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30-31 August
Session 1. Film
Luis Buñuel. Un Chien Andalou ( An Andalusian Dog ) 1929. B/W, in French, with Spanish subtitles.
Courtesy of Filmoteca Española, Madrid.Luis Buñuel. L’Âge d'Or ( The Golden Age) 1930. B/W, in French, with Spanish subtitles.
Courtesy of Centre Pompidou, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris . Donation made in 1989. Original negative restored in 1993 by the Centre Pompidou, Musée National d’Art Moderne, with help from the GAN Foundation for Cinema. 35 mm film courtesy of Filmoteca Española , Madrid . Screenings in 35 mm on Friday at 4:30 p.m. and Saturday at 12 noon.Salvador Dalí with Walt Disney. Destino, 1946-2003. Colour, sound, no dialogue, 6’31’’.
Courtesy of Walt Disney Animation Studios. Film screened only on Friday at 4:30 p.m. and Saturday at 12 noon.Alfred Hitchcock. Spellbound , 1945. B/W, in English, with Spanish subtitles, 2’45’’. Fragment with sets designed by Dalí.
Courtesy of Walt Disney / ABC Domestic Television.Duration of the session: 1h 37 min
* Image rights of Salvador Dalí reserved. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, 2013
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30-31 August
Session 2. Television. Advertisements. Happenings
A fondo . Joaquín Soler Serrano interviews Salvador Dalí, 1977. B/N, 46’
In collaboration with RTVE.*Advertisement for Chocolat Lanvin, 1969. Colour, in French, with Spanish subtitles. 25’’
Courtesy of La Maison de la Publicité *Salvador Dalí working on the two pieces Pastor de Ampurdán and La sirena alada de la Costa Brava to decorate Iberia airlines DC-10 aircraft, 1972. Colour, 1’ 21’’
Courtesy of the Iberia Documentation Centre. *Advertisement for Alka-Seltzer, 1974. Colour, in English, with Spanish subtitles. 44’’ Archives of the Bayer Corporation.
Courtesy of Bayer HealthCare LLC. *Happenings and actions Salvador Dalí happening in Park Güell. Tribute to Gaudí, 1956. B/W NO-DO Archives. Courtesy of Filmoteca Española. *
Dalinian Variations , Dalí on the beach and at his Port Lligat house presenting an invention that enables a sea urchin to paint a picture, 1957. B/W NO-DO Archives. Courtesy of Filmoteca Española. *
Salvador Dalí happening held in Park Güell for Harkness Ballet , 1966. B/W NO-DO Archives. Courtesy of Filmoteca Española. *
Fragment of the Salvador Dalí happening in Granollers. Dalí and his new invention. Rain Painting , 1974. B/W NO-DO Archives. Courtesy of Filmoteca Española. *
Salvador Dalí the baker, 1958. B/W, in French, with Spanish subtitles.
Courtesy of Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (INA), France . *
Ovociped , 1959. B/W, in French, with Spanish subtitles.
Courtesy of Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (INA), France . *Lecture by Dalí at the École Polytechnique, Paris , 1961. B/W, in French, with Spanish subtitles.
Courtesy of Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (INA), France . *Salvador Dalí, Journal de Paris. Dalí presents his collection of swimsuits. Dalí-kinis , 1964. B/W, in French, with Spanish subtitles.
Courtesy of Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (INA), France . *Salvador Dalí. Lorca, poetry phenomenon . Fragment in which Paco Ibáñez sings to Lorca and Dalí talks about him, 1965. B/W, in French, with Spanish subtitles.
Courtesy of Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (INA), France . *Salvador Dalí with Philippe Halsman, Chaos and Creation , 1960. B/W, in English, with Spanish subtitles, 18’26’’.
Courtesy of Philippe Halsman Archive , New York .Dizzy Dali Dinner , 1941. B/W, no sound, 52’’
Courtesy of Grinberg Asset Holdings.*Le Veston aphrodisiaque ( The Aphrodisiac Jacket ), 1964. B/W, in French, with Spanish subtitles, 45’’ Courtesy of Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (INA), France . *
Duration of the session: 1 h 34 min
* Image rights of Salvador Dalí reserved. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, 2013
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30-31 agosto
Session 3. Documentary film
Jean-Christophe Averty.Soft Self-Portrait of Salvador Dalí (Autoportrait mou de Salvador Dalí), 1966. Colour, in French with Spanish subtitles, 70’
Courtesy of Jean-Christophe Averty and Institut National de l’Audiovisuel, INA, France *Duration of the session: 1 h 10 min
* Image rights of Salvador Dalí reserved. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, 2013
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30-31 August
Schedule
Friday, August 30th
11:00 a.m. Session 1. Cinema
1:00 p.m Session 2. Advertisements. Television. Happenings.
3:00 p.m. Session 3. Documentary film
4:30 p.m. Session 1. Cinema
** Screening of L' Âge d'Or and Destino in 35 mm
Saturday, August 31st
11:00 a.m. Session 2. Advertisements. Television. Happenings.
1:00 p.m Session 1. Cinema
** Screening of L' Âge d'Or and Destino in 35 mm
3:00 p.m. Session 3. Documentary film.
4:30 p.m. Session 2. Advertisements. Television. Happenings.
6:30 p.m. Session 3. Documentary film.
8:00 p.m. Session 1. Cinema
10:00 p.m. Session 2. Advertisements. Television. Happenings.
Held on 30, 31 ago 2013
This audiovisual series looks at Salvador Dalí's film, video and television production, as a culmination of the exhibition Dalí. All of the poetic suggestions and all of the plastic possibilities. Almost five hours in length, this collection of works, with repeat screenings over two days, argues that the relationship between Dalí and mass culture is key to understanding the artist's work, but also to developing a different idea of modernity, one that conveys the spectacular and tumultuous nature of 1930s modernity.
The connection between mass media and modern art was understood, during most of that decade, through a complex body of theories. These modes of thinking, which ranged from formalist critique to the most orthodox surrealism, reveal the presence of an inevitable dialectical tension. So, it is no surprise that Clement Greenberg would situate the survival of the avant-garde in its direct confrontation with the kitsch of film and illustration. Similarly, André Breton would conceive of the manifestations of popular culture in surrealism as a simple means by which to transcend everyday life and once again enchant the world with the marvellous. The definitions proposed by the theorists of the time, such as Siegfried Kracauer, present cinema as an entertainment factory, in which the seriality and division of labour, typical of the industrial assembly line, are put to the service of merchandise transformed into spectacle.
Unlike theses such as these, which in one way or another protagonized the decade, Dalí's achievement was to formulate his own conception of the mass media, and his ideas took concrete form in the series of audiovisual productions presented in this series. In contrast with the mechanical and standardised work described by Kracauer, Dalí conceived of the film industry as a machine for the collective production of desire, in which the spectacle is the sequenced version of the paranoiac-critical method and its delirious associations. The public and the masses urgently demand the illogical and tumultuous images of their own desires and their own dreams (…), in Hollywood I hear the word Surrealism from every mouth, he wrote in 1937. Therefore it is not strange at all that Dalí would comment to Buñuel that, after all, L'Age d'Or is nothing but another American movie.
After two collaborations with his friend at the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid (Un Chien Andalou and L'Àge d'Or), Dalí's attraction to the subversive potential of Hollywood and mass culture, so liberating and spontaneous, prompted him to take part in film projects with Walt Disney (a genuine surrealist, along with Harpo Marx and Cecil B. DeMille, Dalí said of Disney) and Alfred Hitchcock. Dalí's originality lies in the fact that, unlike André Breton, he does not idealize or transcend this subculture, but rather promotes, somewhat like the surrealist dissident Georges Bataille, its low and degrading, anti-artistic nature. The artist conceived of himself as a Gargantua that executes and celebrates this collective manifestation of delirium.
So, although this new relationship between artist and spectacle led Breton to expel Dalí from the Surrealist movement - and rename him Avida Dollars - , the creator of The Great Masturbator did become the protagonist of numerous advertisements, documentaries, happenings and various actions undertaken by a generation of younger artists. In doing so, he not only revealed his ability to put forward a specific role of the artist within the mediatic world of post-war art, he also offered a solution, questionable or not, to another endless enigma, that of the relationship between modernity and the mass media.
![Miguel Brieva, ilustración de la novela infantil Manuela y los Cakirukos (Reservoir Books, 2022) [izquierda] y Cibeles no conduzcas, 2023 [derecha]. Cortesía del artista](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/ecologias_del_deseo_utopico.jpg.webp)
![Ángel Alonso, Charbon [Carbón], 1964. Museo Reina Sofía](https://recursos.museoreinasofia.es/styles/small_landscape/public/Actividades/perspectivas_ecoambientales.jpg.webp)
Más actividades
Christian Nyampeta and the École du soir
13, 14, 15 NOV, 11, 12, 13 DIC 2025
Christian Nyampeta is a Rwandan artist, musician and film-maker whose work encompasses pedagogies and community forms of knowledge production and transmission. His Ècole du soir (Evening School) is an art project conceived as a mobile space of collective learning and is named in homage to Ousmane Sembène (1923–2007), a pioneer of African cinema who defined his films as “evening classes” for the people, a medium of education and emancipation through culture.
This block is made up of three double sessions: the video work of Christian Nyampeta, the films of École du soir and one of Ousmane Sèmbene’s feature-length films. Nyampeta will introduce all three first sessions.
Crossed Vignettes
Friday, 21 November 2025 – Check programme
The Crossed Vignettes conference analyses the authorship of comics created by women from an intergenerational perspective and draws from the Museo Reina Sofía Collections. Across different round-table discussions, the programme features the participation of illustrators Marika, Carla Berrocal, Laura Pérez Vernetti and Bea Lema and researchers Viviane Alary, Virginie Giuliana and Elisa McCausland.
The aim of the encounter is twofold: to explore in greater depth the different forms in which women comic book artists have contributed to developing a counterculture; namely, the appearance of ruptures, reformulations and new genres within the ninth art. And to set up a dialogue which ignites an exploration of genealogies linking different generations of artists.
Moreover, the activity is put forward as a continuation to the exhibition Young Ladies the World Over, Unite! Women Adult Comic Book Writers (1967–1993) and the First International Conference on Feminist Comic Book Genealogies, held in April 2024 at the Complutense University of Madrid.
In redefining the visual narratives of the comic book and questioning gender stereotypes in a male-dominated world, women comic book writers and artists have impelled greater visibility and a more prominent role for women in this sphere. The study of intergenerational dialogue between female artists past and present enables an analysis of the way in which these voices reinterpret and carry the legacy of their predecessors, contributing new perspectives, forms of artistic expression and a gender-based hybridisation which enhances the world of comics.
The conference, organised jointly by the Museo Reina Sofía and Université Clermont Auvergne/CELIS (UR4280), is the outcome of the following projects: The Spanish Artistic Canon. Between Critical Literature and Popular Culture: Propaganda, Debates, Advertising (1959–1992), Casa de Velázquez (CALC); Horizon Europa COST Actions iCOn-MICs (Comics and Graphic Novels from the Iberian Cultural Area); and COS-MICs (Comics and Sciences).
UP/ROOTING
11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 NOV 2025
Museo Reina Sofía and MACBA Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA) invite applications for the 2025 iteration of the School of Common Knowledge, which will take place from November 11th to 16th in Madrid and Barcelona.
The School of Common Knowledge (SCK) draws on the network, knowledge and experience of L’Internationale, a confederation of museums, art organizations and universities that strives to reimagine and practice internationalism, solidarity and communality within the cultural field. This year, the SCK program focuses on the contested and dynamic notions of rooting and uprooting in the framework of present —colonial, migrant, situated, and ecological— complexities.
Building on the legacy of the Glossary of Common Knowledge and the current European program Museum of the Commons, the SCK invites participants to reflect on the power of language to shape our understanding of art and society through a co-learning methodology. Its ambition is to be both nomadic and situated, looking at specific cultural and geopolitical situations while exploring their relations and interdependencies with the rest of the world.
In the current context fraught with war and genocide, the criminalization of migration and hyper-identitarianism, concepts such as un/belonging become unstable and in need of collective rethinking:
How can we reframe the sense and practice of belonging away from reductive nationalist paradigms or the violence of displacement? How to critically hold the entanglement of the colonial routes and the cultural roots we are part of? What do we do with the toxic legacies we inherit? And with the emancipatory genealogies and practices that we choose to align with? Can a renewed practice of belonging and coalition-making through affinity be part of a process of dis/identification? What geographies —cultural, artistic, political— do these practices of de/centering, up/rooting, un/belonging and dis/alignment designate?
Departing from these questions, the program consists of a series of visits to situated initiatives (including Museo Situado, Paisanaje and MACBA's Kitchen, to name a few), engagements with the exhibitions and projects on view (Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture from Panafrica), a keynote lecture by Stefano Harney and Fred Moten, as well as daily reading and discussion gatherings, editorial harvest sessions, and conviviality moments.
The Joaquim Jordà Residencies 2025
Friday, 7 November 2025 - 7pm
In this activity, the recipients of the 2024–2025 Joaquim Jordà Residencies call, María Aparicio (Argentina, 1992) and Andrés Jurado (Colombia, 1980), present respective projects related to their body of work in an open session in which to discover the creative interests of two of the most up-and-coming independent film-makers in Latin America today.
María Aparicio presents the working process behind her film De sol a sol (From Sun to Sun), along with a brief journey through the films prior to this project and her filmic searches in recent years. Aparicio synthesises the storyline of De sol a sol from the silhouettes of a group of men who appear between the stalks of a reedbed. Their knives glisten as the sun hits them, flashing and disappearing with their hand movements. Apprentices split the canes using no method; seasoned workers cut with skill. They are workers from a sugar mill in northern Argentina and are watched by Juan Bialet Massé, accompanied by Rosich, assistant and photographer. It is Argentina in 1904 and he is carrying out a mission assigned to him by his country’s government: to travel the Argentinian provinces, reporting on the state of the working classes.
Andrés Jurado, for his part, will look over his own work and the work of the La Vulcanizadora lab in this session. He will also open the archive stemming from the research process in the project Tonada, a journey through the succession of peace agreement betrayals in the history of Colombia. From the colonial era, understood in tumultuous terms, as a hurricane that keeps swirling, to the present day he traces the stories of people like Tacurrumbí, Benkos Biohó, Bateman and the many women and men who were betrayed by governments and oppressors. Tonada seeks to build a sound and film dialogue between the guerrilla disarmament of 1953 and the period following the peace agreement of 2016, invoking these and other events and confronting traumas of betrayal through a film composition devised to be sung. But what is sung? Some of these songs are heard and voices are shared in this presentation.
The Joaquim Jordà Residences programme for film-makers and artists was set in motion by the Museo Reina Sofía in 2022. The initiative comprises a grant for writing a film project rooted in experimentation and essay, as well as two subsequent residencies in FIDMarseille and Doclisboa, international film festivals devoted to exploring non-fictional film and new forms of audiovisual expression.
Ylia and Marta Pang
Thursday, 6 November - 8pm
The encounter between Spanish DJ and producer Ylia and visual artist Marta Pang is presented in the form of a premiere in the Museo Reina Sofía. Both artists converge from divergent trajectories to give form to a new project conceived specifically for this series, which aims to create new stage projects by setting out from the friction between artists and dialogue between disciplines.