Dick Cavett Shares his Thoughts about Show Guest Salvador Dali

By Paul Chimera

Salvador Dali Historian/Writer

For years – decades, actually – I waited with deepening frustration for the opportunity to one day see the video clip of Salvador Dali – and his pet anteater – when the famous artist was a guest on the old Dick Cavett Show.

When the clip finally surfaced on the internet, only about year ago or so, I was thrilled – and the clip didn’t disappoint. Predictably, Mr. Cavett seemed perplexed during his interview with Dali, resorting to some glib remarks in the absence of any true understanding of Dali’s concepts, ideas, and admittedly hard to understand English. Take a look:

Having seen the long-awaited video clip, I’d then wondered if I would ever get to hear what Cavett had to say about that 1970s appearance of the world’s greatest exponent of Surrealism on his show. And then, just this past week, an MSNBC clip surfaced on the Web. It was a televised interview with an elderly but still quick-witted Dick Cavett, on a segment called The Beat, hosted by Ari Melber.

Melber introduced several memorable guest appearances from Cavett’s former show. Including “Salvador Dali marching an anteater around your set, in one of the most delightful late-night scenes, I’m going to say ever,” Melber said, “take a look…” (cut & paste the URL below to view the clip. A segment runs before the Dali discussion begins):

https://www.msnbc.com/the-beat-with-ari/watch/tv-icon-dick-cavett-tells-trump-to-go-back-up-the-escalator-1453257795550

After throwing the camera to a clip showing Dali tossing his ant eater, trying to explain how the animal’s tongue was related to the structure of DNA; and delighting in pronouncing the word “butterfly” as “booterflyeeeeee!”

The Beat host asked Cavett, “What can we learn from Salvador Dali? Said Cavett: “That you can go on – even if you’re insane!” Melber laughed, then went on to other memorable guest appearances.

Once again, the ingenious Dali used the media to continue to ensure that his name was a household word. As Dali’s first secretary, Capt. Peter Moore, once divulged, what drove Dali more than anything else was one thing: fame.

[All images gratefully used under Fair Use provisions for journalistic purposes]

Gala Held the Reins on Dali. And it’s Spelled Dali, Not ‘Dahli’!

By Paul Chimera

Salvador Dali Historian/Writer

I recently came across a painting, posted on Facebook, by an artist named Nikola Golubovski. It depicts an image of Salvador Dali as a large snail, being ridden like a bull by Gala.

It reminded me of how powerfully controlling Gala was in ensuring that the Dali engine was kept fully fueled and actively running – making lots of art and lots of money!

Dali needed Gala most of his life. In the early years of their relationship, some – including Dali himself – credited her with keeping the artist on the safer side of that hair-thin line between madness and genius. And, of course, Gala was an undeniable inspiration and motivator in Dali’s career. He literally worshipped the woman. Her presence in his life fueled his creative engine, pushing him on to a remarkably prodigious artistic career.

Finally, Gala served as the subject for countless paintings, drawings, watercolors and prints by the leading figure in Surrealism. Certainly some of Dali’s greatest achievements at the easel saw Gala assuming a leading or major role. Just a few examples include Portrait of Gala with Rhinocerotic Symptoms; The Angelus of Gala; Portrait of Gala with Lamb Chops Balanced on Her Shoulder; Galarina; Corpus Hypercubus; The Ecumenical Council, and The Madonna of Port Lligat, among countless others.

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 A ‘WTF’ Moment . . .

It came to my attention earlier this week that a most outrageous and inexcusable spelling travesty concerning Salvador Dali’s name appeared in a front-page headline in a publication called Antique Week. In the monthly paper’s Nov. 13, 2017 issue, the following headline ran:

The Surrealist World of Artist Salvadore Dahli

The piece occupied the entire front page and then jumped to a full inside page.

It pains me a bit when I see Dali’s first name spelled with an “e” at the end. It hurts a little more when I see “Salvatore” with both the “e” at the end and a “t” where a “d” should be. But it is a complete tsunami to see “Dahli” with an “h” in there! I don’t understand how such an egregious error could have survived whatever editing/proofreading system that publication employs.

Your humble blogger will be contacting Antique Week shortly to inquire as to how this could have happened. Does it alter the course of history or the present state of our often crazy world? Of course not. But is it a WTF moment? It sure is.

UPDATE!!!  ….  I just today received this email response from the editor of Antique Week:

Thanks for emailing. It was definitely an embarrassing day when that got by our proofreading department. Unfortunately, mistakes happen and that’s why there was an error in the headline.

Underexplored, Dali’s Watercolors are Drop-Dead Stunning!

By Paul Chimera

Salvador Dali Historian/Writer

Possibly the most underexplored puzzle piece in the Dali enigma – and in the overall constellation of his creative genius – is that of the artist’s watercolors. But by no means should we downplay them, because – are you kidding me! – they represent some of Dali’s most spectacular work.

If you have any doubt about this, just feast your eyes on the three gorgeous watercolor paintings (they also involve various touches of gouache and pen & ink) I’m featuring in today’s blog post for The Salvador Dali Society, Inc.©

Dali was commissioned to create them – during his several visits to Italy – by Albert and Mary Laser. They were wealthy American collectors, and the Albert Lasker Award is given annually to a leading medical researcher. (One of the recipients was Dr. Edmund Klein, who developed a cure for a form of skin cancer and was Dali’s personal dermatologist for 10 years.)

No matter what medium Salvador Dali worked in, his genius leaped to the fore like nobody’s business. Even if we had zero information about these works, we would be dazzled by their beauty and the inimitable line, form, color, and interpretation of concept that are unmistakably Dalinian.

All three works were painted in 1949, the year Dali had an audience with Pope Pious XII (and, incidentally, the year this blogger was born).

Lake Garda in northern Italy is that country’s largest and known as a quite popular tourist destination, primarily due to its crystal clear water. One author suggests that the tower and mountain are intended to be phallic and breast-like, respectively. Whether Dali indeed had those intentions in mind is speculative at best, though of course it’s certainly plausible, given the sexual overtones of so much of Dali’s work.

The blotting of the colorful flowers creates a truly stunning effect, while the woman sporting a parasol on her head lends a whimsical and charming surreal feel to the tableau.

In Venice, created for the Laskers, Dali focused on the landmark Church of Santa Maria della Salute. His freer handling of the sun-suffused sky is contrasted with the more distinct and controlled treatment of the lute-playing angel at lower right. All while obligatory gondoliers make an appearance in Dali’s representation of this most unique of Italian cities.

In Roma, Salvador Dali chose to represent the eternal city by depicting the Castel Sant Angelo. According to a source, this was “a fortress and refuge for the Pope in dangerous times that contains the mausoleum of the great Roman emperor Hadrian. The little jester seen at lower right is generally a detail symbolizing the figure of Salvador himself, especially given that he’s wearing a red berretina.

[Images used under Fair Use provisions for journalistic purposes]

A Spoonful of Dali, Served Up in Delicious Ways

By Paul Chimera

Salvador Dali Historian-Writer

Let’s look at a spoonful of Dali – literally. Well, sort of. Spoons, after all, showed up with some frequency – and with a dollop of bewilderment – in Dali’s Surrealism, mainly of the 1930s.

There are theories, observations, and explanations pertaining to spoons. Who knows for sure which ones connect with the intentions and imaginings of Salvador Dali?

One internet source asserts that spoons are symbols of Gnosticism – “a philosophy antithetical to the basic Christian doctrines of salvation, faith and good works.”

Another takes a less religious-oriented view of the utensil, simply noting, “Kitchen utensils are associated with changes you are making. You use them to take what you need in order to find nourishment and self-worth. Like food, the symbolism is exploring fulfillment…A spoon suggests what you need to hold onto in order to feel satisfied, while the fork is more symbolic of taking a stab at something, or making a change in direction that will help you provide for yourself. The spoon can also personify your desire to be cared for and nurtured.”

Any clearer for you now as to what all these Dalinian spoons mean? Me neither. But this is a discussion about Salvador Dali, where things are never quite crystal clear — and Dali wanted to keep it that way!

Perhaps the best known Dali painting in which a spoon prominently inserts itself is Portrait of Picasso of 1947, which appears to be part of the subject’s gray matter and offers up a miniature mandolin.

The work I consider second in prominence, insofar as the subject matter of spoons is concerned, is Agnostic Symbol of 1932. In this case, an outlandishly elongated spoon emerges from a distant wall, this one containing a tiny stop watch (the work shall always take a back seat to another Dali painting that joins it in the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s collection: Soft Construction with Boiled Beans; Premonition of Civil War).

I know of 14 other Dali works – mostly paintings, but also a drawing, sculpture, and a surrealist object – that feature a spoon: Surrealist Object, Gauge of Instantaneous Memory (1932); The Meeting of the Illusion and the Arrested Moment – Fried Eggs Presented in a Spoon (1932); Surrealist Architecture (1932), Portrait of the Vicomtesse Marie-Laure de Noailles (1932), Paranoiac Metamorphosis of Gala’s Face (1932), The Little Theatre (1934), Untitled (1933-1934), Morphological Echo (1936), Sun Table (1936), Autumn Cannibalism (1936), Velasquez Dying Behind the Window on the Left Side Out of Which a Spoon Projects (1982), Chairs with the Wings of a Vulture (1960), and Bust of Dante (1964).

One thing all this reminds us of, I think, is how gastronomy in general was a popular theme in a great many of Dali works, be they paintings, drawings, watercolors, prints, even sculpture. From bread to wine to grapes to cherries to pomegranates and a whole lot more, these items found themselves in a wide range of Dali’s inimitable creative visions.

In a future post, I’m going to riff about Dali and food. After all, I love Dali and I love food…why not put them together!

[Images used under Fair Use provisions for journalistic purposes only]

Alice Cooper calls Dali ‘Greatest Technical Artist of All Time’

By Paul Chimera

Salvador Dali Historian-Writer

I’m certain that, were Salvador Dali 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 months, the woman still channels a lot of weirdness as her boundless talent takes the world by storm.

How ironic, moreover, that Gaga is only a letter shy of Gala! Dali surely would have seized on that twist of fate.

Gaga was clearly inspired by Dali.

But back in the day, when Dali was exploring the exciting then-new phenomenon of holography and how its three-dimensionality could be harnessed to the vision of a Surrealist, there was another outlandish and popular music star whose outrageous public persona paired splendidly with Dali’s: Alice Cooper.

Just about anyone familiar enough with Dali knows he created a cylindrical hologram of “Alice Cooper’s Brain.” He fancied the glam rock star because he represented, Dali explained, a great example of total confusion! “The more confusion the better!”, Dali insisted, as he had Cooper join him in a press conference that was seen and heard around the world.

Now comes what I think is a wonderful comment from Cooper, recently reported on the nme.com website. In an interview there, the still popular musician was asked what his favorite Dali memory was. Here’s what he said:

“Well, Salvador Dali was a show unto himself. Just him walking into a room was very theatrical. One time, he ordered drinks for us all, then ordered himself a glass of hot water. When it came, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a big jar of honey. And he starts pouring the honey into the hot water and lifts it all the way up – gets a big stream of honey going on – then pulls out a pair of scissors from his pocket and cuts the stream (laughs). He was inherently theatrical and you couldn’t understand a word he said. But he was the greatest technical artist of all time.”

[All images used under Fair Use provisions for journalistic purposes only]

Salvador Dali was ‘Crazy’…Um, Like a Fox!

By Paul Chimera

Salvador Dali Historian-Writer

Was Salvador Dali crazy? Literally mad? Such a pointed and provocative question was asked more than a few times in Dali’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, but he was crazy like a fox: clever, cunning, calculating.

Of course, replace “crazy” with “eccentric,” and you’ve got a different story. Dali was in fact eccentric, and that came from two distinct yet partly overlapping places.

It’s well-established that Dali railed against his parents’ attempt to treat him as if he were the first Salvador born to them. Dali’s ill-fated brother, also named Salvador, was born a couple of years before the artist, and died tragically of meningitis.

The first Salvador Dali, left, and the future art world titan.

The second Salvador – the one destined to world fame – endeavored to aggressively establish his own unique identity, resisting attempts to view him as a kind of “replacement” for the Salvador who came before him. Thus were planted the seeds of Dali’s early eccentric behavior.

Robert Descharnes noted that Dali described it as “the double need to liken himself to his dead brother and at the same time to free himself from the absolute impossibility of being someone else. From this duality has come his exhibitionism, as a need to assert his own personality.”

As Dali himself explained it: “All the eccentricities which I commit, all the incoherent displays, are the tragic fixity of my life. I wish to prove to myself that I am not the dead brother, but the living one. As in the myth of Castor and Pollux, in killing my brother, I have gained immortality for myself.”

As Dali grew older and began to develop a style and following as a young artist, he also understood that his apparent “madness” – his unabashed eccentric ways – could serve him well. It set him apart from the pack. It got him noticed. It was a kind of self-marketing strategy: act like a crazy man, get talked about, get people wondering – then bring it home with talent impossible to deny.

It reminds me of how people like Elton John and Lady Gaga got their start in the music industry. John with his outlandish and garish outfits, headgear and glasses, Gaga with her bizarre and creepy look and even that now-iconic, Dali-inspired “meat dress.” And Liberace with his ermine collared capes and signature piano-installed candelabra. And other public figures who understood implicitly that the old show biz saw, “You gotta have a gimmick!” was invariably true.

The key to it all is that real, irrefutable talent must underpin the antics, or it all descends to a quickly forgotten flash in the pan footnote in artistic history. Dali, of course, had talent in abundance.

“The only difference between me and a madman,” Dali famously proclaimed, “is that I am not mad!” I don’t think anyone explained that provocative statement better than author Descharnes:

“He meant he shares with some madmen a tendency to hallucinations, visions, and obsessions, but that unlike the madmen, he is fully aware of the line which separates the real world from the imaginary. Also unlike a madman, (Dali) is able to control himself with intense mental gymnastics, and directs the disturbances of his spirit and his life until he can free himself of them on his canvases or through some exhibitionistic action.”

It was a really rather brilliant declaration – puzzling on the surface but actually pretty descriptive of his plan. He would create a sensation by keeping the world guessing: was Dali truly mad? Or was it all a put-on – a ploy to get noticed, to get on the front page, to get people talking about him?

What we know for sure is that people are still talking about him. And always will.

[Images used under Fair Use provisions for journalistic purposes only]

Small Salvador Dali Painting could bring Big Price at Auction

By Paul Chimera

Salvador Dali 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 Dali oil painting of rather small dimensions (9-3/8 inches x 6-1/2 inches).

It goes on the auction block at Christie’s The Art of the Surreal Evening Sale on February 27 in London, and carries a pre-sale estimate of $1,279,000 – $1,918,500.

The work has reportedly been in a private collection in Greece for some 75 years, considered a real rarity, since the vast majority of Dali’s paintings from the all-important decade of the 1930s are in museum collections.

This little morsel of succulent Surrealism speaks volumes in its simplicity. For me, the first impression is one of that enigmatic wonder Dali was such a master at engendering in us. What, we ask, is this picture about? What are we seeing? What is going on? What aren’t we seeing?

Against a strange, mysterious wall – barren and beaten, but also detailed in a large area of blue and green hues – we see a window into an eerily dark room, out of which a curious and unidentifiable red post emerges. It has alternatively been figured to be a flag pole or a boat mast – yet who can say if either suggestion is accurate, especially given the dreamlike, enigmatic context here? In any case, it lends a deep three-dimensional look to the picture.

The hint of partly cracked brick behind the plaster is a typical Dali motif and injects a sense of dilapidation and desolation to the overall impression the canvas exudes.

One can easily see the window and general structure, such as it is, as perhaps a kind of surrealist view of Dali and Gala’s own modest villa at Port Lligat, which, at the time this work was painted, wasn’t much beyond an anemic barracks that was destined for extensive expansion in the coming years.

This Untitled work invites comparison with a host of other Dali paintings from the 1930s, including The Invisible Man, The Meeting of the Illusion and the Arrested Moment – Fried Eggs Presented in a Spoon, Masochistic Instrument, Morning Ossification of the Cypress, Untitled (Dreams on the Beach), and Morphological Echo.

While there are no fried eggs, melting watches, crutches, ants, flies, or burning giraffes in this Untitled 1932 painting, it’s the kind of Salvador Dali painting collectors love – and part with megabucks for. It has that uniquely Daliesque look and feel to it. It’s surrealistic. It’s enigmatic. It’s mysterious. It’s wonderfully executed. And its provenance is considered irrefutable.

It’s my hunch that the estimate of the price Untitled will bring at auction a few days from now is too low. While it’s true that it’s a small painting — and larger ones tend to fetch more — in this case I predict this little Salvador Dali will bring an unexpectedly large price tag at Christie’s. We shall see.

[Images gratefully used under Fair Use provisions for journalistic purposes only]

Salvador Dali’s ‘Soft Construction’: ‘I Knew it was Something Special’

By Paul Chimera

Salvador Dali Historian-Writer

“So, how did you get hooked on Dali?” people ask me all the time.

“Soft Construction with Boiled Beans,” I reply.

My entrée to the world of Dali.

That great 1936 painting was the door that opened the world of Salvador Dali to me. At the time, around 1968, I knew it solely by that title. The rest of the title – Premonition of Civil War – was never included in any references to the painting, as I recall. Not at that time, anyway. Later, it somehow seemed to appear as the full title.

But no matter. The fact is that this single canvas was the one that got me. Not the Persistence of Memory, or Christ of St. John of the Cross, or others that could have been the initial hook. Nope, not them; it was Soft Construction with Boiled Beans – a title I used to delight in repeating to people, when they asked me how I got into what would become a lifelong study of Salvador Dali’s life and work.

This preparatory study itself is museum-quality.

Actually, the term “soft construction” seems rather indistinct for a Dali painting, doesn’t it? Generally his titles are more specific, more concrete. “Soft construction” just seems a bit obtuse for what is in fact a very precise, purposeful, and powerful artistic statement. And the “boiled beans” part sounds like an amusing afterthought – as if, oh, yeah, let’s throw in some boiled beans for good measure. Ha! (It turns out, too, that the appearance of the Lenin figure walking aimlessly at lower left also appeared the same year in The Chemist of Ampurdan in Search of Absolutely Nothing).

In 1968, I was sitting in an art appreciation course my freshman year of college. By 1971 I graduated with a degree in magazine journalism from Ohio University. But in ’68 I knew little about journalism and even less about Surrealism. Until the professor, giving a slide lecture, showed one work by Salvador Dali: Soft Construction with Boiled Beans.

Baam! The image hit me like a giant rock plucked from the environs of Cape Creus!

I loved the anguished look of the central figure, even though I had no informed understanding of what I was seeing. The fluidity of form spoke to me. Here was a highly imaginative work, skillfully painted. In some respects it had a kind of photographic quality to it. And I loved the luscious lime green and other colors.

I had to find out more – much more – about the man who painted it. Which led me to literally run to the library after class to look up anything and everything I could get my hands on about Salvador Dali. No internet in those days, of course. And not much in O.U.’s library, either. But enough to whet my appetite, after I’d just had a delectable horse d’ oeuvre when that slide appeared on the screen.

Pathetically, the professor wasn’t kind. In talking about various styles of art, he said of the Dali picture, “And then there are things like this!” It seemed clear he was using a sardonic tone, as if to dismiss Dali as someone not to be taken very seriously. Indeed, at that time the art world was largely down on the artist, primarily because they didn’t understand him, and his antics got their professorial knickers in a knot.

Never mind that professor; I thought the Dali work was genius.

Fast forward some five decades, and the esteemed art critic for TIME magazine, Robert Hughes, declared in a TIME article that, in his view, the greatest war picture of the 20^th century was Salvador Dali’s Soft Construction with Boiled Beans; Premonition of Civil War. No, not Pablo Picasso’s Guernica. Sorry, Pablo.

Somehow I just knew, when I saw a slide of this painting back in my college days – and, of course, I’ve seen the work in person several times (it’s in the Philadelphia Museum of Art) – that it was something special.

[Images gratefully used under Fair Use provisions for journalistic purposes only]

Dali’s Obsession with Millet’s ‘Angelus’ was a Key Dimension of his Mystique

By Paul Chimera

Salvador Dali Historian-Writer

Obsessed! There’s probably no better way to put it when it came to Salvador Dali’s relentless focus on The Angelus – a painting by Jean-Francois Millet. Dali saw the widely known, iconic painting of a peasant couple in prayer as an image of repressed sexual desire.

“The Angelus” by Jean-Francois Millet

And he also saw it as a funeral scene, since he’d long contended that the 19^th century French painter had originally depicted a child’s coffin where the basket is. The Louvre eventually proceeded with an X-ray examination of the Millet canvas, discovering quite astonishingly the outline of a small casket underneath the basket of potatoes!

The two bowed figures appeared in countless Dali paintings, drawings, prints, watercolors, sculpture and objects he designed or inspired. One painting of 1932, titled simply Angelus, is one this historian was not aware of until only a few years ago. It showed up in a catalog or book somewhere, and, though around for some 80-plus years, was “new” to me.

Dali’s “Angelus”

As a Dali historian, am I to love every Salvador Dali painting or print or whatever creation this genius and master of Surrealism produced? No. Do I love – or at least really like – most of what Dali did? Sure I do. But not all of it.

Angelus is one Dali picture I’m not enamored of, but it does perpetuate Dali’s Angelus of Millet obsession. And it does invite a look at a few features here.

The black left and right borders, together with the large open space that recedes to the vanishing point, give the painting the look of a stage design or theatre backdrop.

I remember, upon first seeing a reproduction of this painting, being drawn to the two recessed spaces in which, at left, we see two figures with long objects (bread?) on their heads, and at right a formally dressed man playing a cello. These details seem to suggest the balconies of a grand music hall, adding to the theater backdrop feel of this work. I like the way these two spaces are “cut” into the otherwise flat and frankly rather drab look of this composition. What’s more, the cello-playing figure recalls the 1920 work, Portrait of the Cellist Ricardo Pichot.

Dali’s Portrait of the Cellist Ricardo Pichot

Dali saw the woman’s posture in Millet’s Angelus as suggestive of a female praying mantis, which devours its mate after copulation. Could that account for the gaping hole in the man’s chest? And the fact that he’s partially naked?

I’ve written quite a lot about the concept of Dalinian Continuity – the linking of one Dali work to another by the intentional repetition of certain images. We see it here, in Angelus, not only in the obvious Angelus of Millet figures, but also in the car growing out of the rocky cliff formation in the middle distance.

The same car “growing” out of rock was to appear the following year (1933-1934) in an untitled Dali painting, which recently came to auction and brought a very large million dollar-plus sum for a very small painting.

Untitled, this small Dali recently brought a big chunk of change at auction.

Angelus seems to lack the fluid magic of most Dali works from this fertile 1930s period of his best surrealism. That’s how I see it, anyway. Hey, they can’t all be home runs.

[Images gratefully used under Fair  Use provisions for journalistic purposes only]

Dali did Double-Imagery Better than Anyone Else

By Paul Chimera

Salvador Dali Historian-Writer

One of the most impressive and memorable aspects of Salvador Dali’s art was his absolute mastery of double-imagery. I’m not sure any artist in history did it as well as Dali did.

This, of course, is when a painted object or scene becomes, at the same time, something entirely different – depending on how your brain shifts your visual perception from “A” to “B” and back again.

Dali simply loved this kind of illusion. He was a magician with a paint brush!

Probably the most well-known champion of double-imagery painting from art history was Giuseppe Arcimboldi, who did a good number of paintings like this one, where fruits and vegetables and other mainly food items converged to form portraits.

Double-imagery very much accorded with Dali’s Paranoiac-Critical creative method, because true paranoids actually do often perceive double images and multiple meanings in things around them. Dali was able to conjure up such images in the way he viewed and perceived most everything – and then transcribe his visions (that’s the “critical” part of the Paranoiac-Critical method) onto canvas (or print matrix, paper, copper plates, whatever) so that we, too, could share in his optical experience.

The whole sense of irrationality intrinsic to such double-imagery was on the same page with the very purpose of Surrealism. So it was a very inviting road on which Salvador Dali frequently traveled. Here are some of the sights to see along the Dali double-image trail (not necessarily in chronological order):

I believe his first important double-image painting was The Invisible Man. It was an ambitious and complex oil painting, and the appearance of a seated man among the various elements came off quite successfully.

Another early and fascinating effort was the photo of an African hut scene, which, when repositioned a quarter turn, offered up for Dali the appearance of a face. He worked it beautifully to show us what indeed looks like a woman’s face.

A skull theme informed three distinct double-image pictures by Dali, seen here. One was Café Skull, the other a poster design commissioned by the U.S. government to warn servicemen about the evils of venereal disease, and the third is the magnificent oil, Skull of Zurbaran – the only Dali gem gracing the Hirschhorn Museum in Washington, D.C.

Portraiture plays a role in several Dali double-images, too. One is the iconic work, Portrait of Mae West, Which Can Be Used as a Surrealist Apartment. The framed pictures on the wall become the eyes of Ms. West, with the fireplace somewhat unflatteringly representing her nostrils, and the lips sofa that also spawned an actual sofa of this shape. Years later this theme would find itself the center of attention as the Mae West Room in the Teatro-Museo Dali in Figueres, Spain.

In the picture, below left, a bowed woman, derived from Vermeer’s Girl Reading a Letter, is at the same time part of what makes up a profile of a bearded man. Abraham Lincoln emerges out of a multiplicity of colored cubes, while Dali puts a slightly different twist on the double-image technique in his commanding and clever “double-portrait” of Isabel Styler-Tas.

Dali employed his double-imagery genius in the canvas, Old Age, Adolescence and Infancy, and more elegantly in the great Swans Reflecting Elephants.

Dali’s Royal Tiger (I’m using the shortened title) presents us with a composition of cubes – not unlike the Lincoln and Zurbaran works previously discussed – but this time they roar with the macro-image of a Bengal tiger.

Two of the most important paintings ever by Dali pivot around tremendous double-image talent: The Endless Enigma – in which a dog, guitar, fruit dish, face, and horse, are hidden yet seen – and Apparition of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach. Do you see the large dog? There are other elements to detect, as well.

Dali paintings can sure be fun!

Without any doubt in my mind, the three most important double-image paintings ever created by Salvador Dali happen to be three of the most famous works he ever created: Metamorphosis of Narcissus, Slave Market with Disappearing Bust of Voltaire, and The Hallucinogenic Toreador. If you don’t know about the double-images in these three masterpieces, you’re probably not interested in this blog — and therefore you’re probably not here!

Finally, here’s a dandy Dali double-image from his animation project, Destino, with Walt Disney Studios; and the late in life work, Landscape with Hidden Image of Michelangelo – definitely a slightly different take on Dali’s more typical double-image approach (turn it upside down!).

Of course, there are others. But I think this helps us remember (as if we could forget!) that among many things, Salvador Dali will always be respected as the artist who mastered double-imagery probably better than anyone else.

[Images used under Fair Use provisions for journalistic purposes only]