Meeting Dali!

BREAKING NEWS... Picture Billed as Dali's 'Largest' May Make Appearance in Miami in March!

2012-01-25T11:13:00.000-08:00

Meeting Dali! has learned that a work of art attributed to Salvador Dali -- said to be the single largest painting ever produced by the Surrealist Kingpin -- may make a brief one-week appearance in March in a special exhibition in Miami, Florida.

The work, titled "Papillon," is so immense it was photographed in a gymnasium, and appears in small black & white reproduction in the double-volume Descharnes/Neret book, Dali: The Paintings.

More as details become available.

'Tuna Fishing' Reason Enough to Make Trip to Paris for Dali Retrospective

2012-01-24T19:09:00.000-08:00

Hard to believe it's been more than 30 years since the Dali retrospective at the Centre George Pompidou in Paris. Now that unique facility is again poised to become all-Dali, all the time, beginning in November. And a highly reliable source tells me Dali's extraordinary painting, "Tuna Fishing," will be there.

Which means I'll be there.

Perhaps that's the ultimate measure of a true Dali nut! Someone who'll fly across the world to see a single painting by the Catalan master. "Tuna Fishing" has long been on my bucket list. I can think of no other Dali that I simply must see in person before I make it to heaven. And it's going to be a little bit of heaven on earth for my wife and me -- our first time seeing what some consider Salvador Dali's greatest achievement at the easel.

And our first trip to Europe. ("Tuna Fishing" is in the collection of the Paul Ricard Foundation, Isle of Bendor, France. Copyright of Dali's works is held by the Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali, Figueres, Spain. Images used here under journalistic fair use guidelines.)

Salvador Dali's Mind-Blowing 'Tuna Fishing' Masterpiece to be Exhibited at Pompidou Center in Paris for First Time in Decades!

2012-01-22T11:14:00.000-08:00

Meeting Dali! has it on very good authority that Salvador Dali's iconic, masterful, almost never-exhibited "Tuna Fishing" of 1967-1968 -- a massive canvas in dazzling psychadelic colors and painted with the exactitude of a Renaissance master -- will likely be the keystone work at the huge Dali retrospective planned to open in November at the Centre George Pompidou in Paris, France.

To respect certain confidences, I cannot disclose the source of my information. But it is very reliable and comes from a European authority, collector and Dali confidant.

"Tuna Fishing" is considered by some scholars to be the best and most important painting ever created by Salvador Dali -- even eclipsing the immortal soft watches of Dali's 1931 painting, "The Persistence of Memory," in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

"Tuna Fishing" (collection Paul Ricard, France) was inspired, in part, by the tuna fishing expeditions Dali's father would tell him about when the artist was a boy. These voyages, which continue today, are violent and aggressive, with mass quantities of blood spilling into the Mediterranean, creating disquieting pools of crimson. Dali was strangely galvanized by the orchestrated carnage, and his immense, approx. 10 foot x 12 foot painting, captures the brutality of the "tuny catch," while also synthesizing virtually every key art form: surrealism, realism, pop, op, Cubism, abstrac-expressionism, and more.

It also, as Dali explained it, expresses a finite universe, where everything is compressed into a precise and frenetic space. It took Dali upwards of a year to paint the masterwork, using his moveable easel and employing models of sea gulls, human models, and references to other arists' works, such as Gericault's "Raft of the Medusa."

The Pompidou exhibition will reportedly include many seldom seen paintings, large and small. Speculation has it that "Battle of Tetuan" may be there as well, though that has not be confirmed in any way at this juncture.

Watch this space for more about this important development.

Will the Pompidou Exhibition Reel in 'Tuna Fishing'?

2012-01-13T10:32:00.000-08:00

A big, big question on the minds of Dali lovers is whether the big Salvador Dali retrospective planned to begin in November at the Centre George Pompidou in Paris, France, will include Dali's breathtaking painting, "Tuna Fishing," of 1967-'68.

No word on this yet, though I've been trying to gently harangue the right sources, every now and then, to see if this magnificent, rarely displayed canvas will find itself swimming in Dalinian waters at the prestigious Parisian site. That show is then scheduled to move to Madrid in 2013.

My long-time friend and ardent Dali aficionado and collector, Nigel Simmins of England, has long cited "Tuna Fishing" as his favorite Dali work. He was, among other things, greatly taken by the golden dagger in the middle of the picture, which, he says, glows practically as if there's a light switch inside of it!

If "Tuna Fishing" makes it to the Pompidou, your genial Meeting Dali blogger will be on a jet plane headed across the big pond, before you can say "Santiago El Grande" -- my personal Dali favorite, and one I finally got to see in Atlanta, Georgia's High Museum of Art, thanks primarily to Dr. Elliott King. His curatorial work on that show was nothing short of genius.

Viva Dali!

(Dali images are copyright Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali, Figueres, Spain, and used her for non-commercial journalistic purposes only.)

Dali's Surreal Twist to Antiquity!

2011-12-20T08:49:00.000-08:00

In Rhinocerotic Disintegration of Illissus of Phidias (1954), Dali was inspired by a work from the ancient Greek sculptor, Phidias -- and by Dali's own deep fascination with mathematical principles and nuclear physics.

It was thus perfectly logical -- and wonderfully Dalinian -- for the Surrealist master to re-imagine Phidias's headless sculpture disintegrating into the parts of which it's made: atomic particles shown as a kind of confetti of rhinoceros horns. Dali added a starfish and sea urchin to link the work to the watery environs of the Mediterranean Sea, on which Dali and Gala lived, at Port Lligat, Spain, virtually all their lives.

Dali observed that the rhino horn is one of the rare naturally occurring forms in nature that approximates the curve of the logarithmic spiral -- an underlying geometric principle that lends visual harmony and balance to masterful paintings. The geometrical box within the chest of the sculpted figure accords with the mathematical ethos of this remarkable painting.

I would note, however, that while the title suggests "disintegration," what Dali was actually showing, simultaneously, was the integration of the atomic-like particles that make up matter -- these countless parts that make up the whole. Dali was about construction, not destruction.
(Reproduced here under journalistic Fair Use guidelines.)

Part of the Dr. Klein Dali Collection Exclusively at New York's William Bennett Gallery

2011-12-17T12:57:00.000-08:00

Some of the remaining sketches from the popular Dr. Edmund Klein Collection, on view and sale exclusively at The William Bennett Gallery in New York City. See the Gallery at www.williambennettgallery.com, and on facebook. (Photo courtesy of the Gallery.)

Picture Perfect Dali!

2011-12-17T05:11:00.000-08:00

My dear friend from "across the pond," as he likes to put it -- Mr. Nigel Simmins of Britain -- recently noted that he was just as excited to see some never-before-viewed photographs of Dali as he's been over his 40-plus years of being an ardent Dali aficionado.

You'd think, he mused, that after all this time it wouldn't strike much of a chord with him if he came across "new" snaps of his favorite artist. But not true at all. It's all just as fresh and exciting as a Golden Retriever puppy under the tree on Christmas morning.

So here's just one "new" photo I wanted to share today. More coming in subsequent posts. And, as always, material used here is for journalistic purposes under general fair use laws.

Speculating on Huge Dali Exhibition Planned for Late 2012 in Europe

2011-12-13T10:43:00.000-08:00

It's been announced that a huge Salvador Dali exhibition is slated for late 2012, opening at the Pompidou Center in Paris, then heading for the Reina Sofia in Madrid.

How can I not speculate -- and dream -- about what Dali treasures might show up there! Could, for example, Battle of Tetuan make an appearance? Tuna Fishing? Or even the strange Colosso (sp?), about which I know virtually nothing?

The latter, large painting surfaced a few years back, when my friend in Britain, Nigel Simmins -- a great collector of Dali memorabilia -- brought the work to my attention via a London newspaper article. It's reproduced here (used under the Fair Use Doctrine for journalistic purposes).

We'll keep a watchful eye on developments in Paris and Madrid, as more information bubbles up.

Dr. Klein Dali Collection Finding New Homes

2011-12-07T08:37:00.001-08:00

Has it been about five years already, since the "secret" Dr. Edmund Klein Collection of Dali sketches was unearthed from a downtown Buffalo, New York bank vault?

I've been involved in the saga from the beginning -- and what an adventure it's been! Now the sketches, drawings, sculpture and prints have been steadily landing themselves in new collectors' homes, one as far away as that of an astute Dali aficionado/surgeon in Venezuela. Others in the collection of an internationally known Dali expert, and a business owner in Canada.

Remaining works (do I dare say they've been selling like hot cakes?) are being seriously ogled by physicians, in particular, who are finding a kind of emotional or at least professional connection with the works, dedicated to Dali's doctor, the late Edmund Klein.

New York City's William Bennett Gallery has been doing, and continues to do, a bang-up job of presenting the works to discriminating collectors who know there's not a whole lot of Dali uniques on the market. Finding ones like the Klein pieces, whose provenance is exceptional if not unprecedented in the depth of its documentation, is a real plus.

There's so much I could report about my 5-year journey with the great Klein family in general and the delightful Dali originals in particular. A journey that was not always tidy, as some "players" in the art world couldn't -- and still can't -- wrap their head (and wallets) around the fact that they're not a part of the spoils that are going to the victors.

Dali and the Octopus: Two Highly Intelligent Creatures!

2011-11-24T15:54:00.001-08:00

Salvador Dali: super intelligent.
The octopus: super intelligent.

Why not put them together?

Which is what happened when Dali used an actual octopus, smeared in ink, to create part of his famed "Don Quixote" lithograph suite.

Dali also did a host of drawings using octopus tentacles to suggest the head of Medusa.

Even in the far upper right corner of Dali's huge canvas, "Ecumenical Council," the artist pressed the tentacle of an octopus onto the picture (it takes a keen eye or, better yet, a step-ladder to spot this arcane but interesting little detail).

Viva Dali!

Moscow Dali Exhibition Sets Record

2011-11-21T10:38:00.001-08:00

Word's in that some 270,000 people visited a recent Dali exhibition at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow, over an 11-day period -- breaking an attendance record for shows at that venue.

Dali continues to attract, and for one simple, uncomplicated reason: he was exciting as a person, ingenious as an artist. [Illustration used under journalistic fair-use doctrine.]

Will 'Unknown' Dali Film Footage Ever Get Publicly Shown?

2011-11-19T14:44:00.001-08:00

During the inauguration of the world's first Dali Museum, on March 7, 1971 in Beachwood (Cleveland), Ohio, a gentleman whom I'll simply call "Ed" took 16mm film footage of Dali on that historic occasion. Ed was vice-president of the plastics company of which A. Reynolds Morse -- owner of the Dali Museum collection -- was owner/president.

As publicity director of the museum in 1973-'74, I got to know Ed and his wife well. I dined at his home one evening and had the pleasure of viewing his unique film of the Master. I recall one instance in it where Dali drew a cross on a woman's forehead! It was fascinating to see him strolling among the assembled guests -- the dazzling cut of a super-star artist contrasted against the comparatively banal one-room provisional "museum."

But this film has, to my knowledge, never been shown outside of Ed's Ohio home. Hopefully he's had it transferred to more permanent, higher-resolution digital media. And perhaps one day soon he'll realize that present Dali aficionados would benefit from seeing this delightful footage of the great artist in action.

This inexorably reminds me of my irrepressible desire to see the clip of Dali when he appeared in the early '70s on the old Dick Cavett Show -- famed for bringing an ant eater on stage with him, then unceremoniously tossing it onto the lap of Lillian Gish.

[Photo not from the film herein mentioned; used under Fair Use doctrine for journalistic purposes only.]

Dali's Ambiguity Sails in 'Allegory of Sunset Air'

2011-11-18T05:12:00.001-08:00

The more I study the life and work of Salvador Dali, the more I'm humbled by how much more there is for me to learn than what I already know about the Catalan genius.

Here's a reproduction (used here for journalistic fair use purposes only) of "Allegory of Sunset Air" (circa 1940; bottom image). It's reminiscent of some other Dalis, including "Women Imitating the Gestures of a Schooner."

Dali's penchant for sexual imagery rears its head in "Sunset Air," where the morphology of a schooner is also perhaps suggestive of both male and female attributes. The two melons, one cut into sections, can be viewed as testicles, while the tongue-like "sail" adds to the phallic suggestion.

Likewise, the melons -- especially when put in context with the woman's legs -- suggest ample buttocks, a favorite anatomical focus of the sexually ambiguous Dali! By that I mean it was never crystal clear whether Dali was a participant, voyeur, or some combination thereof.

What is clear is that the sexual instinct was a driving force behind many of the artist's works.

Do you have a take on this painting? Would love to hear from you.

Salvador Dali: Hiatus Nearly Over . . .

2011-11-17T19:27:00.001-08:00

Your genial Meeting Dali! host has been on hiatus for the last few months. But all that's about to change.

Watch this space for continuing news and views about Salvador Dali -- history's greatest artist!

Viva Dali!

Big, Important Dali Exhibitions Planned in Europe Next Year

2011-11-17T19:15:00.001-08:00

Word is that some very important Dali works -- very, very important Dalis -- will hang from the walls of the Pompidou Center in Paris late in 2012.

The exhibition will then travel to the Reina-Sofia Museum in Madrid. A reliable, credible and distinguished source has told me additional details that will make Dali aficionados' heads spin! But, respecting her wishes, my lips remain sealed until such time as the lid can be blown off of the hush-hush for now.

Watch this space for coming details!

Oh, and sorry for the extended gap between my previous post and this one. I've been on a kind of hiatus, for reasons important to me but quite boring to you. This blog might remain comparatively quiet for another month or so -- with intermittent posts along the way -- but should be back up to speed early in 2012.

Viva Dali!

Dali to Play Big in European Shows Next Year

2011-11-17T14:23:00.000-08:00

A major, if not humungous Salvador Dali exhibition is reportedly going to rock the Pompidou Center in Paris late next year, with what reliable sources say will be some major, major works by the Master of Surrealism.

The retrospective will play in Paris first, then travel to a prominent museum in Madrid. Stay tuned to MeetingDali! for far more details as they become available.

On a side note, your genial host of this blog has been on a sort of hiatus, so sorry for the long gap between posts. There are still a few "issues" to work out (trust me, they're boring), but I hope to be posting news and views on Mr. Dali more regularly.

Viva Dali!

'Dali Atomicus' Nearly as Universally Recognized as Dali's 'Persistence of Memory'

2011-09-30T04:53:00.000-07:00

Dali Atomicus (1948, copyright Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali, Figueres, Spain) is surely one of the most reproduced photographs of all time, as well as one of the most widely known images attributed to the creativity of Salvador Dali – this time in concert with his photographer friend, Philippe Halsman, who died 10 years before Dali.

The long and fruitful collaboration between the two men was legendary. The culmination of their teamwork was surely the delightful and daffy book, Dali’s Mustache, whose first edition is a collector’s item today.

Of all the photographic images to emerge from the nexus of Dali’s and Halsman’s innovative minds, Dali Atomicus is arguably the most universally known. It gives photographic expression to Dali’s fascination with intra-atomic physics, where it was discovered that matter is discontinuous, and that the microscopic world of the atom – with its protons, neutrons and electrons – is one where nothing touches anything else. This phenomenon is expressed in Dali Atomicus, but it was no easy task.

Dali and Halsman worked tenaciously, take after take after take, until they got it all just right: furniture suspended by wires (later airbrushed out of the finished image); flying cats; water tossed from a bucket; suspended paintings; and, of course, a leaping Salvador Dali – a leering look on his excitable Catalan face!

It’s reported that one of Dali’s first ideas in pulling this spectacular effect off was to put dynamite into live ducks! That, of course, didn’t fly (pun intended), and even some American observers were concerned about the tossed cats, though Dali said the felines were treated so gently and respectfully that the observers from an animal protection society conceded that the cats “enjoyed” flying!

Dali Atomicus is just one more example of how Dali could be given any objective in any medium and he handled it with aplomb. It is, yet again, another reason why Dali is considered one of history’s most inventive and colorful geniuses.

'Myself at the Age of Six...' Reveals Dali as Both Surrealist and Nuclear-Mystical Painter

2011-09-28T04:55:00.001-07:00

By 1950, Salvador Dali was at a kind of point of departure, moving from Surrealism to Nuclear-Mysticism. But even in his atomic period, Dali never lost touch with his surrealist roots. And all of his art is ultimately personal in nature, at least to some degree. The present remarkable work is a good example – a peculiar and rather unforgettable oil painting that marries Dali the surrealist with Dali the artist moved by the phenomenon of “levitation” inherent in nuclear physics.

This was a time, after all, when he ushered in his Nuclear-Mystical Period, which provided a new lens through which Dali viewed the world around him. His mind and brush were profoundly informed by discoveries in atomic physics and the nature of intra-atomic space, where nothing touches anything else. Where things are “rumping and jumping” about, as Dali colorfully put it about protons and electrons and neutrons. And where it makes perfect sense, in a painting like Myself at the Age of Six when I Thought I was a Girl Lifting with Extreme Precaution the Skin of the Sea to Observe a Dog Sleeping in the Shade of the Water that one should be able to lift the skin of the sea to observe a dog lying beneath it!

The dog – borrowed from Ayne Bru’s 16^th century painting, Martyrdom of St. Cucufa, and rediscovered in Dali’s 1950 work – is placidly well-anchored to the surface beneath the raised water, while young Dali – looking immodestly female – finds himself levitating, too, just as he might have found himself in a bizarre dream. And no doubt that was precisely how Dali came to paint such a subject; he’s likely to have dreamt it. The same dog also appeared in his 1954 canvas, Dali Nude….

By the same token, one has to wonder if the young Salvador at this age (i.e., age 6) didn’t in fact harbor some private doubts or confusion over just how comfortable he was in his own skin and with his sexual identity. Especially given that he was born in the shadow of the first Salvador Dali, who died at age 22 months and after whose death Dali the artist was born almost nine months later to the day.

But other interpretations and hypotheses aside, this painting is a wonderful example of Surrealism – Dali’s surrealism – where the impossible becomes possible, the odd becomes commonplace, the dream world finds pictorial expression in shockingly realistic ways.

It’s valid indeed to compare Myself at the Age of Six…with Dali’s 1963 painting, Hercules Lifts the Skin of the Sea and Stops Venus for an Instant from Waking Love. (Both works copyright Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali, Figueres, Spain.)

'Burning Giraffe' a Haunting Icon in Many of Dali's War Premonition Works

2011-09-26T05:21:00.000-07:00

It was late in my long journey of Dalinian discovery that I learned of Giraffe on Fire, this fantastic 1937 gouache on paper, which a few years back was estimated by Christie’s to fetch between $150,000 and $200,000 – and then cashed out at a sizzling $1,870,000!

Dali did several paintings that featured the blatant improbability of a burning giraffe, and most were done in the shadows of impending war. Indeed, Dali is said to have believed that what he called “the masculine cosmic apocalyptic monster” – the burning giraffe – was a premonition of war. Here the dark clouds of war, and the burning fires of conflict, seem evident in this stunning, haunting and extraordinarily forceful gouache, which sold at some nine times over its auction estimate, marking something of a turning point in Dali’s prices at auction.

Dwarfed by and looking up at the barbecued beast is a woman whose head has been supplanted by a riot of roses – a frequently seen motif in Dali’s surrealist pictures, including Springtime Necrophilia. Dali would often replace human heads with other objects, and his symbolism in a premonitory war picture here might suggest how the inhumanity of war is a shame cast upon the face of society reduced to savagery.

But there’s another undeniable interpretation of Dali’s flaming animal – in this case we also see what looks like a cow or bull on fire at left – and that may be the abject disparity or paradox of such a compelling image. We simply don’t think of living creatures “on fire,” the way we would consider a house, building or forest in flames. So when we see a giraffe, of all things, with its neck ablaze, we sit up and take notice, wide-eyed and perplexed – precisely what Dali was aiming for.

Burning Giraffe (copyright Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali) is the quintessential surrealist work by Dali, forcing us to ask what is going on, and why? And forcing us, moreover, to believe it – for Dali’s draftsmanship had an uncanny way of somehow making the unreal seem vividly real. If Dali’s nightmares became our nightmares, even for a moment, he’d succeeded in being an artist who could truly move his admirers.

When Dali inaugurated his Teatru-Museu Dali in Spain in 1974, part of the festivities included his posing with an actual stuffed giraffe, around which Dali and others held burning candles to symbolize the flames, as the Master shouted “foc!” – fire! – in Spanish!

Dali Waxes Surrealistically, Mystically in 'Paranoiac Astral Image' of '34

2011-09-23T05:43:00.000-07:00

I saw Paranoiac Astral Image (1934; copyright Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali, Figueres, Spain) in a Dali exhibition in Hartford, Connecticut, and while it paled in comparison to other works in the show (Dali’s Optical Illusions) from the point of view of sheer size, it made a gigantic impression on me – and continues to do so.

This is Salvador Dali at his surrealist and mystical best, when incomprehensible juxtapositions of unrelated objects make perfect sense in a dream world Dali cultivated to perfection. The work, which is in Hartford’s Wadsworth Atheneum, also taps into theosophy – philosophical or religious thought based on a mystical insight into the divine nature. “Astral” refers to a substance pervading all space and forming the substance of a second body (astral image) belonging to each individual. It accompanies the individual through life, is able to leave the human body at will, and survives the individual after death.

A young Dali in his iconic sailor suit makes an appearance in Paranoiac Astral Image, seated in a fishing boat like the kind still commonly seen along the Bay of Port Lligat. Gala is seated opposite him, dressed in a sun bonnet. Both seem perfectly comfortable, oblivious to the complete absence of sea, lake, or ocean one would find in a “normal” reality. A kind of phantom nurse figure hurries along nearby, as if in another world.

In the foreground, a broken amphora lends a classical connection, while a kind of “average bureaucrat” strolls insouciantly at left, dressed like Dali’s notary father might have been, complete here with straw hat and a strange appendage trailing off his head.

This Beach at Rosas scene looks like it was clipped right out of a dream reel, where our nocturnal reveries conjure up strange spaces populated in often bizarre, nonsensical ways. Dali’s use of open space, and the precise positioning of the four main elements in the composition, give Paranoiac Astral Image a unique, airy, curiously structured quality, and help make it one of Dali’s best surrealist images. While we often focus on some of Dali’s very large canvases, this tiny work – about the same size as his insanely popular Persistence of Memory – proves that Dali’s genius triumphed, no matter what size the work may have been.

'Battle of Tetuan' Depicts Historical Event with Surrealist Twist

2011-09-21T05:11:00.001-07:00

Dali’s great Battle of Tetuan (1962, David Nahmad Collection, Milan; copyright Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali, Figueres, Spain), is one of his most ambitious, complex, massive, and in some ways confounding oils. Part of his inspiration came from Mariano Fortuny’s large painting of the same theme, which Dali long admired.

The battle was fought near Tetuan, Morocco, between the Spanish army of Africa and the Moroccan army in 1860.

In Dali’s wildly unconventional depiction of this piece of history, the advancing foreground warriors include a portrait of Gala on horseback as well as the artist’s own self-portrait. And this is a rare painting in that it actually includes two portraits of gala, the other appearing at top center. I’ve actually heard it said that Dali included himself in every painting he did! That, of course, is preposterous. But he did appear in some, even if it might seem a tad odd, and The Battle of Tetuan is one of those occasions. When it came to Gala, however, he frequently included her in his works, as she was his leading model and the most important thing in his life – personally and artistically.

Intermingled with the foreground battlers is a numerical pattern, where numbers 3, 5, 7, 8, etc., can be discerned by a keen eye – probably representing Dali’s numerology interest. He has also shown this part of the painting overlaid with the double-helix molecular model of DNA – a nod to his consuming interest in atomic physics, genetics, and other concerns of modern science.

In the right middle distance, the suggestion of additional warriors was inspired by a phenomenon by which Dali was fascinated at this early 1960s period: the rivers of white (negative space) surrounding the printed text of newspapers. A small newspaper clipping is in fact juxtaposed with The Battle of Tetuan as a detail shown in Robert Descharnes’ book, The World of Salvador Dali. (The Salvador Dali Society, www.dali.com, offers an original drawing by Dali, titled Bust of Socrates, which was created using this negative space in newspaper text technique).

The bizarre flying horse at upper left is perfectly logical in a historical treatment with a surrealistic twist, as is the grossly elongated human leg in front of the full-body portrait of Gala, recalling Dali’s tiny oil, The Ghost of Vermeer of Delft, Which Can be Used as a Table and perhaps The Specter of Sex Appeal, as well.

I saw The Battle of Tetuan briefly in the early 1990s at Christie’s in New York City, where it sold that evening for about $2 million. Its immense size lends an awe-inspiring, powerful and thunderous mood to this remarkable Salvador Dali masterwork. As I looked up at it, it seemed to go on forever – an enormous canvas overflowing with a palpable energy. Such was the power of Dali’s painting.

Dali Paints Colorful Double-Image in 'Dance of the Flower Maidens'

2011-09-19T04:58:00.000-07:00

Dali’s draftsmanship, brilliance as a colorist, and penchant for the double-image are all choreographed wonderfully in Dance of the Flower Maidens, a stunning picture originally created as a porcelain dinner plate design for Louis E. Helman, president of the Castleton China Company of New York City.

As Salvador Dali was so adept at doing, he draws us into the heart of this work by using a pronounced perspective from below, which seems enhanced in its depth by the classic architectural columns that help draw our eye deep into the center of the work.

The maidens’ heads of roses was a popular motif Dali used in a variety of his important surrealist works, such as the great 1935 oil, Woman with the Head of Roses and, a year later, Necrophiliac Springtime. The concept was carried out with real models at the time, and remains popular to this day; several rose-headed women were seen at the opening of the great Dali: The Late Work exhibition in 2010 at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art.

Double-imagery – a phenomenon Salvador Dali loved and used often – takes flight here, as the birds in the middle fly in a pattern that forms a human face. Dali used the same birds-becoming-face effect in designing an impressive Peace medallion.

Watercolor over pencil, Dance of the Flower Maidens demonstrates Dali’s legendary technique; even in the normally difficult to control medium of watercolor, the artist struts impressive technical brilliance. I don’t think it can be emphasized enough: Dali’s surrealism could never have gained the success it did, had it not been for his outstanding painting skills. He was clearly one of the most accomplished “technicians” in the history of fine art. (Copyright Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali, Figueres, Spain.)

Mathematics, Mysticism Merge in Dali's Beautiful 'Corpus Hypercubus'

2011-09-15T17:10:00.000-07:00

I know of at least one Dali aficionado who believes Corpus Hypercubus is the greatest work Dali ever painted. It would not take a whole lot of arm-twisting to get me to concur.

Dali’s astonishing intellect set in motion a number of forces that came together in this dynamic and powerful work: the mathematics of the hypercube; the metaphysics of the fourth dimension (time); the Treatise on Cubic Form by Juan de Herrera, architect of the Escorial in Madrid; Dali’s surrealistic nod to Picasso’s cubism; and of course the Crucifixion of Christ.

The sheer beauty of Dali’s breathtaking technique is equaled in impact by the towering sense of awe that strikes us, as we see Mary Magdalene, in the person of Gala Dali, dwarfed by the immense appearance of Jesus, who floats before the hypercubic cross, into the fourth dimension.

As in Dali’s other major Crucifixion painting – Christ of St. John of the Cross – he doesn’t show us Jesus’ face, nor any pain or humiliation of the crucified Savior. Indeed, both of Dali’s major Christ figures are strong…muscular…alive!

Reportedly, when financier/art collector Chester Dale bought and subsequently donated Corpus Hypercubus to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, it was maligned and a source of jealousy. Today, of course, it is one of the most popular works in that museum, and widely held as one of Salvador Dali’s most impressive masterpieces.

I’ve personally always found it more awe-inspiring and interesting than Christ of St. John of the Cross, though both paintings are nothing short of magnificent.

One of Dali's Best 'Society' Portraits is This One: 'Equestrian Portrait of Carmen Bordiu-Franco'

2011-09-14T05:24:00.001-07:00

Some of Salvador Dali’s best works were his sometimes outrageous, always interesting portraits – and one of the best, in my view, is Equestrian Portrait of Carmen Bordiu-Franco of 1974 (private collection; copyright Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali).

The sitter was Franco’s granddaughter, and many U.S. and European newspapers and magazines carried pictures and stories of her and Dali during the unfolding of his widely-publicized commission – no doubt a sweetheart of a deal, though Dali’s bank account was already pretty robust!

A video clip that appears in at least one documentary on the Master shows him walking into the Prado Museum in Madrid, where a crowd had been assembled – “thinking they were in for an hour of brushwork from the Master,” as one narrator put it. Instead, Dali put a tiny dab of white paint in the corner of the sitter’s eye – “leaving a highly aristocratic audience not quite knowing where they’d landed themselves,” the narrator continued.

As always, Dali produced a faithful likeness of his subject, showing her atop a horse that isn’t really there, but is instead the contour of a kind of cut-out image – a window, if you will, onto two very Spanish elements: the Escorial palace in Spain, and figures from Dali’s favorite artist, the Spanish Master Velasquez’s painting, Surrender at Breda.

In fact, Miss Franco is not really there either, aside from her head, arm and leg; her body is a swirl of clouds – lending, as does the horse, a dream-like, ethereal quality to this truly dashing picture. It’s a large and stunning canvas, to be sure, and one of many fine portraits Dali painted. Works that will reportedly appear in a year or two in a forthcoming book on Salvador Dali’s portraiture, under development by Canadian writer Julia Pine, in cooperation, as I understand it, with England’s Dawn Ades.

In 'The Sheep,' Salvador Dali Demonstrates his Transformative Powers!

2011-09-11T17:37:00.000-07:00

Salvador Dali’s wit and redoubtable technical fluency shine like the sun filtering through the lamp shade in his gouache-watercolor over chromolithograph, The Sheep, of 1942 (Salvador Dali Museum, Florida; copyright Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali, Spain).

This kind of masterful reworking of a painting by another artist (Albrecht Schenck; see his painting, below) could not have been effectively pulled off by someone without the precision eye and brush of Dali. His imagination was as boundless as it was tinged in humor, and here we cannot help but be pleasantly amused by a snowy scene showing a flock of sheep, a shepherd and a duck in flight – now transformed into the interior of a salon, complete with table, lamp, phone, library and seductively reclining woman! And, of course, the sheep themselves morphing into furniture – their legs becoming ornate couch and chair legs! A lone book is set upon one of them, further giving it a coffee table-like appearance.

Notice how the crouching shepherd in the middle distance has an ash tray on his head! And the light of the sun in Schenck’s original oil illuminates through the shade of the lamp, which features an iconic Dalinian eye. A couple of cherubic figures cavort in a large, decoratively framed painting hanging on the wall at left.

Dali’s inventiveness invaded every conceivable form of creative expression. It was well known by those who had the good fortune of being in Dali’s company (including me, when I visited him in the lounge of the St. Regis Hotel in New York City in 1973 and 1974) that he would often taken virtually anything handed to him or that he spotted nearby and magically transform it into something artistic. It was almost as if Dali couldn’t stop this creative engine within him, constantly spinning at off-the-chart RPM’s.

In the same year, ’42, Dali also executed a collage over chromolithograph, over-painted with gouache, titled Design for the Interior Decoration of Stable-Library. It had similar features to The Sheep and was certainly no less inventive and eye-opening. Dali’s genius was beyond doubt, and it’s reassuring to this blogger that most of the world is now coming to this realization – a realization long-time Dali aficionados like me began enjoying decades ago.

'Persistence of Memory' Lives Up To Gala's Prediction: 'No One Who Sees It Shall Ever Forget It!'

2011-09-09T05:17:00.000-07:00

I’ve been putting off and putting off a blog post about Dali’s The Persistence of Memory, because the work is so famous, so iconic, so synonymous with Salvador Dali, that the question becomes: What can I say about it that hasn’t already been said?

Indeed, just today I learned that reportedly Dali’s most universally recognized Persistence of Memory of 1931 – painted when Dali was only 27 years old – is second only to The Mona Lisa as the most downloaded painting on the Internet!

How remarkable that a canvas the size of the average laptop computer screen is so huge in the world’s psyche. And to think that, when Dali was painting it one night in Paris, while Gala was away at the movies, he painted only the background and wasn’t clear what he would put in the landscape – until he spotted a piece of Camembert melting in the warm Paris air. He pondered notions of the hard and the soft, and suddenly the ideas of limp watches entered his mind.

Of course, scholars, writers, historians and aficionados have all had their turn at adding plausible input to how Dali’s famed, flaccid watches should be interpreted. Dali himself has commented in various ways – contending that he was inspired by Einstein’s theory of relativity, as well as his observation that Americans, most especially, seem so driven by watches and time and schedules and being on-time for meetings.

Then there was Dali’s belief, too, that time seemed to stand still in Port Lligat, his home for virtually all his adult life, tucked among the rocks of Cape Creus at the most extreme northeast corner of Spain. Dali thus negated time altogether, by reducing the rigidity and inflexibility of its persistent ticking, ticking, ticking to floppy timepieces running like the aforementioned melted Camembert cheese.

One thing that astonishes many who see it for the first time (it’s in the Museum of Modern Art in New York; copyright Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali, Figueres, Spain) is its small size. Though countless college kids have posters of Persistence on their dorm room doors and walls – often giving the impression the painting is quite large – it is indeed very small. And it’s surely the single most popular work in the MoMA.

So what more can be said about Dali’s Persistence of Memory? Except that it alone probably would have made the name Salvador Dali immortal, even if he’d never achieved anything else in his long and prodigious career. “Once someone sees it,” said Gala, when Dali asked her opinion of the work when she returned from the movies that night, “they will never forget it.” Indeed, that night in Paris, Gala spoke an immortal truth.

In 'Masochistic Instrument,' Did Dali Trumpet His Own Sexual Anxieties? Seems Likely . . .

2011-09-06T17:32:00.001-07:00

The beauty of art involves an inherent dichotomy: the freedom of viewers to form their own interpretations of what they’re seeing; and the expressed intent of the artist himself. In the case of Salvador Dali’s 1933-1934 Masochistic Instrument (copyright Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali, Spain), it’s not especially difficult to infer, at least in part, what the then 30-year-old artist was trying to express.

All his life, Dali suggested he was impotent, that his greatest pleasure of the sexual kind was gained from voyeurism and masturbation. Here the “instrument” – a violin metaphor for erectile dysfunction, or at least performance anxiety – is limp and useless, and almost takes on the appearance of a face in distress. The naked woman, who we see as if we’re peeping into the neighbor’s bedroom window, holds the soft object guardedly, as if not wanting to touch much of it, if she can help it.

Contrast the left section of the canvas with phallic images of virility at right: the tall, proud and erect cypress tree, and the rigid, pink-tipped appendage emerging from it. Dali’s preoccupation with his own sexual identity, his own desires and fears within the sexual realm, seem clearly symbolized in this surrealist picture signed in deflowering red.

Ironically, Salvador Dali’s very last paintings, in the 1980s, when he was irreversibly ill and alone, included many images of musical instruments – indeed including violins and cellos – in distorted and highly agitated states. Much of the rhythm of Dali’s life was captured through his strange associations with musical instruments, including violins, cellos, pianos, guitars, even a tuba in one of his paintings for Billy’s Rose’s Seven Lively Arts.

Why the present oil is titled Masochistic Instrument isn’t clear. Perhaps it was Dali’s own sense of personal masochism, allowing the reality of his self-expressed impotence to be symbolically and submissively trumpeted to the world through his art. Finally, the decrepit condition of the structure in which the woman stands might be an allusion to the brothels of Paris Dali was said to have visited as a young man, with the resultant shame that might have resulted from performance concerns. As I said, the beauty of art is that we’re free to interpret things as we wish, while respecting the intent of the artist, too. Interpreting the art of Dali is the most fun of all!

'Parade of Cavaliers' Less Known but No Less Impressive Dali Double-Image Painting

2011-09-02T05:18:00.000-07:00

Dali’s 1942 Parade of Cavaliers (copyright Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali) was recently acquired at auction by one of the silver screen’s most prominent Hollywood actors: Leonardo DiCaprio. I recall the price tag being in the neighborhood of a million and a half dollars, give or take a few pesetas.

While the work is believed to have been part of a series of pictures Dali created as set designs for Romeo & Juliet, it’s a stunning painting in its own right – one that, while not real widely known in most Dali circles, offers up an intriguing double-image.

On the right half of the composition we find a sort of tunnel of rearing horses, guiding the way for a woman and child walking toward a distant building. There’s an overall dark, rather foreboding tone to it all, not the least of which is the foreground skull – a symbol of man’s inexorable mortality: a reality that consumed Dali’s thoughts all his life. The general noir vibe of the work is congruent with the dark, war-time era in which the artist completed this painting.

The double-imagery is found in the left section, where most of us probably first see a horse and rider, a la Saint George and the Dragon – in this case the cavalier aiming his lance at a sphere. However, at the same time, Dali’s genius at hidden imagery comes through. It’s a large black-helmeted face, in profile, looking to the left as we view the image. If you don’t yet see it, let me help:

The head of the rider is the face’s left eye. The space between his lance and his chest area is the dark, pointed nose. The black space of the background arch is the full head of the figure, looking like a warrior’s helmet. There’s even a left arm running down from what would be the left shoulder of the figure, and then below the horse’s hind legs – albeit the arm seems to have more feminine traits. Such androgyny or ambiguity certainly isn’t inconsistent with Dali’s style!

(The reproduction used here appears to have a watermark on it, but it only minimally affects the image. Copyright Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali; used here under the Fair Use Doctrine that governs journalistic use of images in the U.S.A.)

Dali's Dazzling Technique Shines in 'Dionysus Spitting the Complete Image of Cadaques...'

2011-08-30T20:07:00.000-07:00

As I contemplate Dali’s bizarrely-titled Dionysus Spitting the Complete Image of Cadaques on the Tip of the Tongue of a Three-Storied Guardian Woman (1958-60; collection Dali Museum, Florida; copyright Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali, Figueres, Spain), I’m reminded of just how fortunate I was to have been publicity director of the original Salvador Dali Museum of Beachwood, Ohio.

I got to see this remarkable picture every day, along with so many other mind-bending gems from the Reynolds and Eleanor Morse Collection. I loved Dionysus Spitting the Complete Image of Cadaques the instant I set eyes on it – and my reason actually has more to do with technique than imagery, though I love both.

However, the imagery is of course astounding: a 3-story-tall, undulating form of a woman, inspired by the capricious curves of the architecture of Gaudi, whom Dali deeply admired. The lady is, alas, quite naked – with distinctly erect nipples and no shame in her exposed genitalia. Dionysus – the Greek god of wine and ritual madness – has his own private parts exposed, as the cherries serve as a testicular reference. In fact, the fruit was the point of departure in this work, plucked as it were from a child’s reading book.

The background field workers owe to Dali’s interest in the French painter, Millet, and at right a field of zig-zag elements is the artist’s nod to his consuming interest in nuclear physics and the atomic composition of matter.

My real love of this little oil on panel, only about 12 by 9 inches, owes to the superb detail in the work. The technique represents realism, pointillism, abstraction and, of course, surrealism, all coming together in an enamel-like painting that again expresses the incomparable draughtsmanship of Dali. This one has to be seen in person to be truly appreciated. There’s simply nothing like it.

Yet ultimately, and despite a technique that has been lauded incontestably, even by his most ardent detractors, Salvador Dali’s greatest contribution in a work like this is his unparalleled imagination. Who else could dream up the unlikely union of workers in a field and a spitting Greek god of wine – with a mini library thrown in for good measure – but the kingpin of Surrealism, Salvador Dali!

'The Font' Mirrors Tornado of Thoughts Whipping Through 26-year-old Dali's Head'

2011-08-29T06:53:00.000-07:00

The Font is an open book on Dali’s thoughts and sensibilities at age 26; you could say he had a bit of sex on the brain!

A couple of posts ago I wrote about Dali’s The Dream. Today let’s set our gaze upon The Font, an equally short title where the central figure of the dreaming woman with her mouth swarmed by ants appears, similarly to how she looks in The Dream.

The date of this painting (1930; copyright Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali, Figueres, Spain), makes it clear that this picture represents a 26-year-old Dali before Gala entered his life: A young Catalan with a tornado of thoughts, obsessions, fears and sexual fantasies whipping around in his excitable, imaginative mind.

The flowing water from the font – itself in the form of a Medusa figure – might easily be a symbol for the spilling of bodily fluids, and such an allusion isn’t hard to fit into the overall sexual context of the painting. A painting that melds sexual and religious influences – the chalice and host in the center, for example, below which two figures appear to be involved in oral sex. Religious guilt and sexual tension inexorably meet head-on!

Alas, a lion approaches – long held to be a symbol for paternal authority and judgment. From the back of the kneeling figure is an outgrowth of a vulture-like bird and moths representing death or foreboding. A clinging grasshopper is not only a widely known source of fear for the young Dali (he was literally petrified of the jumping, clinging insects), but is theorized to be a phallic symbol.

Phallic seems an apt description, too, of the monolithic structure to the right, with openings in which ants and keys appear. Freud’s psychoanalytic work found that dreams offering up keys suggest the unconscious and the unlocking of the unconscious – as well as sexual penetration. The six spaces in this structure can surely be interpreted as vaginal-like. Counterbalancing phallic references, which also include the stone columns, is the woman’s mouth of ants, not unlike the appearance of female sexual anatomy. And, atop the monolithic form at right, another menacing grasshopper.

Guilt, fear, anxiety, sexual interest, fatherly retribution, eroticism – and more – all find an outlet in The Font, which was typical of the Salvador Dali of this period, charged as he was with sexual curiosity, fears, doubts, discoveries and guilt. Despite such a seemingly disparate array of images, Dali pulls it off with artistic integrity, managing a well-painted composition that set the tone for what critics persist in believing was Dali’s most important surrealist period: the decade of the 1930s.

This blogger doesn’t argue that point, but believes just as strongly that his post-surrealist period – especially his Nuclear-Mystical period – brought us some of the most exciting creations from the hands and mind of Salvador Dali!

Dali Seems Self-Deprecating in 'Soft Self-Portrait with Fried Bacon'

2011-08-26T05:43:00.000-07:00

It’s unclear why Salvador Dali sometimes included the title of his work directly on the canvas, such as he did here in Soft Self-Portrait with Fried Bacon (1941; Collection Teatru-Museum Dali; copyright Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali, Figueres, Spain).

What is clear, though, is that the normally proud and self-assured artist (outwardly, anyway) has taken a bit of an off-ramp here – portraying himself in a melting mask of sorts, recalling his iconic melting watches. Numerous crutches – a favorite element in Dali’s arsenal of surrealist props – help support his flaccid face.

The grilled bacon strip might represent Dali’s love of gastronomy, and its shriveled form echoes the “cooked,” melted morphology of his visage – but also adds a secondary ingredient of humor to this unusual and amusing feast for our eyes!

Perhaps the only feature that retains a sense of typical Dalinian pride is that divine handlebar mustache!

Dali was quoted about this work: “Instead of painting the soul, the inside, I wanted to paint solely the outside, the envelope, the glove of myself.”

In a book published by the Teatru-Museu Dali, authors Pitxot, Aguer, and Puig note, “Dali always remembered the piece of flayed skin with which Michelangelo represented himself in the Sistine chapel in the Vatican and argued the most consistent thing of our representation is not the spirit or the vitality, but the skin.”

Dali Captures a Leading Inspiration Source -- Dreams -- in his Important Painting, 'The Dream'

2011-08-23T18:11:00.000-07:00

The Dream of 1931 couldn’t be more perfectly titled. After all, it was the dream that was to Surrealist painting what the Moulin rouge was to Toulouse Lautrec; what ballerinas were to Degas; what landscapes were to Turner.

The dream was the gateway to so many of the mysteries and bizarre, disjointed, compellingly haunting images that arose in the surrealists’ paintings in general and Salvador Dali’s masterful works in particular.

Still, I must say, as author of this blog and a long-time Dali historian, that The Dream had never been a favorite of mine. It’s hard to explain such things, except that you know as well as I that some Dali’s speak to you, while others leave you pleased but not blown away.

But all that changed – and this is a phenomenon I’ve written about before – when I saw The Dream in person several years ago at the Cleveland Museum of Art in Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A. That museum, which has long owned Dali’s St. George and the Dragon etching but had never had a Dali painting in all its history, made quite a splash in the news media when it acquired this important surrealist classic (copyright Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali, Figueres, Spain). And I must say, I was blown away!

What you really don’t detect in a flat book reproduction is the richness and depth of such a work, in this case most notably in the eyelids of the female dreamer. They are painted in a rich, dramatic impasto that really pops when you see the work in the flesh. I was immediately drawn to this 3-D feature of the canvas. And, of course, the brilliant detail – the precise, photographic technique of what she’s dreaming about in the left background – just adds to the appeal of such a painting.

Images of sexuality and shame seem to be represented by the shadowy background figures, while the dreamer’s mouth has vanished, supplanted by the creepy notion of a swarm of ants where her lips should be – reminiscent of a scene from Dali’s important surrealist film, Un Chien Andalou, and of the painting, The Great Masturbator. Rendered unable to speak, doesn’t it remind you of dreams you’ve had where you not only wish to speak, but need to speak, but you can’t? It’s a nightmarish feeling.

Her Medusa-inspired hair and overall appearance really do seem to capture a woman deep in sleep, but Dali goes well beyond that to give us visual entry into the thoughts that preoccupy her private, personal dream world. The Dream is, to be sure, one of the most important paintings in Salvador Dali’s all-important surrealist period of the 1930s.

'Giant Flying Mocha Cup with an Inexplicable Five Meter Appendage' Reveals Dali's Enigmatic, Humorous Nature

2011-08-22T05:43:00.000-07:00

When I consider a work like Giant Flying Mocha Cup with an Inexplicable Five Meter Appendage (1946; copyright Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali, Figueres, Spain), I’m quickly reminded of a word that was one of Dali’s favorites – and very much described Dali him as well: enigma.

What in the name of God does such an odd-looking work “mean”?

Well, like many Dali pictures, this one synthesizes a few influences, while leaving much of the work’s interpretation entirely up to us. After all, even Dali described it as “inexplicable” in his own title!

However, we must remember, perhaps first and foremost, that (a) Salvador Dali was a surrealist, and (b) the surrealists were heavily influenced by Sigmund Freud. And, in particular, by Freud’s important book, Interpretation of Dreams.

We know, in Freud’s lexicon of dream imagery and symbolism, that receptacles (such as the coffee cup here) were symbolic of female genitalia, and that long rods or appendages (such as the outrageously long and bizarre form shown here) were phallic. Could the 42-year-old Dali have had a little sex on his mind at the time he painted this work? The nearby pomegranate, which appeared in several other Dali works around this period, is a classic symbol of resurrection and chastity.

Now, below the floating cup is a stone cube, with inlaid marble and, in the center of the circle, the head of Medussa. But consider that, if you extended the circular pattern up onto the tall shaft coming off the cup handle, you’d be approximating the curve of a logarithmic spiral – a mathematic principle with which Dali was obsessed, and which he employed in creating the beautiful spatial harmony in his works – present picture included.

A figure in the right distance appears to be Arab, reminding us of Dali’s roots, while the background mountain is reminiscent of the same eerie landscape seen in a painting with which Dali was long obsessed: The Isle of the Dead by Arnold Bocklin.

For all the individual elements of Giant Flying Mocha Cup that can be examined and deciphered, the larger arc of the painting connects with an absolute truism that can be said of much of Dali’s diverse body of surrealist work: it was quintessentially enigmatic! But let’s not forget, too, that Dali simply enjoyed doing unusual things, often with a dash of humor sprinkled in for good measure. There’s no question that the image of this spectacularly strange coffee cup was calculated to make us smile, if not utter an audible laugh.

Dali was nothing if not fun!

Double-Imagery Hitches a Ride on Dali's 'Phantom Cart'

2011-08-18T19:32:00.000-07:00

Another double-Dali!

Salvador Dali did two versions of The Phantom Cart of 1933 (copyright Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali, Figueres, Spain), at a time when he was deeply preoccupied with his great penchant for and ability at double-imagery.

This work, however, is a more subtle example of Dali’s fascination with how things can simultaneously become other things. And unlike so many of Dali’s paintings that capture the great light, color and energy of the Mediterranean coastal region, Phantom Cart gives us a monochromatic glimpse of vast dessert-like area.

The cart appearing to carry two people is, at the same time, a kind of gateway to the distant town, while those riding simultaneously become elements of the town’s architecture.

This oil on panel is far from one of Dali’s best or most memorable works, but it demonstrates – as so many of his pictures do – two of his most important influences: the Paranoiac-Critical method, which enabled him to translate his unique ability to see double images onto canvas in a “critical” way, so that we too can see them; and his undying admiration for the landscape of his native Catalonia.

And, of course, all of it is executed in that painstaking, precise manner that has never failed to impress even those who might not consider themselves Dali fans. The Surrealist master’s technique was second to none, and his uncanny ability to paint so photographically allowed Dali to make the unreal seem miraculously real!