By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian I’m continually dazzled by Dalí’s undying diversity. OK, shameless alliteration aside, it really is rather extraordinary to consider how truly diverse Salvador Dalí’s catalog was. While Dalí was indefatigably a Surrealist, his work embraced so many different styles that it’s little wonder he was so inscrutable to categorize. Take,…
By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian In the Dalí world, we’re still waiting for “the big one.” No, not a California earthquake (God willing, that will never happen), but a blockbuster auction sale of a Dalí painting. A sale that eclipses even heavy-hitters like Picasso and Warhol and Van Gogh. The kind that…
By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian We know quite a bit about what Dalí painted, but not so much about how he painted. So I was pleased to recently come across information provided by the Tate Museum in London about its 1936 painting, Forgotten Horizon, and how master Dalí painted it. The work…
By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian Sometimes it seems as if the world couldn’t quite turn on its axis without the influence of Salvador Dalí shining its bright light….somewhere. Recently, that light made for a most illuminating talk at the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. Its collection – donated by the…
By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian Salvador Dalí claimed he was not much of a music appreciator. He insisted that music was immensely inferior to art – painting, more precisely – and that the eye clearly triumphed over the ear. And yet Dalí was a master of contradiction. He would hum and whistle…
By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian If there’s any doubt that Salvador Dalí did it all, try to find any artistic road on which he didn’t travel. Impossible. One outlet through which Dalí made his mark was photography. Not behind the camera (usually), but in front of it. And in creative collaboration most famously…
By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian When it comes to Salvador Dalí and film, three things leap to mind: the films Dalí made; the scenes he created for films; and the films he appeared in. We think pretty immediately of creative efforts such as Un Chien Andalou and L’Age D’ Or, which he made…
By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian I’ve had countless discussions with fellow “Dalínists” about works brought to our attention that are alleged to be by Dalí, but feature characteristics that raise doubts. Sometimes we’re surprised to learn that many are indeed genuine, even when certain peculiarities raise some red flags. A widely reproduced…
By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian I return now and again to my favorite Salvador Dalí painting, Santiago El Grande, and today I do so after seeing a recent news story about the painting’s permanent home – the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in Fredericton, New Brunswick. The story focused – as most stories…
By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian “Enigma” might as well have been Salvador Dalí’s middle name. So much of his mind-bending surrealism was wrapped in a cloak of enigma, with the unraveling left up to us. That’s always been the ultimate fun of it all: trying to understand what Dalí might have been telling…