Salvador Dalí
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
|
Related e |
|
Featured: |
Salvador Dalí (May 11 1904 – January 23 1989) was a Surrealist Spanish artist and one of the most financially successful painters of the 20th century. His best known painting is The Persistence of Memory, hist best known objects the Lobster Telephone and the Mae West Lips Sofa, his best known film, An Andalusian Dog.
Contents |
Dali and surrealism
During the Spanish Civil War Dalí remained apolitical, striving to comprehend the war in its minutiae. His surrealist fellows, being predominantly Marxist, eventually maintained his expulsion from this group, to which his fascination with Hitler contributed. At this, Dalí retorted, "Le surréalisme, c'est moi." André Breton coined the anagram "avida dollars" (for Salvador Dalí), which more or less translates to "eager for dollars," by which he referred to Dalí after the period of his expulsion; the surrealists henceforth spoke of Dalí in the past tense, as if he were dead. The surrealist movement and various members thereof (such as Ted Joans) would continue to issue extremely harsh polemics against Dalí until the time of his death and beyond.
Career
He was a skilled draftsman, best known for the striking, bizarre, and beautiful images in his surrealist work. His painterly skills are often attributed to the influence of Renaissance masters. His best known work, The Persistence of Memory, was completed in 1931. Salvador Dalí's artistic repertoire also included film, sculpture, and photography. He collaborated with Walt Disney on the Academy Award-nominated short cartoon Destino, which was released posthumously in 2003.
Arab lineage
Born in Catalonia, Spain, Dalí insisted on his "Arab lineage," claiming that his ancestors descended from the Moors who invaded Spain in 711, and attributed to these origins, "my love of everything that is gilded and excessive, my passion for luxury and my love of oriental clothes." Gibson found out that "Dalí" (and its many variants) is an extremely common surname in Arab countries like Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria or Egypt. On the other hand, also according to Gibson, Dalí's mother family, the Domènech of Barcelona, had Jewish roots.
Eccentricity
Widely considered to be greatly imaginative, Dalí had an affinity for doing unusual things to draw attention to himself. This sometimes irked those who loved his art as much as it annoyed his critics, since his eccentric manner sometimes drew more public attention than his artwork. The purposefully sought notoriety led to broad public recognition and many purchases of his works by people from all walks of life.
