August 02, 2002
"One can detest Salvador Dali the man."
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| Two Berlins. 28 Juillet. |
The man was bizarre, and for all the competition, he was not the master painter that was Picasso nor the master publicist that was Warhol.
Salvador Dali Sr., his father, had a son named Salvador Dali in 1901. But he died in less than two years. Then he had another Salvador Dali, the one Andre Breton mocked with the anagram on his name "Avida Dollars".
A queer doubling for this man, straight from the start.
It was on his schoolroom wall where he discovered a reproduction of L'Angélus by Millet, an image on which he would later discover an infant's coffin in the depiction of a sack of potatoes--later confirmed by X-rays of the painting at the Louvre.
Then there is the perverse sexual/mortal obsession with grasshoppers (which started when he was a kid--his mother had "eaten" his brother/father to produce him as the female grasshopper mates by consuming her partner?) and all the blank pages he signed (for money) but then later claimed to be forgeries.
Currently running in Paris: Klein + Paris photo show, Daniel Buren's "the museum that didn't exist" show at Pompidou, "Chere Peintre" review of 90s portraiture, and lots more besides.
Posted by amol at August 2, 2002 11:49 AM