Salvador Dali's Birthdate

He is one of my favourite painters. Because who can come up with this stuff? Really! You have to be incredibly creative to think this stuff up or -well, Salvador Dali!

Dali was a Spanish surrealist painter who lived during the 20th century. His most famous painting is one that you may know as "Melting Clocks", but he actually titled it "The Persistence of Memory".

If you took a first year film class you may have watched Un Chien andalou (1928), one of the best known surrealist films. Dali and the first-time director Luis Buñuel produced the film with Dali co-writing and acting in for the film. The poignant opening scene where an eye is slit with a razor is an indelible scar in my mind. *shudders*Oh dear, and now we move on...

Dali was influenced by Sigmund Freud's writing about the "erotic significance of subconscious imagery", which subsequently influenced his paintings. To access the images of his subconscious, he would cause himself to go into a hallucinatatory state. The paintings in this state are his most well regarded paintings and made him the "world's best-known Surrealist artist". The following are some of my favourite Dali works...

When I was in Madrid, I spent a day in Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sophia where a number of Salvador Dali's works are displayed (and Un Chien andalou is played). It was really neat to see one of my favourite artist's paintings for real! (I saw Picasso's Guernica too!)

In recent Salvador Dali News... Little Ashes, a film about Dali's just came out on May 8th. Robert Pattinson (you may know him as Edward Cullin in Twilight) plays Dali. would like to see it, but perhaps I'll wait till it's on DVD or something

To finish off this post on Dali, here are two amusing quotes by Dali:

"I don't do drugs; I am drugs."

&

"The only difference between myself and a madman is that I am not mad."

Update: After posting this I received an email from someone in the PR dept. at Time Inc. and who is in charge of communications for Life. She stumbled upon my blog post in the press for Salvador Dali for today and suggested that I might appreciate a series of photos of Dali from Life Magazine's website. Have a "look-see"! You'll see what an eccentric character Dali was!

Work Cited: "Salvador Dalí." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 11 May. 2009 <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/150173/Salvador-Dali>.
All photos and direct quotes will take you to their original site by clicking on them.