The Art of Salvador Dali

PHILADELPHIA, PENN.

:Ask a random group of people what comes to mind at the mention of Salvador Dali and the answer is likely to be melting watches and a handlebar moustache. Ask them what Dali's limp watches mean and you will get puzzled looks and varied answers.

Dali is one of the most perplexing, controversial and familiar artists of the Twentieth Century. Known as well for his eccentric, larger-than-life personality as his provocative, hallucinatory art, he created an astoundingly diverse body of work, including painting, drawings, prints, book illustrations, films and stage sets. Whatever the medium, his works are filled with dreamlike, fetishist images rendered in a precise, hyperrealist style.

To most people, Dali remains a strange and fascinating enigma. Was he the great artist he claimed to be - or a genius at making people believe that? His reputation has been tarnished and misunderstood because of the perception that he was too greedy in his pursuit of publicity and money. In the process of becoming an international celebrity, he was a shameless self-promoter, an egomaniac who proclaimed himself the greatest painter of all time.