9. 100th anniversary of Salvador Dali's birth
100th anniversary of Salvador Dali's birth
showman, brilliant artist and the proud owner of one of the world's pointiest mustaches, Surrealist Salvador Dali was a cultural icon known as much for his eccentric lifestyle as for his art.
A painter, sculptor and writer who referred to himself as "the Divine Dali" – and said his work was "a thousand times better than all of Picasso's work put together" – Dali (1904 -1989) was not for his modesty. His flashy dress style and disconcerting habit of staring bug-eyed into camera lenses added to his deserved reputation as a lover of the limelight, while too-frank discussions of his obsessions with sexuality, masturbation and scatology marked him as mad in the minds of many.
Yet experts say that Dali was anything but mad and that his showman's personality has eclipsed what's truly important his art. They hope to set the record straight with the "Year of Dali 2004," yearlong exhibits and activities celebrating the 100th anniversary of the artist's birth on May 11, 1904. Most events are being held in his homeland of Catalonia, Spain, but exhibits will also be shown in Philadelphia, at the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, and throughout Europe.
University of Barcelona art history professor Lourdes Cirlot tells how Dali used his eccentricities simply to gain notoriety. "He tried to give an image of extravagance because it sells. He was conscious of it; he wanted to . Dali was incredibly interested in fame, but he was basically normal." As Dali himself famously quipped, "the only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad."
Born into a well-to-do family in 1904, from a young age he creative ways to get attention. With time, he seems to it. By age 18 Dali was studying art in Madrid, where he would become friends with students like poet Federico Garcia Lorca and filmmaker Luis Buńuel, two men who would influence and be strongly influenced by Dali. Shortly after, he read Sigmund Freud's writings on the erotic significance of the subconscious. His interpretations of Freud's work encouraged Dali to exploit his fear and fascination of the erotic, a theme that would appear times in his artwork.
In 1929 he met Gala, a married Russian woman became Dali's lover and muse. They lived for a time in Paris, where Dali was immersed in the surrealism movement. He became one of the leading figures of the movement, and Dali's technique of accessing images from his subconscious his brand of surrealism, a dream world where realism and fantasy are side by side. Dali deformed objects and people in his paintings. One of his best-known works, "The Persistence of Memory" (1931) features melted clocks draped over a table, a tree limb and a disfigured head. Dali was the most innovative surrealist and the best painter of the group. Now he is the symbol of surrealism. He is the painter of dreams .