Salvador Dalí and the Resurgence of Surrealism

Earlier this fall I had the immense honor of being the featured speaker for the Meadows Museum’s Luis Martín Lecture Series in the Humanities at Southern Methodist University.  I was invited to present a series of five lectures in conjunction with their amazing exhibition Dalí: Poetics of the Small (on view until January 6, 2019!).  The exhibition itself features an array of Dalí’s small-form paintings created in the period he was most directly active with the orthodox Surrealist movement. I used this as a springboard to explore how Dalí’s entrance into the movement in 1929 helped revitalize a movement that had been struggling with its political aspirations and cultural convictions.

The Meadows Museum thankfully recorded all of the lectures and have posted them to their official YouTube channel.  I’ve embedded them below, but if you wish to binge watch them, here is the link to the entire series as a playlist.  I only ask you never let me actually watch them and become painfully aware of all of my personal tics.

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Lecture 1: What Is Surrealism?

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Lecture 2: Dalí at the Precipice of Surrealism

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Lecture 3: When Was the Golden Age?

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Lecture 4: The Paranoiac Critic

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Lecture 5: Dalí Conquers Surrealism