By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian-Writer I’m certain that, were Salvador Dalí alive and working today, he would have figured out a way to align his unique brand of showmanship with that of Lady Gaga. It would have been a rather perfect match, when you think about it. Despite Gaga’s tamer affectations in recent…
By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian-Writer Was Salvador Dalí crazy? Literally mad? Such a pointed and provocative question was asked more than a few times in Dalí’s lifetime. Some continue to ask it today. While the answer might be a bit complicated, it’s at the same time really quite simple: No! Ahh,…
By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian-Writer February always vibrates with the buzz of what’s coming up at the big auction houses later in the month. This time there’s excitement in the air – certainly for me, and I suspect for quite a few others – over an Untitled 1932 Salvador Dalí oil painting of…
By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian-Writer The Stendhal Syndrome is a curious and interesting phenomenon, whereby people are brought to a state of dizziness and sometimes even loss of consciousness in the presence of great art. Scientists don’t quite know why this happens, but when it comes to the art of Salvador Dalí,…
By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian-Writer The issue of whether size matters is on the radar again, thanks to an interesting photo I’ve recently come across. It shows a variation of Dalí’s most famous painting, The Persistence of Memory, but much, much larger (artist unknown). Ironically, many people who’ve seen reproductions of…
By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian-Writer “So, how did you get hooked on Dalí?” people ask me all the time. “Soft Construction with Boiled Beans,” I reply. That great 1936 painting was the door that opened the world of Salvador Dalí to me. At the time, around 1968, I knew it…
By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian-Writer Obsessed! There’s probably no better way to put it when it came to Salvador Dalí’s relentless focus on The Angelus – a painting by Jean-Francois Millet. Dalí saw the widely known, iconic painting of a peasant couple in prayer as an image of repressed sexual desire. …
By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian-Writer One of the most impressive and memorable aspects of Salvador Dalí’s art was his absolute mastery of double-imagery. I’m not sure any artist in history did it as well as Dalí did. This, of course, is when a painted object or scene becomes, at the same…
By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian-Writer The dictionary defines it as “a person with many talents or areas of knowledge.” Renaissance man. Nothing described Salvador Dalí if not those two words. What an understatement! Dalí pretty much did it all. It’s part of what defined him as a genius. The irony is that…
By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian-Writer It turns out there’s room for both at the top of Salvador Dalí’s large Battle of Tetuan painting: Gala standing above the battle scene, and – in a background detail – the coronation of the Virgin, for whom a young United Nations guide appears to have been the…