" he said. Now that’s was unusual, normally people think I'm some kind of painter & decorator. "Yes just like an Artist" I said. "So what do you paint? Stuff like Dali? I like his pictures". Pictures not Paintings, I thought well I suppose he has only seen prints and posters on the wall of his flat and only the common images we all are forced to consider as the extent of his work. "No I'm not a surrealist, I'm a modernist abstract painter" I replied and noting his blank look, added "what do you know about Dali?" He smiled, pushed aside his coffee and sat back, saying "Not as much as you I bet" . I grinned back, his smile was infectious "probably not", I said. Less than five minutes later he had gone and I was left to consider what did I know about Salvador Dali?(Salvador Dali)
What is surrealism? The expressions of thought's without the requisite for any control, reason, physical or moral focus or presumptions. Well Dali certainly fits that picture In my view. He was an eccentric Spanish painter known for doing unusual and excessive things to draw attention to himself. He loved anything that was gilded, luxurious or going to extremes. His whole life was as surrealist, as is his work. He has been quoted as saying, "There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad." Well that’s open to debate! Perhaps we must define madness more fully. To my mind madness, momentary or lasting is simply operating outside of the normal rules of society and there's nothing wrong with that on occasions.
Whilst in Barcelona I visited a Dali exhibition and wow what an eye popper that is. The collection is full of photo's, drawings, artifacts' and memorabilia, presenting Dali as a showman. What surprised me the most was the constant reference's to sex. The drawing's in particular are
full of sexual images and suggestions which seem almost pornographic and far removed from the classic examples of his work that we are most familiar with. As for the man himself? He explored many media throughout his life. painting, sculpture, writing, film and photography. In his youth, Dali had embraced both anarchism and communism. Later he supported Franco. the fascist leader of Spain. He also had a fixation with Hitler, however he was not an anti-Semite. By the time of his 1970 book Dali by Dali, he was declaring himself an anarchist and monarchist. So who or what was Salvador Dali? (Barcelona, the square neer the Dali exibition)In my own opinion, Dali was an obsessional human being, bound, uncontrollable by his own persistence of ideas and emotions. He had a passion for art even from an early age and devoured every artistic style he came into contact with. He was a devoted husband and a showman on the verge of madness. He exploited his own madness as a showman and exaggerated his showmanship as madness. He loved living in Spain. The only time he lived in France or America was to study art or avoid war. The fact that he chose to live in Spain while it was ruled by Franco. (He was one of the few intellectuals to do so.) shows how passionate he was about his nation. I doubt very much that he truly cared about politics. But he realized it was necessary to have political views and would use them to exploit or exaggerate his own self image if necessary.
He spent his remaining years back in his beloved Catalonia. After his wife 'Gala's' death in 1982, he seams to have lost the will to live and finally died in 1989 at the age of 84 in Figueres the same town he had been born in in 1904. WOW what a life he lived. He lived it all, every minute, with out compromise and although I might not admire his work I certainly admire his life.
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