Dali is Da Man

It is hardly an original thought of mine, but I earnestly believe that Salvador Dali either had more fun than any man alive, or he was seriously in need of deep psychotherapy. I tend to go with the former.

We have been exposed to Dali of late through a museum dedicated to his work in Figueres, Spain -- just a bit over the border from France -- and at his seaside home in Cadaques, Spain, a gorgeous village also just south of the border. What I came away with was this was a man whose middle name should have been “whimsy” and who likely giggled and winked his way through life. In some afterlife, somewhere, he is likely sharing convivial, drug enhanced, conversation with Mark Twain and John Lennon, explaining how on earth he could grow that zany mustache of his that jutted outward like two pencil thin skewers.

His house is so fitting. Its whitewashed, serene exterior belie the mischief awaiting inside. His studio, for example, features a pulley system that allowed him to raise or lower his large canvases to a floor below so that he could sit in an overstuffed chair and never have to move no matter how large the canvas he was working on. The outdoor pool area has a sofa shaped as a set of bright red, puffy lips. Multiple statues of the Michelin Man dot the gardens. And, one room is perfectly round with built-in couches all along the periphery. The ceiling is domed. If you stand in the middle of the room, you can hear your voice resonate as if you were shouting into the Grand Canyon. Yet, if you move two feet from that spot, all sounds normal.

The man was not shy either. It seems as if his image is featured in half of his works, from soaring ceiling frescoes to three dimensional holographs to paintings of himself from the vantage point of his feet so that as you gaze upward you are struck once again by that crazyass mustache.

It is said of Dali that he once had an epiphany that the railroad station in Perpignan, France was actually the center of the universe. In that moment, perhaps in an acid driven fog, he wrote, “Suddenly before me everything appeared with the clarity of lightning.”

Really, Sal? Really?