Salvador Dali: Anarchist Who Embraced Catholicism, Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock

"To surreality, with love"
The Australian (June 9, 2009)

"SPANISH artist Salvador Dali was a master of image. He adopted many poses throughout his long career, from the only anarchist in his Catalan village to the face of surrealism, but what you saw was not necessarily what you got, according to Dali scholar and art historian Elliott King.

" 'It's hard with Dali because you don't know where the persona ends, and what is sincere and how much is for show,' he says.

"King will be in Melbourne for Salvador Dali: Liquid Desire, a retrospective opening at the National Gallery of Victoria this week. It draws on work from the collections of the Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali in Figueres, Spain (Dali's birthplace), and the Salvador Dali Museum in St Petersburg, Florida. ..."

For people who may not have heard of Salvador Dali, this quote from the article gives (I think) a pretty good idea of what he was like: "...He often made enigmatic or egotistical public pronouncements, used contentious political figures such as Mao Zedong and Adolf Hitler in his work, and embraced Catholicism, Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock..."

The article includes a pretty good mini-biography of a man who "embraced Catholicism, Walt Disney and Alfred Hitchcock" - and may be best known for a painting of melting clocks.

Salvador Dali was also a sculptor and jeweler.

I'm something of a fan of Dali, partly for his art, and partly for the flamboyant way that he created "his own brand", as the article put it.