San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
For Salvador Dalí, state’s Central Coast was a calling
The arts culture of the Monterey Peninsula doesn’t exactly have a reputation for outre extravagance. But for the better part of six years, it was the home of one of the most flamboyant and visionary artists of the 20th century, a man who has practically become a brand name for untamed but media-savvy creativity: Salvador Dalí.
Today, Monterey is home to Dali17, a high-profile downtown museum featuring lithographs, sculptures and some original Dalí etchings. In July, the museum was sued for copyright infringement by the Spanish foundation that Dalí created before his death in 1989. But it remains open, providing a vivid reminder of Dalí’s long association with the area.
Dalí arrived on the Monterey Peninsula with an enormous splash in the late summer of 1941, when he hosted a bizarre costume party/publicity stunt called A Surrealistic Night in an Enchanted Forest (or Night in a Surrealist Forest, as some accounts have it) at the posh Hotel Del Monte. The event attracted international news coverage. Today, it would be a social media and cable news feeding frenzy.
Shortly after the party, Dalí left the area for New York, but a year later, he and his Russian-born wife, Gala, returned to Monterey, where they lived on and off until 1948.
“Most people know that he had this big party in 1941,” says Neal Hotelling, the resident historian at the Pebble Beach Co., which owns the golf links and other resort properties at Pebble Beach. “But there’s little knowledge of Dalí (in Monterey) beyond the party. The truth is, he kept coming back.”
Dalí first came to California as one of the most famous refugees of the emerging war in Europe. He and Gala were living in Paris when Hitler invaded Poland. They fled to
Spain for a while, but eventually they set sail for America in 1940.
Early on in his American years, Dalí lived at a Virginia estate where he developed a famous feud with his temporary roommate, writer Henry Miller (who would later also become an iconic personality in Monterey County). Eventually, on a tour of the West Coast, the Dalís stayed at the stately Hotel Del Monte, which was soon to be sold to the U.S. Navy and is today part of the Naval Postgraduate School.
It was there where Dalí conceived of the surrealism party to raise money for other artists displaced by the war — though the party’s expenses were so high, there was nothing left over.
Guests, who included celebs such as Bob Hope and Gloria Vanderbilt, were encouraged to come dressed as their favorite bad dream. Dalí recruited local artists to help him turn the hotel’s ballroom into a kind of grotto, with stalactites made of plaster and paper and store mannequins with animal heads. Live animals including porcupines and bobcats were brought in (though the San Francisco Zoo refused Dalí’s request for a live giraffe).
The late Monterey artist Bruce Ariss was part of the design team. In his memoir, he related how he helped Dalí bring in a wrecked car and how he persuaded a neighbor to lie naked under the car. “We gave her so many sleeping pills that she slept through the entire party without moving an eyelash,” Ariss wrote.
In the summer of 1942, Dalí returned to Monterey looking for a quiet retreat where he could pursue his art. The climate, vegetation and Spanish place names of the Monterey Peninsula always reminded Dalí of his hometown of Port Lligat, on Spain’s Mediterranean coast. Today, both Port Lligat and Monterey have museums devoted to Dalí’s art.
In 1943, the Navy took over the Hotel Del Monte, and the Dalís moved their operation to Cottage Row at the Del Monte Lodge, which is today the Lodge at Pebble Beach, where they had two rooms, one serving as Dalí’s studio. The Dalís would regularly spend their winters in either New York or Hollywood, but they spent most of their time in Monterey. In the roughly seven years Dalí lived in the U.S., he spent about 45 months cumulatively in Monterey.
“Dalí loved the Monterey Peninsula,” Hotelling says. “He always said it reminded him of his home — the coastline, the cypress trees, the climate and the ocean. He came from a small town. He liked the excitement of New York, but I think he ultimately preferred the quiet.”
With his much-photographed face and famous mustache, Dalí could not hope to be incognito in Monterey, even if he had wanted to. But he wanted to concentrate on his work, and, for the most part, the locals let him do that.
“It’s not like it was Podunk, Indiana,” Hotelling says. “The clientele was very reserved and respectful of him. He had plenty of interaction with visitors and other guests at the resort. These were people with money, and this was a place where people who could pay him commissions would come. He could do business from there.”
Dalí’s years in Monterey coincided with a particularly hectic time in his life. He was in Monterey when his autobiography, “The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí,” was published, and, a couple of years later, when his only novel, “Hidden Faces,” was released. He worked with Alfred Hitchcock on the film “Spellbound” and with Walt Disney on a doomed short film project called “Destino.” He designed commercial art for a perfume and a line of neckties. And he painted, too. Among his commissions from the period are portraits of socialites Dorothy Spreckels Munn and Enid Haldorn, now part of the collection at the de Young Museum.
He was living in Monterey in the summer of 1945 when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed. He was so shaken that he changed the focus of his art and entered into his “atomic period.” He said at the time, “The atom has become my favorite food for thought.”
On the social scene, he joined the Carmel Art Association and, in 1947, he participated as a juror in an art show featuring the work of high school students from all over California. He attended occasional parties and posed for photographs. He sat for interviews with local reporters, but would only speak French. He got lost in southern Monterey County with his friends the actor Burgess Meredith and his wife, movie star Paulette Goddard. He made the local papers when his 1941 Cadillac convertible was stolen during a robbery in Pebble Beach. (The car was recovered and is today on exhibit at the Dalí Museum in Figueres, Spain.)
Hotelling claims that because Dalí’s biographers and scholars are mostly from the East Coast and Europe, they tend to downplay or overlook the years he spent in Monterey. Indeed, before the opening of Dali17 in 2016, there was precious little evidence in Monterey of Dalí’s history there.
But Hotelling, who has given lectures on Dalí’s time in Monterey at the Dali17 museum, said that Dalí created between 10 and 15 paintings a year in his California period, many of which rank among his finest and most adventurous works.
In 1948, with the war over, the Dalís were eager to return to Europe. They left the Monterey Peninsula for good that year. He lived for another 40 years in Spain. “It’s important to note how significant his time on the Monterey Peninsula was,” said Hotelling. “It was much more than just a little costume party.”
Wallace Baine is a writer in the Monterey area. Email: travel@ sfchronicle.com