Famous Citations

These are the most famous citations and thoughts of Salvador Dali:

1. " I don`t do drugs, I am drugs"

2. "Surrealism is myself" ( Dali`s Moustache Dali& Halsman)

3.  " Providing the right honey for the right fly at the right time and place" ( Dali`s Moustache Dali& Halsman)

4. " Me crazy? I am certainly saner than the person who bought this book" ( Dali`s Moustache Dali& Halsman)

5. " Every morning I am awake, I experience supreme pleasure- the joy of being Salvador Dali and I ask myself what things this Salvador Dali is going to accomplish today"

6. "Have no fear of perfection - you will never reach it"

7. " The only difference between me and madman that I am not mad"

8. "There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad"

9. "Let my enemies devour each other"

10. " The secret of my influence has always been that it remained secret"

11. " Take me I am the drug; Take me I am hallucinogenic"

12. " Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing"

13. " Wars have never hurt anyone except the people who died"

14."Liking money like I like it is nothing less than mysticism. Money is a glory"

                                                                 Avida Dollars

Andre Breton was a main criticizer of Dali`s artworks. He gave Salvador Dali a nickname "Avida Dollars" which was an anagram from Salvador Dali. The anagram means greedy for money, which was kind of a truth about Dali. When Dali moved to the USA, he started his capitalist career and self-promoting. Dali was a favourite character for advertisers. 

                                                          From the article written by Mark Vallen, 2005

                                                            from weheartit.com  

Paintings

Dali painted more than 1500 masterpieces. Definitely its impossible to talk about all of them in a single post. In this post the most famous and interesting paintings will be discussed.

1. Early paintings of Salvador Dali were painted in impressionism style. When Dali`s parents wanted to hire an artist-instructor for their kid, he said that he was an impressionist and no teacher was needed for him. One of my favorite paintings of Dali in impressionism is Boat ( Commercial Sailboat Riding an Anchor in the Bay of Cadaques), which was painted in 1919.

2. Next styles which was a step in Dali`s development as an artist were Dadaism and Cubism. Pablo Picasso was one of the influences on Dali`s formation of his own art!
For example, if we look at Still Life painting, we may think that it was painted by Picasso. No, it was Dali`s work.

3. These styles lead to Salvador`s finding himself as Surrealist. When he was asked what was surrealism, Dali responded that he was Surrealism.

4.The Great Masurbator, 1929
 
Painted in surrealistic style. Here we can see such details as ants, locust, egg, and  creatures. This painting may reflect Dali`s emotions about sex, connected with fear (locust is symbol of fear in his paintings), which were created in his mind by his father.

5. Persistence of Memory, 1931

The main detail here is Dali`s famous melting watch.
The weird creature in the middle of the painting is believed to be Dali.
This painting is a clear representation of Surrealism.
The painting can be viewed through different perspectives:

        1. Dream Theory

As almost all Surrealist were explaining their art as painting from dreams, it can be conducted that melting clock can symbolize the unimportance of time in dreams. In simple words, we don't have sense of time in our dreams.

       2. It is also believed that Melting clock can be Dali`s interpretation or understanding of Einstein's  Theory of Relativity. Time is relative, maybe thats what melting watch meant?

Check out this captivating article to get more info about melting clock:

http://legomenon.com/salvador-dali-persistence-of-memory-melting-clocks-meaning.html

6. Basket of Bread, 1945

There is a smiler Dali`s painting named The Basket of Bread, 1926

Painting made in realism style. Dali wanted to persuade audience that he could become successful even if he painted in Realism.

The painting was literally finished 1 day before the war ended.


7. The Swallow`s Tail, 1983

The last painting of Salvador Dali.

Inspired by catastrophe theory invented by Rene Thom.

It is also believed that this painting was Dali`s hope to escape from death. He was inventing his own theories how to prolong life and clef was involved into his theories.

Fame and Celebrities in Dali`s Life

       Dali wanted fame and money. Dali got it. New York and Paris were asking him to make exhibitions. Dali was a star of his century. He was invited to various TV shows and interviews. He had great parties and was invited to the best dinners with the best people.

Here is one of his interviews:

The other video shows Dali on a very popular TV show What`s My Line, where people have to guess a celebrity by asking questions:

Personally I am impressed by this video. Here we can see that Dali was already very famous for his paintings. In addition to this, it tells us more about Dali from his behaviour. Dali considers himself to be a genius. From his answers he is famous of everything he does. And he actually is. In my opinion, Dali is not famous for his painting, but his paintings are famous because of Dali.

The following video shows one of the parties made by Dali in a surreal style:

Pretty extraordinary, isn't it?

So, the question is what made Dali so popular?

1. His uniqueness. Dali is a very interesting person, and he attracted attention with his behaviour, charisma, and appearance.

2. His talent. Dali was able to project his uniqueness in his art works. He had great ideas. They may seem insane, but they are grabbing attention.

3. Dali was a genius. Yes, he definitely was. He was well educated and smart. He always found new ways to achieve success.

4. Motivation. Dali had goals and he reached them by all means. We wanted to be rich and famous - he became. He made lots of efforts, tried new ways, but he never gave up!

5. And the last one, but very important. For sure right people was Dali`s asset. He got acquainted with many various famous people, who helped him to become successful!

Which celebrities was Dali acquainted with? There are many of them, but I decided to write about the most known by everyone.

1. Lorca. Spanish poet. I have already written about Dali- Lorca relationship. For more information visit this link  http://geniusdali.blogspot.ca/2014/02/little-ashes.html . PS. It is really interesting relationship!

2. Pablo Picasso. Dali was his admirer. When Dali came to Paris and visited Picasso, he said that he would visit Louvre only after the meeting with Picasso. Both artists enjoyed each others works. Picasso even connected Dali and his art dealer.

from weheartit.com

3. Sigmund Freud. As all surrealists, Dali was influenced by Freud and his psychoanalysis theory. Dali met Freud in 1938. Zweig organized this meeting.

4. The same year Dali met Coco Chanel in her house in Raquebrune, where Dali painted a lot of his art works. People believe they had an affair. Anyway they were really close. Some sources also say she was his inspiration for his jewelry collection ( from http://tinyurl.com/koxs785).

                                           Dali and Chanel. From weheartit.com

5. Dali connected Disney by himself.  He offered Disney to work together on a cartoon Destino. When Dali saw the product he was ashamed and he said no one will see it. The project was not finished, however, Dali and Disney were good friends and had something in common : they both loved money and were greedy. In 54 years later, Disney`s nephew decided to finish the project. Here is the final product, made based on Dali`s storyline:

Source: http://mentalfloss.com/article/50074/time-salvador-dali-worked-walt-disney

As far as we can see, without all these people we wouldn't know the one Dali we know now!

Love=>Gala=>Life

      It is impossible to talk about Salvador Dali without mentioning his wife Gala Dali. She is a very interesting person to talk about as well. Gala`s real name was Elena Ivanovna Diakonova. She was a Russian lady from Kazan, from a family of intellectuals. One of her friends in Russia was Marina Tsvetaeva. 

      In 1912 Elena was sent to Switzerland, where she had her tuberculosis cured. There she met her first husband Eluard. They married and had a daughter. However, Gala was not a really good mother. 

In 1929 Gala and her husband visited Salvador Dali. They started to have an affair even though Gala was 10 years older. Gala divorced her husband and moved in with Salvador, but the maintained close relationships with her previous husband. 

     Nevertheless Gala was considered a witch and whore, Dali loved her for the rest of his life. Gala Dali was spitting into faces of people she did not like. She was also a very cruel person. When Dali and Salvador did not have money and they had to live at Lydia Nogeures`s house ( Dali`s old friend), they had a bunny. Dali loved their pet very much. When they were invited to Paris, the couple didn't know what to do with their lovely animal. So one day when Dali came home after painting outside, Gala gave him a soup. When Dali finished his dinner, Gala said it was their favourite bunny in the soup.

      Salvador was encouraging her love and sex affairs with other young artist. She was even buying very expensive gifts for her lovers. For example, she gave aways Dali`s paintings and a million dollar mansion to her lover Jeff Fenholt ( he was a famous rockstar). She was his muse, love and life. Gala was responsible for selling Dali`s paintings, she worked as his agent. Dali and Gala seemed to be a happy family. However, people claimed Dali and Gala were having arguments in public and even fighting at during their last years together. 

     Gala died when she was 87 and was buried in Girona, in the house Dali bought for her. Dali could`t believe Gala has died.  The rest of his life seemed to be a torture. 

     Gala meant a lot in Salvador`s life. She loved him for his being crazy. Once, when Dali wanted to impress Gala he put turd all over his body. Gala liked this behaviour. She adored Dali`s hysterical laugh and all his fads. Dali didn't feel ashamed with Gala. He knew she was his destiny, his life. She had some magical control over him.