Andrew Graham-Dixon TV - Simon Schama TV - Desmond Morris TV - Tim Marlow TV - Discovering Dali TV - George Orwell - Salvador Dali - J G Ballard - Matthew Collings TV - The Adventures of Modern Art TV - Art on the BBC: The Great Salvador Dali TV -
The new territory of the mind … the great surrealist and all-round showman, Salvador Dali. Andrew Graham-Dixon, The Art of Spain III: The Mystical North, BBC 2008
Some Spanish artists had more than an inkling of what was coming: Premonitions of Civil War. Simon Schama’s Power of Art: Picasso, BBC 2006
Salvador Dali: ‘One of the most important artists of the twentieth century.’ Great Artists in Their Own Words I: The Future is Now 1907-1939, Desmond Morris, BBC 2013
Metamorphosis of Narcissus 1937: This is one of the most popular and celebrated of all the Tate’s paintings. Tim Marlow on ... The New Tate Modern
This is part of what Dali called his Paranoiac Critical Method. ibid.
Lobster Telephone 1936: He is also emphasising their similarity. ibid.
This tale of two cities began in New York in 1965 when I became the only living director to actually complete with the great surrealist Salvador Dali. Discovering Dali: A Tale of Two Cities, 2010
We should never forget that Salvador Dali was a rogue who liked to tease the establishment. ibid.
Fifty times the talent of an ordinary artist ... in his outlook, his character, the bedrock decency of a human being does not exist. George Orwell
Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad. Salvador Dali
There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad. Salvador Dali
There are some days when I think I’m going to die from an overdose of satisfaction. Salvador Dali
Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision. Salvador Dali
Each morning when I awake, I experience again a supreme pleasure – that of being Salvador Dali. Salvador Dali
At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since. Salvador Dali
People love mystery, and that is why they love my paintings. Salvador Dalí
The art of Salvador Dalí, an extreme metaphor at a time when only the extreme will do, constitutes a body of prophecy about ourselves unequaled in accuracy since Freud’s ‘Civilization And Its Discontents’. Voyeurism, self-disgust, the infantile basis of our fears and longings, and our need to pursue our own psychopathologies as a game – these diseases of the psyche Dali has diagnosed with dismaying accuracy. His paintings not only anticipate the psychic crisis which produced our glaucous paradise, but document the uncertain pleasures of living within it. The great twin leitmotifs of the 20th century – sex and paranoia – preside over his life, as over ours. J G Ballard, Diary of a Genius introduction, 1974
Salvador Dali is modern art’s big problem … I don’t think Dali was a phoney though. Matthew Collings, This is Modern Art VI: The Shock of the Now, Channel 4 1999
Salvador Dali explored the dark side of his unconscious and was sidelined by the Surrealists as a result. The Adventures of Modern Art V: Libertad! Sky Arts 2020
Ever since the first programmes flickered on to our screens filmmakers, presenters and experts have all turned to television to bring art out of museums and galleries and into our living rooms. As the great masters became available to millions instead of hundreds, programme makers found new ways for us to appreciate them from the faintly ridiculous to the downright astonishing. One artist above all others used the big and the small screen to promote his art as well as himself: Salvador Dali. Art on the BBC: The Great Salvador Dali, BBC 2022
The works that Dali created in the decade beginning 1929 are generally agreed to be his greatest and will propel him from struggling artist to the world’s most famous surrealist. But Dali’s antic were beginning to appear to the rest of the group less like serious explorations of the unconscious mind and more like cheap publicity stunts. ibid.