Art
SALVADOR DALI Cedric Maldonado on the eccentric surrealist artist who turned dreams into art and back into dreams again
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“Dandyismo was en vogue, and Dalí’s eccentricities brought him into the closed dandy set at the apex of student life. English customs and manners were all the rage: an illustration declared the watchword of the dandies: ‘Desperation for tea! Tea! Tea! Tea!’”
don’t do drugs, I am drugs.” – Salvador Dalí
Looking aslant, the bright, causticallyshadowed Catalan sunshine casting deep shadows among phallic, cervic and fantastical rock shapes, a painter stands at his easel, wearing an unconvincing dark wig, the red breeches of a Zouave and the pointed slippers of an Ottoman bey, as the country flies that live on Catalan olive trees gather hungrily at his moustaches and lips, which he has helpfully covered in date palm sugar and honey to lead one into his mouth: a human Venus Fly Trap. This can be none other than the self-styled ‘concentric-eccentric’ artist, Surrealist and proto-Pop-Art showman, Salvador Dalí.
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