that speaks the whole world.

The image is concocted from some strange ingredients, the latest breakthroughs in atomic science and a

hunk of male muscle from the studios of Hollywood.

So how did an artist, denounced as a tasteless joker and a blasphemer, produce what many believe to be the greatest religious painting of the 20th century?

Today the painting hangs in Glasgow, in St. Munger's Museum of Religious Life and Art.

It has astonished and intrigued people for 50 years, including leading religious figures.

I'm not very keen on surrealism, but this is a case where surrealism seems to work and you're looking at the painting, you're looking at a scene, and yet at the same time you're looking down on the crucifixion,

and the crucified Christ, it's as if you're seeing the view from the Creator, from the Father, looking down on the Son, through whom all things were made according to St. John.

Like most great religious art, it seeks to connect us with a life beyond the grave.

When I first saw it, I was totally bowled over by it.

The way the cross is tilted, it is as if some greater being, God or Jesus, is looking down and making sure that everyone's okay and safe.

And in terms of when you think of a loved one dying, it's almost what you want to believe, that they do rise and go to heaven,

but they're looking down on their loved ones and making sure they're okay.

Many have never forgotten their first glimpse.

At eight, when I first saw it, what amazed me was knowing that what I was looking at could never have been seen and yet had been painted.

I knew that you could never actually see this, and yet there it was, so realistic and almost touchable.

For once, the crucifixion isn't static.

It lifts our eyes from earth to heaven through an extraordinary feat of perspective.

The horizon line that you see in the painting draws you in to it, such that it's somehow quite reassuring,

such that you see a landscape which is naturalistic, which you can identify with.

And then gradually, your eyes drawn upwards, it ascends with this fantastic, powerful image of ascension that you get,

of the crucified Christ, but of one who is probably on the brink of ascension into paradise,

so that there's an element of hope.

This image of Christ on the cross has hung for half a century in the religiously divided city of Glasgow.

It caused a violent row when it arrived, because this Catholic vision of Christ's body offended the city's Presbyterians.

But then controversy was the lifeblood of the artist who painted it,

one of the strangest Catholics of the 20th century, Salvador Dali.

In a notorious film he made with his friend Luis Buñuel in 1929,

Dali appeared in the guise of a Jesuit priest tied to a grotesque assembly of pianos and putrefying donkeys.

Dali was a leading member of the Surrealists.

They sought ways to free their unconscious desires.

Dreams and fantasies were more real to them than ordinary life.

They declared themselves the enemies of patriotism, bourgeois morality, and most especially the church.

I think Dali managed to be outrageous, even when in the context of the Surrealist Movement,

which itself courted outrage very flamboyantly.

Surrealism was profoundly anti-clerical.

It was profoundly against the church, profoundly against any religions.

Dali puts on canvas the horror of his nightmares, of his dreams, of his anxieties.

That I think he does better than anybody else among that group of painters.

The sheer horror of being alone, utterly alone, in the middle of the night with no escape,

that he does unforgettably.

The crucifixion is set in a very real landscape,

an area of the Spanish Mediterranean coast around a place called Port Legat.

In his early paintings, Dali had revisited his childhood haunt obsessively.

He's a man who spent whole days staring at the rocks of Cap Creus.

As the sun passes overhead, shadows transform the images into ghosts and characters,

and that all falls into the realm of the imagination.

Dali was a very special observer.

Dreams for Dali were never blurred.

He painted them with the same sharp edges as the crags of Cap Creus.

The surrealist painter would eventually bring his religious vision

to the landscape he'd known all his life.

In the 1930s, Dali had been a surrealist in Paris.

Never a fan of physical conflict, when war broke out, he fled to America.

Once peace had been declared, he had a fervent desire to return home.

But in Spain, there was a new regime.

Spain in arms, under the leadership of General Franco.

Generalissimo Francisco Franco had been ruling Spain as a dictator since 1939.

His victory after a brutal civil war had been opposed by the surrealists

and by all progressive artists.

In the post-war world, Franco looked like an unlovable survivor

from the age of fascist dictators.

Dali had a reputation as being a wicked, blasphemous, sacrilegious, red surrealist.

And he couldn't return to Spain with that reputation

because he had to go back, being on the right side of Franco.

And I mean the right side.

So he decided to become a Catholic.

And I will never be convinced by anybody that he believed in Catholicism.

But he did it because he knew that if he didn't do it,

he couldn't get back to Spain as almost the court painter,

which is what he wanted, to be Franco's court painter.

Dali was expelled from the surrealist movement

and he ensured they'd never have him back

by proclaiming that he had returned to the fold

of the Holy Roman Catholic Church.

Going straight to the top,

he was granted an audience with the Pope himself.

Dali didn't go to confession like conventional Catholics,

but religious imagery would permeate his paintings for the next 30 years.

Some have accused Dali of cynicism in his embrace of religion,

but it did allow him to return to his beloved homeland of Port-Legade.

Going back to Port-Legade was absolutely essential for Dali's creativity.

Even when he would go to New York or Paris for the rest of the year,

he always carried a piece of wood from Port-Legade

and kept it with him.

There was something that he always needed to stay very attached to that centre.

Coming home connected Dali

with an intensely Spanish artistic tradition,

far older than surrealism.

I think Dali's need to return to Spain was extremely deep.

And I think that he was not returning,

I mean, just to his beloved Catalonia,

but also to a whole artistic tradition

that included Zorberan and Velázquez.

Both Velázquez and Zorberan

are extraordinarily graphic and grounded painters.

Their figures are somehow very real.

But at the same time,

they express a profound sense of the mystery

of the relationship between man and God.

Returning to Spain encouraged Dali to see himself

as the latest in a long line of Catholic mystics.

In 1951, he published his Mystical Manifesto,

describing an ambitious crucifixion

that was forming in his mind.

I want my next Christ to be a painting

containing more beauty and joy

than anything that will have been painted up to the present.

I want to paint a Christ

that will be the absolute opposite

in every respect of the materialist

and savagely anti-mystical Christ of Grunewald.

Dali was reacting to the crucifixion

by Matthias Grunewald.

This massive icon of Christ's agony

was painted 500 years ago

as an altarpiece for the monastery

at Isenheim near Strasbourg.

It's been called the last word in Teutonic torture.

The body of Christ looks horribly broken,

with thorns and twigs embedded in his flesh.

In a sense, it's the greatest crucifixion.

When you think about the crucified Christ

as represented in art,

you often come back to that one.

And of course, it's an image

that spoke to modern artists,

from George Gross to Max Beckman to Francis Bacon.

Many modern artists really wanted to deal with that.

It's a kind of perverse and stunted

and twisting, writhing, gangrenous image of Christ.

Dali disliked Grunewald because it was so ugly

and because it represented pain

in an extraordinarily direct and very uncomfortable way.

I think one of the things he wanted

was a Christ of extraordinary beauty.

The crucifixion was to be rooted in the part of Spain

that was sacred to its creator.

At first glance, the landscape at the foot of the cross

looks like the Sea of Galilee.

But this biblical scene is simply the view

from the artist's front door in Port Legat.

All my life, in every way,

I have thought of this place as biblical.

And it is peopled exclusively by fishermen.

The mountains are exactly the same as those of Port Legat,

except that I've altered the actual proportions

to suit the composition of the picture.

Dali's Christ of St John of the Cross

is floating over the scene

that he saw every day from his studio window.

You see the bay at Port Legat

with the quay alongside

and the yellow boat that Dali used frequently

to go out and swim and fish from.

One of the great traditions of European religious painting

is to imagine the events of the Bible

taking place in your own hometown,

that these are events that happen regularly in your place.

And Dali's stayed true to that.

This is the local crucifixion,

which every great crucifixion has to be.

The landscape may be real,

but the figures standing in it

are quotations from 17th-century artists.

One man is lifted from a Velazquez drawing.

This peasant, painted by the French artist Louis Lenin,

became a Spanish fisherman.

It is through these small figures

that we contemplate the mystery of Christ's suffering.

You need to have the figures

because you need to realise

that this is a vision of heaven from the earth

and that their scale is our scale,

that we crawl on the earth

while this extraordinary soaring vision

of redemption is ever ahead.

The chief inspiration for this astonishing perspective

came when the artist encountered a very unusual monk.

Father Bruno de Jesus Marie

was a Carmelite who sought out

the company of artists and intellectuals.

In 1950, he told Dali

about an extraordinary drawing of the crucifixion

and almost 400 years old.

It came from the pen of a monk

who had drawn it in a state of ecstasy.

St. John of the Cross was a 16th-century monk

who rose from humble origins

to become one of the great mystics

of the Catholic Church.

He and his spiritual mentor,

St. Teresa of Avila,

initiated a monastic movement

known as Descalzos, barefoot,

committing themselves

to the ideals of poverty and austerity.

Because of the purity of his vision,

St. John was persecuted and imprisoned

by some of his fellow monks.

But he wasn't just a reformer.

He wrote some of the most famed mystical poetry

of the Catholic Church.

The further that I climbed the heights,

the less I seem to understand

these clouds so nebulous and grand

that can light up the darkest night.

For he who understands that sight

remains forever knowing naught,

transcending knowledge with God's thought.

John's spiritual life was so intense

that he saw visions.

Around 1575,

from the gallery of his monastery in Avila,

he had a vision of Christ crucified.

We're in front of the gallery

of St. John of the Cross.

This is the place where he liked to withdraw

to have a moment of prayer and solitude,

and where, it is said,

he had his vision of Christ.

He then immediately drew it

on a scrap of paper,

which we have preserved.

Even by the standards of modern art,

the drawing is indeed extraordinary.

Because St. John was looking down

from a gallery,

he saw the cross from above.

There is a sophisticated sense of perspective

in the contours of the cross,

and a dramatic sense of foreshortening

in our view of Christ's body.

Perhaps the vision of the mystic saint

was not so far removed

from the dreams of the Surrealists.

I think St. John of the Cross

was for Dali a figure

that he very much identified with.

Here we have someone who's had a vision

and is persecuted by the church

for this vision.

And Dali is capable of mystic reverence.

He's capable of imagining,

not just in his sleep,

but in his waking state,

these images that he must impart to the world.

With his love of paradox,

Dali took St. John's drawing

and combined it with, of all things,

atomic science.

He enjoyed reading about nuclear physics

and now he's set about

one of 20th century art's

most bizarre projects,

synthesising Catholic mysticism

with the elementary particles of the universe.

In 1950, I had a cosmic dream

in which I saw this image in colour,

which in my dream represented

the nucleus of the atom.

This nucleus later took on

a metaphysical sense.

I considered it the very unity

of the universe, the Christ.

When, thanks to the suggestion

of Father Bruno, a Carmelite,

I saw the Christ drawn

by St. John of the Cross,

I worked out geometrically

a triangle and a circle,

which aesthetically distilled

all my previous experiments.

And I drew my Christ

in this triangle.

I think what you're looking at

is something of a big bang

type genesis for a mystical awakening

on the part of Dali.

And that original first study,

which is very loosely drawn

and has a sort of funneling triangle,

is then conformed

into a more strict design

with the triangle,

with the circle within it.

And I think that that itself

is an attempt for him

to take something that is maybe

in the beginning more emotional

and filter it through science

and particularly mathematics

to create this sort of balance.

But even geometric structures

inspired by atomic science

don't solve everything.

Dali still wrestled

with St. John of the Cross's drawing,

as if unsure whether Christ

was vertical or horizontal.

In the first study

for Christ at St. John of the Cross,

what you can see

is Dali plotting and planning.

He hasn't worked it out yet.

He's playing around

with how it's going to look.

You see the aerial perspective,

the levitation that's going to happen

in the work.

But in a way,

he's exploring it from both sides.

And notice how Christ's arms

are actually strapped to the cross.

Eventually, in the finished painting,

he'll get rid of that.

He's attempting to bend

and alter the perspective

of the original drawing

to create this new radical vision

of the Christ actually hovering up in space,

which ends from a different angle

in the painting,

but nevertheless has that same spatial sensation

of this sort of hovering,

flying Christ above you.

The coast of Port Ligat

had provided the setting.

St. John's drawing

had given Dali the idea

of looking down on Christ from above,

and his atomic dream

had suggested a kind

of mathematical model.

But the idea had to be made flesh.

There is a world of fun

for young and old at the seashore.

Dali's years in America

had included a stint in Hollywood.

He was a friend of studio boss

Jack Warner.

Now he asked Jack

for some help

in the casting department.

Stuntman Russ Saunders was 33,

the right age to play Jesus.

One morning, he got the call.

They call me through casting,

but instead of taking me to a stage

where they interview people

for stunt work,

we went to Jack Warner's office.

They gave me a pair

of swimming trunks

and asked me to change

in the men's room.

There was a Spanish guy

with a mustache and a glass cane.

He asked me to raise my arms

and turn around

and do some mannerisms

that he wanted.

Russ and his muscles

got the part.

The next day,

he found himself being dangled

from the gantries

of a film studio

and photographed from above.

Dali was determined

to use the resources

of Hollywood

to give an edge

of photographic realism

to his vision

of Christ on the cross.

Okay, Bob,

can we take James' position, please?

Going up.

The photographs

of Russ Saunders

have been lost,

so we set out

to recreate the process.

What Dali was looking for

was a way

to exaggerate

the perspective

of being above Christ

and looking down.

If you can get

a little bit more bend

in the elbows,

especially,

it's your left arm

that is slightly

more concerned about.

By photographing

a man suspended

from wires,

Dali would convey

the strong pull

of gravity

on Christ's body.

I think that's

a good starting point.

Okay,

can you hold that

there first

as much as you can?

I'll just do

a quick thyroid.

That's really nice.

Okay,

nice and still.

Excellent.

Okay,

and relax.

Coming down.

That's really nice.

That looks good.

And then going

if maybe

just get a little bit

more bend

in that arm,

you can see where I'm,

that one's really good

and it's just,

I know,

it's probably asking a lot.

The Hollywood studio

photos were enlarged

and sent back to Spain

where Dali made drawings

based on Russ Saunders' body.

To help him place

the Hollywood stuntman

on the cross,

Dali turned

to a quantity surveyor

Emilio Puignau.

Dali asked him

to use the photos

to work out

the proportions

of the crucifixion

he was planning.

Puignau took

a large piece of paper.

From the Russ Saunders photos,

he placed Christ

in the top half

of the paper.

He then used threads

to find the vanishing

point of the cross.

Dali used

this vanishing point

to determine

the horizon

of Port Legate

in the lower half

of the picture.

The Renaissance technique

of mathematically

reasoned perspective

enabled Dali

to lock the two elements

of his painting together.

Dali and Puignau

worked out

the final dimensions

of the painting.

It would be

seven feet

by four feet.

A tall, narrow shape

would intensify

the dizzying vertigo

of the painting's perspective.

Dali said that

by cutting off

the top of the cross

with the frame

of the picture,

he wanted to convey

a sense of infinity,

the sense that the cross

would go on forever.

He makes the hands

slightly bigger

and the feet

slightly smaller

in order to make it seem

as though the Christ

is coming out.

It changes the shadow

of Christ's arm.

It's a very unnatural shadow

but he believes

that it'll contribute

to this grandiosity.

So there's a lot

that Dali seems

to try to do

to really make the Christ

pop out at you

and really seem like

a huge figure

hovering over the bay.

The image is very stark

but there are mysterious elements

which challenge any viewer.

For instance,

what time of day is it?

Is it the dawn

or is it the evening

of the day?

But the evening of the day

is also the dawn

in the sense

in the crucifixion

and his end

is his beginning.

Where can the viewer

be standing?

Are we in outer space

looking down

or are we on earth

looking up?

It's an unusual perspective.

It's very, very dramatic

but I feel as a viewer

really kind of in between

the landscape

and in between

the crucifixion of Christ.

I don't feel

that I'm looking down

on the crucifixion

but in between

and I think there's

an interesting scale.

I don't feel

that Christ is our size

or that

but I don't know

exactly what that scale is.

I don't know if

you know

he's the size

of the room

that we're in.

I don't know

if he's larger

than that

that if the crucifixion's

a kilometer long

or 10 kilometers long.

What's so good about the picture

is that in every way

it's impossible.

I mean, you are

apparently above the Christ

looking down

but you're also on earth.

There is no place

for you to be

and that's one

of the great achievements

of it

that this is

a totally ungraspable

experience.

It's uncontainable

and it's an astonishing

thing to do that

in a square canvas.

Dali worked intensively

on his Christ

of St John of the Cross

for five months.

It was approaching

completion in November

1951

when a journalist

from the magazine

Picture Post

arrived in Port Legat.

My Christ is not finished

he enunciated

in his fractured English.

You shall be the first

to see it.

We entered

the cloistered studio

where he placed

some Bach

on the American record player

drawing the curtains

to avoid reflections

on the canvas

that was still wet.

Christ was caught

in the same light

we had left outside.

His foreshortened body

in a startling

feat of perspective

floated in the same

evening sky

over the familiar rocks.

You must be very happy

was all I could find

to say

as we walked out

into the evening sunlight.

Dali replied

I am too happy

and the best thing

is not to talk about it.

In a London gallery

in December 1951

the painting was exhibited

for the first time.

The trouble with interviewing

Salvador Dali

is that he talks

with everything at once

including the radar whiskers

which locate his ideas.

If the meaning is obscure

there's no doubt

about his brilliant drawing

and colour work.

most impressive of all

is Dali's crucifixion.

The trouble with

these exciting talks

on art is that

you never know

where they'll end

when you talk to

atomic painters.

Crowds clustered

around Dali's Christ

but the critics

were sniffy.

The author and cartoonist

Osbert Lancaster wrote

It is as though

a tout

who normally offered

artistic nudes

had suddenly changed

his stock in trade

to illuminated

mass cards.

However one man

believed Dali's Christ

could lure the crowds

into his museum.

Tom Honeyman

was director of the

museums and art galleries

of Glasgow.

He had originally

trained as a doctor

and worked as a GP

in the poorest part

of the city.

When I was a medical student

I used to spend

maybe two days a week

in the art gallery.

That was because

I couldn't afford

the lunch in the union

and I went down there

with my sandwiches

and my apples

and you're not

supposed to do that

but see when

the attendant

wasn't around

I would be

munching my apple

and looking at pictures

and I would say

my interest

and the appreciation

of art

stems from that time.

Glasgow was known

as the second city

of the empire

but the shipbuilding

that had brought

the city prosperity

was in decline.

Glasgow contained

some of the worst

slums in Britain

and there were huge

social problems

that needed addressing.

Tom Honeyman

thought art

had a role to play

in regenerating the city.

He just wanted

people to realise

they were missing out

on something

which could enrich

their ordinary lives

and that was an

appreciation of the arts.

My job was to bring

people in

I remember saying

facetiously

if I could get

the Celtic

and the Rangers

to put on a football

match in the central court

I would do it.

He may have been

idealistic about art

for the people

but Honeyman

was also very hard-headed.

When he started

negotiating with Dali

to buy the picture

he demanded

the copyright as well.

One of the fascinating

things about the purchase

is just how

canny Tom Honeyman

actually was.

He purchased

the copyright

of the painting

which was very unusual

at the time

and it was clearly

kind of part

of the discussions

that went on

around the purchase.

One of the reasons

why the council

was sold

on the purchase

was because

they understood

that there would be

some kind of financial

return for what was

really quite a high

outlay.

Honeyman hammered

the price down

from £12,000

to £8,200

and Dali agreed

to throw in

the copyright.

As soon as the deal

was done

the storm broke.

£8,200

for this?

Augustus John

says

absolutely mad!

Nice work

Signor Dali.

It seemed

a huge sum

of money

to pay

an eccentric

foreigner

at a time

when Glasgow's

slums

needed clearing

and the streets

needed lighting.

The row

wasn't about art

it was about

how much money

had been spent

and the row

was that some

people said

well you should

be building houses

for poor people

not spending money

on a bit of

paint on a canvas

how can you

possibly do that?

That was the

bold new step

and that step

in a way

of spending money

on art

you know

really

was a major

step

in the reinvention

of Glasgow

after the war

as the

Steve Schibberling

collapsed

Glasgow

reinvented

itself

as a

capital

of culture

Glasgow's

Protestants

were shocked

by the

painting

it seemed

calculated

to fan

the flames

of hatred

between

Presbyterians

who regarded

any painting

of Christ

as blasphemy

and the

city's

catholic

minority

Glasgow's

Presbyterian

church

wrote

to the

corporation

the

hanging

of such

a picture

in a

public

place

will

a

encourage

idolatrous

worship

in the

hearts

of the

ignorant

and

superstitious

who may

gaze

on it

and

b

will

pain

and shock

the

religious

susceptibilities

of all

pious

Protestants

What's interesting

is the way

that Honeyman

as a showman

and the painting

itself

as a kind

of tour

de force

overcame

that opposition

it seemed

that people

simply voted

with their feet

men

took their

hats off

school groups

who came

in in their

usual

high-spirited

fashion

as soon as

they went

into the room

where the

Dali was on

display

became hushed

in awe

Dali and

Honeyman

became pen

pals

Honeyman

kept inviting

Dali to

Glasgow

and Dali

admiring

his friend's

audacity

drew him

as Don

Quixote

fighting

against

his

backward

fellow

countrymen

My

very dear

friend

as you

can see

the

envious

and the

systematic

Dali

haters

will end

up

making

our

Christ

legendary

and one

of the

most

famous

in the

world

so far

I've

been accused

of copying

eight

different

paintings

Inside

the

Glasgow

School

of Art

the

students

were

enraged

by

Honeyman's

purchase

they

organized

petitions

denouncing

the picture

a student

leader

described

the

purchase

as

shameful

waste

of

money

when

young

artists

are

finding

it

so

hard

to

make

a

name

One

of

the

leaders

of

the

student

protest

was

William

Crozier

today

he's a

successful

artist

but his

feelings

about

Dali's

Christ

have

not

changed

Had

Dr.

Honeyman

said

I'm

going

to

present

you

with

the

Dali

of

1933

or something

it would have been

a wild

delight

you know

the man

could paint

he was

inventive

and you

know

he was

extraordinary

by this

time

everything

had

changed

for him

really

he

was

past

long

the

Glasgow

art

students

started

a debate

that

continues

to

this

day

the

crucifixion

proved

popular

with

the

people

of

Glasgow

but

many

artists

and

critics

continue

to

loathe it

the

only

people

I've

heard

actually

praising

it

are

city

councillors

taxi

drivers

and

people

not

concerned

with

the

art

it

seems

to me

grotesque

and

unbeautiful

really

unbeautiful

and I

can see

no

suffering

in the

figure

either

I

mean

Christ

on

the

cross

it's

a very

pretty

body

on

the

cross

it

doesn't

give me

any

sense

of

the

pain

of

the

crucifixion

the

horror

for every

critic

denouncing

the

painting

as

vulgar

kitsch

there's

a

committed

Christian

experiencing

Dali's

image

as a

strong

statement

of

Christ's

humanity

the

way

he's

actually

depicting

it

is

something

that

has

made

it

a

very

popular

painting

because

it

does

emphasize

the

sort

of

Christ

of

the

common

people

the

kind

of

liberation

Christ

the

liberation

theology

Christ

the

Christ

who

actually

came

down

and

was

an

ordinary

working

young

man

worked

as

a

carpenter

worked

with

muscles

worked

with

his

hands

the

painting

is a

radical

break

with

how

Christ

on

the

cross

has

been

represented

instead

of a

tortured

this

crucifixion

has

made

Christ

whole

again

no

crown

of

thorns

no

nails

no

fixtures

to the

cross

how do

I feel

about that

I feel

comfortable

about it

because it

does express

something

of the

intention

of

Christ

he is

there

because

he was

prepared

to be

there

he was

there

because

he was

prepared

to

accept

his

father's

will

and

so

the

painting

does

invite

us

to

contemplate

at

ever

deeper

level

the

reality

of

the

mystery

of

the

cross

Christ's

body

may

have

the

gloss

of

Hollywood

about

it

but

his

face

is

hidden

Dali

even

seems

to have

captured

the

slightly

out

of

focus

quality

that

he

saw

in

the

photos

looking

down

on

Russ

Saunders

head

the

fact

that

we

don't

see

the

face

of

Christ

is

very

clever

on

the

part

of

Dali

I

think

it

offers

an

element

of

intrigue

which

is

very

modern

and

very

Hollywoodian

and

filmic

because

it

allows

us

to

fantasize

to

project

onto

him

to

enjoy

his

sort

of

tussled

hair

and

his

wonderful

stuntsman's

figure

One

of the

reasons

I think

this

is a

very

good

painting

is

very

holy

man

St

John

of

the

Cross

and

so

that

supreme

clarity

the

hallucinatory

clarity

of

a

hallucination

of a

vision

is

what

he

achieves

Dali's

image of

the

crucifixion

was one

that he

would

return

to

again

and

again

during

the

next

decade

It

has

all

the

ingredients

of

an

iconic

image

and

I

think

when

Dali

uses

it

again

in

other

works

he's

very

much

aware

that

people

will

recognize

it

it's

his

signature

peace

From

his

first

study

for

Christ

of

St

John

of

the

Cross

to

the

massive

religious

paintings

that

followed

Dali

was

sustained

by

a

belief

that

science

and

religion

were

not

enemies

that

man's

discovery

of the

atomic

nature

of

physics

you

feel

that

that

really

livens

things

up

enormously

for

me

the

more

happy

thing

is

look

these

terrific

conflicts

about

electrons

and

p.m.

songs

and

atoms

everything

jumping

and

romping

in

a

completely

extraordinary

eurythmic

feeling

and now

you move

on

and all

your

life

will

be

to

the

rhythm

of

atomic

explosion

exactly

one

new

kind

of

atomic

and

nuclear

mysticism

well

thank you

very much

that's

a

fascinating

phrase

nuclear

mysticism

Dali's

bizarre

nuclear

mysticism

led

to

his

image

of

the

assumption

of

the

Virgin

Mary

clearly

modeled

on

his

wife

Gala

he

claimed

exotically

that

atomic

physics

could

explain

the

miracle

he

painted

Mary's

molecules

flying

apart

to be

reassembled

in

heaven

at

the

heart

of

this

painting

is

the

symbol

of

his

faith

Christ

of

Saint

John

of

the

Cross

in

his

discovery

of

America

by

Christopher

Columbus

Dali

used

his

iconic

crucifixion

not

once

but

twice

a

monk

carries

a

cross

onto

the

shore

of

the

new

world

reproducing

his

own

sanctification

between

the

artist

and

Jesus

Christ

If you

look at

the head

of

Christ

Saint

John

of

the

Cross

Dali

albeit

through

a kind

of

optical

illusion

here

has

created

a double

image

where we

see

his

own

face

on

top

of

the

head

of

the

Christ

itself

This

is

interesting

because

it seems

to me

that

this

is

a

way

in

which

Dali

is

trying

to

allow

the

viewer

to

have

their

own

sort

of

mystical

vision

but

of

course

what

do

they

see

in

Christ's

head

but

they

see

Salvador

Dali

Salvador

Dali

never

got

to

Glasgow

but

in

1963

the

curator

who

stuck

his

neck

out

to

buy

the

painting

finally

arrived

in

Port

Legat

Tom

Honeyman

told

Dali

his

Christ

was

now

a

much

loved

part

of

Glasgow's

culture

and

because

Glasgow

owned

painting

had

paid

for

itself

many

times

over

in

1993

Dali's

Christ

was

removed

to

a

new

home

Christ

of

St.

John

of

the

Cross

was

to

become

Exhibit A

in a

brand

new

museum

of

religious

multiculturalism

it

found

itself

surrounded

by

artifacts

from

the

great

faiths

of

the

world

the

key

to

financing

this

museum

was

the

very

work

that

had

provoked

outrage

when

it

was

purchased

when

I

said

the

Dali

was

going

there

everyone

understood

that

this

was

going

to

be

not

just

educational

for

communities

but

a

real

visitor

attraction

and

therefore

the money

came in

from the

tourist

board

from

all the

different

agencies

that have

to be

employed

to make

these

things

work

in

2005

Christ

of

St

John

of

the

Cross

was

voted

the

most

popular

painting

in

Scotland

confirming

its

place

in

Glasgow's

cultural

history

and

probably

a

wider

world

than

that

what

fascinates

me

about

the

Dali

is

it

represents

this

extraordinary

three-way

conversation

you

have

the

history

of

Spanish

mysticism

of

religion

then

you

have

the

extraordinary

iconoclastic

flowering

of surrealism

between

the

wars

you

place

those

two

histories

alongside

this

dure

post-war

city

dealing

with

economic

problems

with

reconstruction

the

idea

that

you

can

have

these

three

entirely

disparate

strands

coming

together

in this

one

image

to

me

is

a

testament

to

the

painting's

power

and to

its

uniqueness

today

Glasgow's

principal

municipal

gallery

at

Kelvin Grove

is being

refurbished

to rally

public support

for this

project

Glasgow

council

announced

that

Christ of

St.

John

of the

Cross

would

return

to

its

historic

home

Dali

may have

created

the most

popular

painting

in

Scotland

but the

argument

about

the

sincerity

of

his

religious

vision

shows

no sign

of abating

history

I think

it's

more

suitable

to

Las

Vegas

than

it

is

to

a

public

gallery

I

don't

believe

it's

a

crucifixion

I

don't

believe

it's

even

a

Christian

picture

it's

something

else

which

belongs

to

Varnham

and

Bailey

rather

than

in a

museum

it

doesn't

give me

any

feeling

of

true

spirituality

whatsoever

what

it

looks

to

me

like

is

just

a

very

clever

trick

I

think

he's

producing

work

that

he

hopes

will

be

hugely

popular

and

will

get

him

this

reputation

as

a

catholic

painter

and

I

think

that's

another

country

because

I

don't

think

for

a

second

he

is

a

convinced

catholic

the

complexity

of

Dali's

religious

faith

was

a

supported

by a

forest

of phallic

symbols

the

yellow

boat

which

once

floated

in

the

harbor

of

port

legat

in

the

christ

of

saint

john

of

the

cross

today

is

precariously

perched

above

Dali's

extraordinary

museum

in

Figueres

the

whole

museum

resembles

a

journey

through

the

artist's

brain

marked

by

a

crucifix

the

painter

is

buried

beneath

the

floor

of

this

extravagant

theater

museum

that

he

created

to

capture

the

contradictory

sides

of

his

art

and

his

personality

the

museum

suggests

that

Dali's

interest

in

religion

was

genuine

but

how

relevant

is

the

question

of

sincerity

I don't

think it

really

matters

what

the

artist

believed

what

he's

done

is

create

an

image

which

allows

other

people

to

articulate

what

they

believe

this

this

a

real

human

being

this

is

a

real

human

christ

reaching

out

and

reaching

out

towards

the

scene

below

I

don't

see

it

as

a

blasphemous

picture

at

all

but

one

that

is

like

crucifixions

traditional

crucifixions

exploring

this

imponderable

I see

it as

an

exploratory

picture

perhaps

the

painting's

greatest

achievement

is to

be a

religious

image

which

evoked

a

response

in

the

second

half

of

the

20th

century

after

scientists

discovered

that there

wasn't

heaven

up there

and hell

down

below

but

there

were

you know

vast

endless

worlds

of

empty

space

out

there

with

planets

spinning

around

there

didn't

seem

to be

any

space

for

God

and

in

a

strange

way

I

think

Dali

has

created

a

place

for

God

within

a

world

that

is

now

dark

within

this

darkness

within

this

vast

emptiness

of

modern

science

there

is

this

figure

of

Christ

hovering

over

us

and

comforting

in

in

in

largely

secular

society

of

the

20th

century

the

Christ

of

Saint

John

of

the

cross

created

a

spiritual

image

for a

space

age

era

perhaps

the least

surreal

work

Dali

painted

in

his

life

it

somehow

synthesized

the mysticism

of Saint

John

with a

vision

of the

future

this

faceless

Christ

continues

to tantalize

us

with a glimpse

of

eternity

believers

and

non-believers

alike