The serial killer who recreated the works of Salvador Dali
Every artist wants to inspire someone who comes after them. The goal of any piece of art is to have something that lasts longer than you do, but once it’s out of your hands, there’s no telling where things could go. People can use your work as an example to make their own masterpieces, but in the case of Salvador Dali, his fascination with the city of Perpignan was used as an excuse to do despicable actions.
Then again, there doesn’t seem to be anything too horrible about Dali’s affinity for a certain city, merely perplexity over his adoration for something rather mundane. Perpignan was always a beautiful piece of art history for him, and seeing the architecture and the layout of the train station was so singular that he felt like it should have been there since the dawn of time. To most people, however, it is just an ordinary Spanish station.
While Dali’s inspired depictions of Perpignan are some of his more mystifying works, transfiguring the building that he claimed came him an erection into a work of marvel. However, they turned ugly when people started imitating his art in real life.
If you look at the picture in question, there are a lot of disturbing images as well as Dali’s usual surreal visions. For one thing, there is always the spectre of something disturbing just out of frame, like one of the paintings depicting what looks like a shadowy figure about to sodomise a young woman.
There are also depictions of people screaming out in many of them, including various depictions of people in what looks like a fetal position with their arms outstretched before them. This kind of artistic license would have been perfectly acceptable, but it tended to get a little bit insane when various women were found in the city in a few familiar positions.
Throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, the bodies of four women were recovered in Perpignan, having been murdered and heavily mutilated by an unknown assailant. While this wouldn’t have been any different from the usual cold case scenario, most of them ended up being found in various poses identical to what was found in Dali’s paintings.
For instance, the first victim was found with her arms crossed in an artistic style. While it’s hard to pin just one position on Dali, the next victim having her head and hands removed was a bit more puzzling, considering Dali’s famed The Spectre of Sex Appeal. Considering the first victims had no fresh blood present on the scene, this was clearly something thought out as an artistic statement.
Considering Dali’s fascination with the female body and his penchant for various sadomasochistic activities, this was that mentality taken to its absolute worst conclusion. When talking about the topic of sadomasochism, Dali’s quote, “The pain was insignificant, the pleasure was immense”, had taken on an especially dark undercurrent.
While the killer eventually had four women killed and mutilated for his macabre art project, justice was served when Marc Delplech was sentenced to 30 years in prison for the death of one of the victims. However, that wasn’t the end of the story, with Jacques Rançon testifying years later that he was the one responsible for murdering those women. As of 2018, he was still awaiting trial from the victim’s families.
Regardless of what surreal images Dali was able to put into people’s minds, it’s always important to be mindful of how people are interpreting your work. Dali never intended for people to be murdered on behalf of his own work, but having art be out of one’s hands is actually a far more dangerous experience than a lot of people realise.
