Diary of a Genius

By Salvador Dalí and Salvadore (foreword and notes by Michel Deon) translated by Richard Howard Dali

Book Overview

Diary of a Geniusstands as one of the seminal texts of Surrealism, revealing the most astonishing and intimate workings of the mind of Salvador Dal , the eccentric polymath genius who became the living embodiment of Surrealism, the 20th century's most intensely subversive, disturbing and influential art movement. Dal 's second volume of autobiography, Diary of a Genius covers his life from 1952 to 1963, during which years we learn of his amour fou for his wife Gala, and their relationship both at home in Cadaqu s and during bizarre world travels. We also learn how Dal draws inspiration from excrement, rotten fish and Vermeer's Lacemaker to enter his "rhinocerontic" period, preaching his post-holocaustal gospels of nuclear mysticism and cosmogenic atavism; and we follow the labyrinthine mental journeys that lead to the creation of such paintings as the Assumption, and his film script The Flesh Wheelbarrow.

This new expanded edition includes a brilliant and revelatory essay on Salvador Dal , and the importance of his art to the 20th century, by the author J. G. Ballard.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0971457832
• ISBN13: 9780971457836
• Release Date: March 2007
• Publisher: Glitter Books
• Length: 100 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Not just an artist, Dalí himself is the art

Supposedly, some small corner of the mind tosses its dice continuously, trying every combination of fact against every other. Next some filter removes the nonsense - most of it - and lets through a few drops of insight. In some few minds, a droplet or two more forms steady trickle of meaningful creativity. In Dalí, the floodgates had opened. Every experience, even seeing a hotel bellboy, spilling some coffee, or flatulence, had mystic and mythic meaning for him. Read just a few of his words, and you know that you can't just read his words. Ideas swirled around him in chaotic orbits, like his beloved flies. His writing makes me think of a show of fireworks, which an author tries to describe by tracing a few dozen especially brilliant sparks. Three things stand out as invariant across Dalí's life, as he tells it. The second is Gala, his wife, muse, agent, and tour-guide to planet earth. The third is enthusiasm for everything, a degree of involvement with his world that permeates his vision and hearing, but also his senses of smell, touch, and all things of the body. That level of everyday intensity would stun most people in just minutes, and probably kill some. The first point in Dalí's world is, of course, Dalí. I can not describe Dalí on Dalí, you must experience that first-hand. //wiredweird

Give Us This Day Our Dali...

`Diary of a Genius' is an honest and real study of the world's most acclaimed surrealist painter. Rich in imagery, Dali reveals the canvas of his life with candour, colour and masterful composition. Shadows of self-doubt are subtly juxtaposed beside his brilliant self-awareness, and his reflections are a fusion of form and feeling. Many of the entries are poignant, highlighting the painter's melancholic marriage to mortality towards the end of his life. In his final days, he sought neither separation nor divorce from it, accepting the inevitability that the brush strokes of his being would flourish for only a brief period more. Perhaps the most significant entry revealing Dali's resignation is that appearing on page 136:`Cordoba - June19 1986Had lunch today in a fish café on the Plaza del Potro. Table for one. Told the waiter that I had a young man's vision clouded by an old man's eyes. He told me to get glasses. I told him to get stuffed olives. The fish tasted like horse. I was disappointed because it usually tasted like camel. When the bill arrived, I realised I had no money so in lieu of cash I presented a napkin sketch entitled `Apparition of Ungarnished Paella Being Mocked by Pablo Casals on Beach'. The waiter gave me an inferior Picasso self-portrait on drink coaster in lieu of the change.I no longer feel at home with human beings so I think I'll move to New York.'This remarkable book is a work of genius about a genius' work

rhinoceros horns and elephant skulls

Egocentric, insightful, humorous, scatalogical, artistic, poetic, profound, intense,surreal, beautiful, philosophical insanity!

Stimulateing, interresting, and all too insane

Dali is an insane being. However, if you like to be stimulated then this is the best book to do the job.I found Diary of a genius to be an "out-there" kinda book. I absoultely adored it. Between Dali's interrestings ideas he kept you laughing. A must read for the half insane.

hilariously bizarro reflections of a self centered nut-case

the great dali offers a glimpse of the workings of his twisted mind with chapters dedicated to subjects such as: the universe as a four-buttock continum, over 100 uses for a whale bone and how he turned into a fish. a must read for pure laughter and looney inspiration.