By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian I remember, many years back – sometime in the 1960s, I think it was – seeing a short Associated Press wire service story in my hometown newspaper. It announced a seemingly outrageous new declaration from Salvador Dalí that the controversial Spanish artist was “planning to paint the sky.” The brief story…
By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian To a hammer, everything looks like a nail. To Salvador Dalí, everything was a potential canvas. He was known to even paint pictures on paper coffee cup covers! Some of Dalí’s best work was when he adopted the role of adaptor or modifier, taking existing images and…
By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian By now, surely everyone’s heard of the dubious phenomenon known as “fake news.” But it doesn’t just affect politics; it can also rear its head in the world of art. In the case of Salvador Dalí, it has – in several ways. One I’ve just come across, others…
By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian In some ways, painting is like writing. They’re both creative pursuits, and in either case you never quite know where, when and how the muse will strike. Today’s blog post evolved from my eating a tangerine and contemplating what I’d write about. The juicy, delicious fruit reminded…
By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian Today’s blog post is a little different. Its focus is on Dalí’s words more than his pictures. Indeed, many have contended that Salvador Dalí was an even better writer than painter. That could be debated until his soft watches turn hard, but such a deliberation would be pointless….
By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian There’s an endless number of doors behind which fascinating stories emerge when we enter the house of Salvador Dalí. I’m talking metaphorically, though Dalí’s actual house in Port Lligat, Spain, is indeed a topic about which there are interminable tales to tell, too. Let’s open a few…
By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian Salvador Dalí painted some of the most extraordinary portraits in history. They invariably paired two distinct forces: Dalí’s idiosyncratic surrealist imagination, and his virtuoso painting technique. His sitters may sometimes have landed themselves in enigmatic landscapes, but their likenesses were captured with precision and clarity. A case in point…
By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian Salvador Dalí, architect. Come again? Architecture is clearly not a profession we associate with the master of the melting watch, the curator of crutches, the guru of giraffes on fire. But if you think about it, Dalí’s thoughts and talents were never really very far from the…
By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian Your Salvador Dalí historian is not averse to admitting when he’s ignorant about some things pertaining to the kingpin of Surrealism. Today’s blog demonstrates that. As many times as I’ve seen this image, below, I confess to having not focused sufficiently enough on its title and, ultimately,…
By Paul Chimera Salvador Dalí Historian What a joy to discover new things in the paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture, and mix-media works of Salvador Dalí. Same goes for his many books, when I sometimes re-read one – or a section of one – and pick up on things I somehow missed first time around….