Before you read this post, let’s do a small exercise. What does come to your mind when the words “Salvador Dali” are mentioned? What do you know about his life and his artwork? Think about it for only 30 seconds!
This post is based on a non-fiction book called “Dali and I”, written by Stan Laurysses.
Back in the seventies, SL was an “ordinary” man living in Belgium: he worked in a cheese factory, making holes in wheels in Emmentaler cheese - how ordinary is that?!?!?! One day, he got call from the Antwerp’s weekly Panorama magazine offering him a job switch. They wanted Stan to be the weekly correspondent in Hollywood and boost Panorama’s circulation by interviewing beautiful movie faces. There was only a small issue: there were no funds available to send him to California – so, when he accepted the new challenge, all he was given was a desk, a chair and a typewriter.
Stan started fabricating “live” interviews and after a few years doing so, he came up with the idea of Dali helping Walt Disney to create the most scandalous animated porn cartoon ever. Sales skyrocketed and our boy got another unexpected phone call: the president of a multimillion-dollar company invited him to lead the fine art-investment branch of his company. “Why me? I don’t know anything about art!” – Stan asked his then future boss. And the answer was: “You know Salvador Dali”!
SL’s new job was basically to buy Dali’s artwork all over the world and to sell them as an art investment to very rich people. Every painting he bought was an opportunity for him to become closer and to investigate Dali’s world, personally and professionally.
Dali was a weird and unpredictable man, never bathed or showered and sprayed jasmine eau de cologne behind each ear to stop the stench of his continuous farting. He often organized planned to detail sex circus (also know as ballet of passion). If he couldn’t satisfy his voyeuristic impulses, he wasn’t able to work. Among his guests were gay and straight catwalk stars, Vietnam veterans, dwarfs, hermaphrodites and living lobsters (heaps of them). Guests were not allowed to use the bathroom. Can you imagine what did his swimming pool look like?
His museum in Figueres (Spain) contains, according to his founder, only 25% of genuine genuine work. Among the rest, 25% is fake genuine and 50% is fake fake. Dali and his businessmen knew that, for a certain period of time, the world was hungry for his art. They then became money-making machines selling countless works that were signed by Dali but painted or printed indeed by artists or art dealers – all hired by Dali himself. During the early seventies, there were four different artists working together for him. Is this surreal enough for you? :-P
Now that you know a little bit more about the world art, can anyone tell me who made this painting?
