the NachtKabarett
All Writing & Content © Nick Kushner Unless Noted Otherwise
Marilyn Manson, mid 2006 from a photoshoot for Juxtapoz Magazine |
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| Left ; Marilyn Manson in a still frame from 'The Beautiful People' video, 1996. Right ; Salvador Dalí circa 1944 in another photo by Philippe Halsman. | |
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Left ; Marilyn Manson circa late 2007 during the 'Eat Me, Drink Me' era. Right ; Salvador Dalí circa 1944 in a photo by Philippe Halsman. Also correlary to Manson is that Halsman also shot such icons as Sharon Tate and Marilyn Monroe. This fantastic contribution & discovery is courtesy of Manzin, of Manzin.net. |
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MarilynManson.comI've been in the bored room this past month trying to explain the difference between a night club and a night stick to a pile of idiots, who for the life of them, could not see the connection betwixt the moustache of Dali and the "mustache" of Nietzsche. I have put the dirt back in my mouth and drank from the dead, regardless of what these powdered wig witch doctors prescribed. We will not be censored.
(..)
I am here,
MM
AD[posted 1/23/2003 U.S.A.]
Dalí and Nietzsche are two iconoclasts which Manson has invoked and sought inspiration from in an innumerable amount of instances with the former being a more recently cited most frequently and with 1996's Antichrist Svperstar being a quoted tribute to the work of the latter.
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| Buñuel & Dalí's 'L'Age d'Or' (The Golden Age) and Nietzsche's Antichrist, respectively quoted in the titles of Manson's albums 'The Golden Age of Grotesque' and 'Antichrist Svperstar'. |
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In January 2003 leading up to the release of The Golden Age of Grotesque, Manson made a post to his journal on MarilynManson.com in regard to a comparison between the mustache's of Nietzsche and Dalí along with two video previews of the song Para-noir. In a 1962 interview with David Bryson, Dalí made this exact contrast between Nietzsche and himself based on their facial extremities which was prompted after imploring him to define his term 'Paranoiac.' The word 'paranoiac' is one which is short for the 'The Paranoiac Critical Method', Dalí's method of painting he once defined as, "... A spontaneous method of irrational knowledge based on the systematic objectification of associations and delirious interpretations...", a method praised by fellow surrealist Andre Breton as the movement as a whole played upon the expression of the subconscious and irrational via the conscious mind and in a rational concrete medium of painting. This concept is also one which is no stranger to Manson who has to have experimented with the occult, sleep deprivation and narcotics to achieve of freedom of the subconscious in the creation of art, where the rational inhibitions of the conscious have been subsided to release the inner depths of creativity.
Paranoiac, more similarly, is also a remix of the song Para-noir, featured on the mOBSCENE single, which is itself a corruption of the word paramour meaning, 'a lover in an adulterous relationship', making it a befitting title for its theme.
BRYSON: Could you define the word 'paranoiac'? Could you define it in more detail?
DALI: The name is paranoiac critical method: one spontaneous method of knowledge based in the instantaneous association of delirious material: everything [that] appear[s] in my life, delirious, antagonistic, impossible [all] pushed together. My method instantaneously creates these miracles. Two completely different kinds of imagination. One is the romantic imagination where countries are represented by [the] Pre Raphaelites, Bouguereau, Rossetti, these people live in one dream but this dream is completely subjective, neurotic... this dream disappears, there is no possible proof this dream exists. ...my kind of imagination is the contrary of Pre Raphaelite is the same consistency [but] it is not romantic it is completely classic. The relationship between this classical Mediterranean landscape is the same landscape of Greece [with the] fantastic mythology of the Greek antiquity and my monstruositites is the same kind of solid rock shape.
BRYSON: Yes, I understand that the geology, what you see here, confirms the images. The images are your private images in Dali's head but painted out they correspond to a reality.
DALI: Exactly because, my delirium is injected and sublimate in this rocks and in this geology. There's many kinds of imagination, [such as] the Romantic imagination, almost never exist in rock. It's only fog, music, evanescent visions of Nordic countries [where] everything is completely musical.
This also is very clear in my moustache because my moustache is the contrary of the moustache of Friedrich Nietzsche. Friedrich Nietzsche is the depressive moustache, plenty of music and fog and romanticism and the Dalí moustache is exactly the same que two erected scissors completely metallic.
Salvador Dalí, interview with David Bryson
BBC Third Programme, 1962
In short, the concept presented via the microcosm of the two mustaches is the dichotomy and differentiation between that which is depressive and romantic with that which is uplifted and pragmatic and thus yet another illustration and dimension of the dichotomy which is Marilyn Manson within the context of The Golden Age of Grotesque and two of the extreme influences thereof.
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| Manson as Dalí on the 2006 shot for Juxtapoz, with his 1999 watercolor painting 'Die Deutsche Kampferin' (The German female fighter) representing an androgynous Hitler, a reference to Dalí's fascination for fascism, particularly the sensuality and eroticism he claimed to see in Hitler, and to the "degenerate" nature of his work. The moustache theme is once again present here, and we can also note the columbines next to the chaplinesque figure. | |
"This one was very much a dedication to Dalí because he had painted 'Hitler as a Housewife' and the paintings were destroyed when he exhibited them with the exhibition for Un Chien Andalou with Buñuel, and so no one has ever seen them. So when I was reading about them, I wanted to paint something in return, but living in Hollywood I thought there was a bit of Chaplin in it all. I think it's funny when you have a mustache and it really defines sort of 'evil' or 'funny'. Change hats, same moustache..."Marilyn Manson, at the vernissage of his Trismegistus art show
December 5, 2008
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| Still frame from the (s)AINT video with a noticeable appearance of Manson's painting. | |
Salvador Dalí, Diary of a Genius, 1965"During this time, Hitler was Hitlerising, and one day I painted a Nazi children’s nurse knitting. She had accidentally sat down in a big puddle of water. At the insistence of some of my most intimate Surrealist friends, I had to paint out her swastika armband. I had never expected the emotions that would be aroused by this emblem. I became so obsessed with it that I projected my delirium on to the personality of Hitler, who always appeared to me as a woman. Many of the paintings I did at this period were destroyed when the German Army invaded France. I was fascinated by Hitler’s soft, round back, always so tightly encased in its uniform. Every time I started painting the leather strap that ran from his belt across the opposite shoulder, the softness of the Hitlerian flesh squeezed into the military tunic brought me to a state of ecstasy that was simultaneously gustatory, milky, nutritive and Wagnerian, and made my heart beat violently, a very rare emotion I don’t experience even when I’m making love. Hitler’s chubby flesh, which I imagined to be like the most opulent feminine flesh with the whitest skin, fascinated me.
(...)
In addition, I considered Hitler a complete masochist possessed by the idea of provoking a war in order to lose it heroically. In fact, he was preparing one of those gratuitous acts which were at the time very much appreciated by our group. My insistence on considering Hitler’s mystique from the Surrealist point of view, as well as my insistence on giving a religious meaning to the sadistic element in surrealism, both of which were aggravated by the developments of my paranoiac-critical method of analysis, which tended to deprecate automatism and its inherent narcissism, ended in a series of breaks and intermittent rows with Breton and his friends."
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| Marilyn Manson during the 'Holy Wood' era, 2000. Discovery courtesy of Manzin, of Manzin.net | |
For more references to Salvador Dalí in Marilyn Manson see the following articles on The NACHTKABARETT:
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| THE MECHANICAL CHRIST & Christus Hypercubus |
CRUCI-FICTION IN SPACE & Christ of St John of the Cross |
ARMA...GEDDON Pretty as a ($) |