Product Description

MANIAC EYEBALL contains the frank and uncensored confessions of Salvador Dalí, from his childhood and first adolescent sexual experiences to his emergence as a painter, Surrealist, and eventually the most famous - and possibly richest - artist of modern times. These inspired tracts, covering art, love, sex, money, death, fame, science, his famous friends and enemies, and his extraordinary creative genius, reveal the intricate workings of Dalí's mind to create not only an unparalleled autobiography but also one of the key Surrealist texts yet published. Illustrated throughout, MANIAC EYEBALL also includes a complete chronology of Dalí's life. It is the third and most comprehensive volume of autobiography by the most famous and controversial painter of the 20th century. Salvador Dalí (1904-1989) entered the ranks of the Surrealists in 1929 with a series of iconoclastic paintings which fused technical virtuosity with Freudian infantilism, leading to his invention of the "paranoiac-critical" method. Later expelled from the Surrealist Group, he was christened "Avida Dollars" by André Breton whilst acquiring the reputation of master showman and scandalist. His art and writings remain amongst the most unique and important bodies of work of the 20th Century. Solar Art Directives features the most innovative artists of the 20th century.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #223265 in Books
• Published on: 2009-01-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

About the Author
Dalí, Salvador (1904-89): Spanish painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and designer. He became one of the most famous painters in the world and is now synonymous with Surrealism.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
HOW TO CONQUER PARIS I was dreaming not of love but of glory, and I knew that the road to success led through Paris. But in 1927 Paris was far from Figueras, far away, mysterious, and big. I landed there one morning with my sister and aunt, to judge its distance and size, as a boxer does during a round of studying his opponent. First I discovered Versailles (and continued to like the Escorial better) and the musty Musée Grévin waxworks. My self-confidence increased daily, but nothing essential had been accomplished. What I needed was the accolade of the only Parisian who mattered in my eyes: Pablo Picasso. I had carefully prepared my way to him. I knew that Picasso had seen one of my paintings in Barcelona, Muchacha de Espaldes (Rear View Of A Girl; known in English as Girl's Shoulder or Girl's Back), and had liked it: he had mentioned it to his dealer, Paul Rosenberg, who had written me out of the blue to ask for some photographs of my work. I had asked a friend of Lorca's, the Cuban painter Manuel Angel Ortiz, to take me to Picasso's studio. As soon as I got to 23 Rue La Boétie, I knew those two jet-black button eyes of his had recognized me. I was "the other one" - the only one able to stand up to him. (In truth, now I know the world was a little too small for the two of us. Fortunately, I was still young!) I respectfully tendered a gift to him, another Figueras muchacha such as the one he had appreciated, and it took me quite a while to extricate it from its mummy's wrappings; but it was a real live painting that came out of the diapers and it seemed to me that as he looked at it, it took on a sudden new life. Picasso spent a long while, scrutinizing it minutely, and it had never looked finer to me. From that minute on, he was at great pains to dazzle me. My opening agitation was now replaced by assurance, as he took me into his studio on the floor above and for two hours kept displaying his paintings for me, the largest as well as the smallest, which he put on his easel. He went to and fro, choosing, weighing, setting up, silent and quick, stepping back, carefully inspecting his own genius but dancing his courtship dance for me alone and looking at me with long looks of complicity. We each knew who we were. Our mutual silence was charged with an electricity of the highest potential...