Forensic Scientist Uses Dna to Explore Dali’s Bizarre Genius
Samples taken from nasal feeding tubes could also help to authenticate works.
It is like something from a surrealist still life – a hat, glasses, moustache and toilet seat. This is the collection of belongings that forensic scientist Michael Rieders was offered when he put the word out that he was trying to track down Salvador Dali’s DNA.
"I have been fascinated by Dali and his artwork since I was around 11 years old," he said. "I found it hard to believe that a person could come up with such exotic, bizarre art."
By tracking down Dali’s DNA he felt he could get closer to the surrealist artist. But more than that, he hoped that if he could characterise Dali’s DNA fingerprint, he could use it to help authenticate the handful of paintings and artworks that are not signed but are claimed by some to have been painted by the Spanish master.
Dali’s DNA might even hold clues to the man’s creative genius. "He was just a machine of creativity at all levels," said Bruce Hochman, director of the Dali Gallery in San Juan, California. "Not only was he a great painter, he could work in any medium." Dali also designed jewellery, designed sets for Disney, wrote and starred in an opera and was an accomplished draughtsman.
When the "Dali universe", as Dr Rieders calls it, began offering to sell him objects to test for DNA he suspected most respondents were opportunists. But then he was given an unmissable chance of getting close to Dali’s DNA.
Mr Hochman put Dr Rieders in touch with two of Dali’s closest friends, Robert and Nicolas Descharnes. They had kept two nasal tubes nurses had used to feed the painter when he was recovering from a fire in 1984. The blaze, which was started by an electrical fault at his castle in Pubol, France, left Dali with second degree burns on his leg and burns to his throat from breathing in the hot smoke.
"I’m not 100% sure why [they kept them]," said Dr Rieders, a toxicologist and lab director at NMS Labs in Willow Grove, Philadelphia, "but I now had an artefact that I was reasonably sure would contain some of Dali’s DNA."
The Descharnes, renowned authenticators of Dali’s work, had stored the tubes in sealed envelopes signed and dated by Dali’s doctor and nurse.
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Dr Rieders told the annual meeting of the Academy of Forensic Sciences in San Antonio, Texas, that his team took swabs from 19 different places on the outside of the tubes. The profiles – which included DNA markers at 16 different sites on the chromosomes – all pointed in the same direction. "They all ended up coming back to a single male individual. This was a good sign," he said.
The next step is what to do with the DNA. "Let’s be clear about this. I have no intention of creating a cloned army of surrealist artists," said Dr Rieders, who sported a melting clock tie in honour of one of Dali’s most famous images.
One priority is to preserve the DNA for future testing. The team have offered one sample of the DNA to the Dali Foundation in Spain, one to the Dali Museum in St Petersburg, Florida, and one to the Forensic Archaeo-Toxicology Institute, an organisation that retains DNA samples from significant cases. "We want to make sure that if a catastrophe should happen in Willow Grove, Pennsylvania, we won’t lose the chance of having Dali’s DNA," said Dr Rieders. Dali died in 1989 leaving no descendants.
One possibility would be to study Dali’s DNA for clues to his artistic genius. Perhaps he had a mild form of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder which fuelled his creativity.
"Dali collectors will want to use the DNA profile to help establish whether the huge amounts of supposed Dali paraphernalia that exists is real. There are many Dali objects out there, some on eBay, that are claimed to have been in the possession of Dali," said Dr Rieders.
"We now have the art world very interested in using this Dali DNA reference as a way of looking to see if some of the other objects and artwork out there could perhaps be Dali’s."
One piece in particular, a small watercolour called The Snail and the Angel, has a brown stain on it that is supposedly Dali’s semen. The authenticity of that painting is not in doubt, but Dr Rieders thinks it would be a good place to start to try out the DNA fingerprint.
| © Guardian News & Media 2008 Published: 2/23/2007 |
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