“The first man to compare the cheeks of a young woman to a rose was obviously a poet; the first to repeat it was possibly an idiot” Salvador Dali
“Those who are afraid to immitate, produce nothing”, Dali concluded. He obviously knew what he was talking about because his parents convinced him he was the reincarnation of his dead brother, after whom he had been named.
The ultimate showman, Dali became one of the richest artists of his age, constantly courting the media, experimenting endlessly. From his famous paintings, to fiction, architecture, film; his imagination never stopped.
Here are some interviews with Dali in English:
Dali has become the quintessential surrealist. “Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision” he said. His main theoretical contribution to the movement was his “Paranoiac-Critical Method”, focusing on the brain’s ability to perceive links between things which rationally are not linked, a method he applied in his paintings:
- 360 degree video of what it would be like to walk inside one of Dali’s paintings
- Un chien Andalou (1929)
Here are are some professors who attempt to interpret Dali’s work:
- BBC radio “Decoding the masterworks: Dali’s Metamorphosis of Narcissus”
- WGBH Forum network video lecture “Dali: The Late Work”
- Oxford University Audio Lecture “The experimental demonstration of critical paranoia: Salvador Dalí’s The Tragic Myth of Millet’s Angelus”
There are so many documentaries about the man online that it seems pointless to list them all, but I will present three different perspectives:
- BBC Great Lives on Salvador Dali
- Antiquity.tv. Download Salvador Dali documentary
- Youtube.com: “BBC Modern Masters: Salvador Dali”:
