April 14-20, 2005

naked city

Surreal Life

50-yard 'stache: Dalí copycat Carmen Martella stares down the great surrealist. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

For Carmen Martella, impersonating Dalí is all about persistence.

by A.D. Amorosi

The scene: Rev. Tbagg's Pup Tent Revival at Tritone. A handsomely odd couple, Carmen Martella III and Susan Ricca, garbed in '40s swelleganza and homemade lobster hats, enter the room.

After a brief huddle, the man with the moustache (a full 2.5 inches per side) walks on stage alone to the strains of "Hello Dolly." Previously, he'd handed the audience sheets of paper to participate in his "Exquisite Corpse" — a game created by artist/theorist Andre Breton in which participants create drawings and prose fragments to form a surrealist communal poem. While the audience scribbles, the man twirls his waxed mustache as an "applesauce" sign blinks below his mic. Peering down his nose, his slicked, center-parted hair dripping onto his face, he glares at the crowd.

Once "Dolly" ends, he reads at random, in his thick, hurried, mock-Catalan accent, the scribbled-on papers that have come together as one beautiful and stupid whole.

Their "Corpse" finished, Martella tosses his hair, collects Ricca and they're gone.

As "Salvador Dalí" and "Gala," Martella and Ricca have made a spectacle as the painter and his missus.

"Wherever we go, people point, exclaiming "There's Dalí!'" says Martella, 29. "I lift my cane in acknowledgement and respond with a resounding "Buenos noches!' And the ladies more often than not always comment on the sexiness of my mustache."

That he doesn't closely resemble Dalí physically doesn't seem to matter. Since the start of Philadelphia Museum of Art's Dalí exhibit, the duo has gallivanted throughout Philadelphia: stopping regularly at Bar Noir, L'Etage and N. 3rd, performing and drinking; taking on Young Professional parties at the museum, where Martella does Q and A sessions; hosting private dinner parties where he draws, paints and discusses surrealism.

"We're bringing the spirit of Dalí to the streets in the form of surrealist living theater," says Martella, a Philadelphia painter/art historian/actor specializing in "living tributes" and "eccentric personas" under the banner of his Screaming Clown Unlimited.

"Like Dalí, I use Hungarian mustache wax, a secret recipe I reveal in a performance titled "The Mystery of Dalí's Mustache,' where I discuss its mystery and mythology," says Martella. "When my mustache is fully waxed and pointed to the heavens, it acts as antennae for me to imbue the spirit of the Divine Dalí."

But, like bald fat guys who walk around as "Ben Franklin," Martella doesn't look like Dalí as much as he evokes the all-around ardor of the artist and his ends to a mien. This isn't just about carrying lobster phones and canes. Martella is a scholar of surrealism.

In his heavy Spanish accent, Martella performs Dalí-created performance pieces like "The Birth of Dalí" (where Dalí hatches out of a giant egg on a beach announcing his rebirth, free of traumatism) as well as concocting his Dalí-style stage presentations based on his paintings and writings.

"I often have to interpret what he's saying because the Dalí accent is so thick," says Ricca, 32. The local art director and prop stylist who's worked on Fox's Design Invasion for Banyan Productions and Comcast Digital Cable, doubles as Martella's manager, booker, subtitler as well as doing her own "characters."

"And I'm older than Carmen, just like Gala was to Dalí."

There's something charmingly old-fashioned about their devotion — to each other, to surrealism, to the dry-cleaning bills they must rack up pressing vintage finery. Martella's Salvador is made even more (sur)real with a Gala by his side.

"He calls me his muse, his goddess, his strength," says Ricca. "We complement each other visually, aesthetically and creatively. We share the same level of passion and dedication for each other's work experience. He is, for me, my Dalí-an Dream." The two became companions after meeting at 2002's Henri David's Halloween Ball ("Susan was a satyr whose costume was made exactly as I had always wanted to make, sculpted puppet goat legs around her real legs, hooves and all," says Martella). Since their meeting, he's worked on her television and video projects, commercials and such. She has performed behind his series of personas, acting out characters such as "Lionel Richie" and "Melissa Rivers."

Along with horrors of his creation (the evil androgyne "Xero," who paired with sci-fi rockers P.T. Lovekraft for 2004's Fringe Fest) Martella has taken on "living tributes" of Rip Taylor, Tom Jones, Charles Nelson Reilly and Andy Warhol. All have embodied a certain surreality. Portraying Dalí, though, has always been a deeper, more satisfying challenge for Martella. But how does the man who becomes Dalí imagine a meeting of the two?

"If Dalí saw me, he'd beat me to the ground with his cane, pick me up, dust me off, then buy me a big glass of hot water and honey," says Martella. "But Dalí said he was surrealism. So why not become surrealism itself by becoming Dalí?"