Salvador Dali Surrealism Quotes

Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.

I do not understand why, when I ask for grilled lobster in a restaurant, I'm never served a cooked telephone.

The one thing the world will never have enough of is the outrageous.

yes, i have dated Salvador Dali guy when i was a high school girl. he was a great lover. but i had to dump him because he stole my inspiration of bent clock*~* .... who cares...

Time melting like a Dali painting

I am a prostitute. I don't want to know the client. I just want money, lots of money. My seed rises into the glorious eruption of a majestic orgasm when I picture the Divine Dali rolling in money. - Salvador Dalí

Ancient philosophy was framed by prodigies, Aristotle, Plato and Socrates. And even though their thoughts were deemed the aristocratic voice, they also had a thing for little boys. Katherine the Great so it's been said, needed large animals to be fulfilled in bed. From historic rulers to the Ancient Greeks, we're standing on the shoulders of freaks. Isn't life pretty? Earnest Hemingway once said, then he a bullet through his head. Salvador Dali's surreal paintings were God sent, you'd never know he ate his own excrement. Then there's Da Vinci for whom it required, dressing in women's underwear to be inspired. From the great romantics to the Ancient Greeks, we're standing on the shoulders of freaks. Truman Capote needless to say, would be intoxicated 20 hours a day. From the modern authors to the Ancient Greeks, we're standing on the shoulders of freaks.

Reality was a trick of cognition, an illusion woven by the brain. Beneath the apparently solid skin of the world lay a fizzing unreality of quantum mechanics, playing out on a warped and surreal Salvador Dali landscape. Ghost worlds peeled away from the present with every decision. The universe itself would one day simmer down to absolute entropic stasis, the absolute and literal end of time itself. No action, no memory of an action, no trace of a memory, could endure for ever. Every human deed, from the smallest kindness to the grandest artistic achievement, was ultimately pointless. But it wasn’t as if people went around thinking

На заре я проснулся и, не умывшись, сел перед мольбертом, стоявшим в моей комнате рядом с кроватью. Первый образ сутра был - мое полотно, последнее, что я видел перед сном. Я пытался уснуть, фиксируя его глазами, чтобы сохранить его очертания во время сна, и несколько раз посреди ночи вставал, чтобы на миг взглянуть на него в лунном свете. Или, проснувшись, включал свет, чтобы видеть изображение, которое меня не оставляло. Весь день, сидя, как медиум, перед мольбертом, я фиксировал полотно и видел, как появляются фрагменты моего собственного воображения. Когда изображение точно закреплялось в картине, я тут же рисовал его. Но иногда надо было ждать часами, бездельничая с неподвижной кистью в руке, прежде чем что-то появлялось. Бывали у меня и ложные изображения, я задыхался и недоумевал, потом они рассеивались, и я говорил себе: "Ну что, теперь искупаемся?

Как бы там ни было, в тот период я и в самом деле не был «нормальным». Впрочем, как определить для живого существа лимиты «нормальности» и «ненормальности»? Я говорю, что в 1929 году в Кадакесе я не был нормальным – и это означает, что это верно по отношению к сегодняшнему дню, когда я пишу книгу. Несомненно, я сделал огромные успехи, приспосабливаясь к действительности. Когда у меня появилась первая галлюцинация, я получал удовольствие от своей необычной психики и стимулировал свои «необычности». Каждое утро я немного поливал растение моего безумия, до тех пор, пока оно не стало цвести и давать плоды, которые чуть не пожрали мою жизнь, и так было до тех пор, пока я не понял, что пора уничтожить это растение, растоптать его каблуками, зарыть в землю и начать снова завоевывать свое «жизненное пространство». Девиз «безумие для безумия» я должен был за год сменить на «Обуздание безумия», который носил уже католический характер. Безумие открыло мне некоторые из своих секретов, которые я тщательно оберегал даже тогда, когда пристрастился к разрушительному его обузданию и пытался увлечь за собой всю группу сюрреалистов.

Всю мою жизнь мне действительно было очень трудно свыкнуться с озадачивающей «нормальностью» существ, которые населяют мир. Я всегда говорил себе: ничто из того, что могло произойти, не происходит. Не могу понять, как это человеческие существа могут быть так мало индивидуализированны и всегда руководствуются самыми строгими законами приспосабливаемости. Возьмите такую простейшую вещь, как крушения поездов. Сколько тысяч железных дорог покрывают пять континентов — и так немного крушений. Тех, кто устраивают крушения, в тысячи раз меньше, чем тех, кто любит путешествовать по рельсам. Когда в Венгрии арестовали диверсанта Марушку, устраивавшего крушения поездов, это был сенсационный и уникальный случай. Не верю, что человек настолько лишен фантазии, чтобы у водителей автобусов время от времени не появлялось желание выбить витрину Присуник, чтобы на лету не выхватить несколько подарков для своих семей. Не понимаю, не могу понять, почему фабриканты бачков для спуска воды не вложат в их конструкцию бомбу, которая взрывалась бы, когда потянешь за цепочку. Мне не понять, почему все ванны одной формы. Почему бы не придумать страшно дорогие такси — почти как все, но с искусственным дождем внутри, чтобы путешественник надевал плащ, когда на улице прекрасная погода. Не понимаю, почему мне не приносят отварной телефон, когда я заказываю жаренного омара, почему охладиться в ведерке со льдом ставят шампанское, а не вечно теплых и липких телефонных абонентов. И почему бы не заворачивать в соболиные меха разбитые телефоны с зеленой мятой в форме омара с дохлой крысой внутри — прямо Эдгар По, почему бы не водить их на поводке или не ставить на спину живой черепахе… Поражает ослепление людей, всегда совершающих одно и то же. Меня также удивляет, почему служащий банка не съедает чек, мне удивительно, что художники раньше меня не додумались рисовать «мягкие часы»…

It was Salvador Dalí who said the red wine of Cadaqués has the bitter taste of tears.

Salí a pasear con Salvador. Una tarde me propuso: —Jeanne ¿no te inquieta saber si existe un más allá? —Imagino que lo habrá —Imaginar no sirve, es necesario SABERLO —Si, tienes razón Dalí se puso encantado con mi respuesta, tomó mis brazos con sus manos para mirarme fijamente en los ojos: —Mira Jeanne, existe una manera de saberlo. —¿Cuál? —La muerte. Vamos a hacer un experimento, si estás de acuerdo, te mato ahora mismo y si hay un más allá, te me apereces y me lo confirmas. —¡Estás loco! Mejor yo te mato a ti y tú te me apareces. No le gustó la idea. Al final decidimos que el que muriera primero le avisaría al otro. Hace un año que murió y no se me ha aparecido: o se olvidó del pacto, o no hay nada más...

A dandy," wrote Charles Baudelaire, "must be looking in his mirror at all times, waking and sleeping." Dali could easily have become the living proof of Baudelaire's dictum. But the literal mirror was not enough for him. Dali needed mirrors of many kinds: his pictures, his admirers, newspapers and magazines and television. And even that still left him unsatisfied. So one Christmas he took a walk in the streets of New York carrying a bell. He would ring it whenever he felt people were not paying enough attention to him. "The thought of not being recognised was unbearable." True to himself to the bitter end, he delighted in following Catalonian television's bulletins on his state of health during his last days alive (in Quiron hospital in Barcelona); he wanted to hear people talking about him, and he also wanted to know whether his health would revive or whether he would be dying soon. At the age of six he wanted to be a female cook - he specified the gender. At seven he wanted to be Napoleon. "Ever since, my ambition has been continually on the increase, as has my megalomania: now all I want to be is Salvador Dali. But the closer I get to my goal, the further Salvador Dali drifts away from me." He painted his first picture in 1910 at the age of six. At ten he discovered Impressionist art, and at fourteen the Pompiers (a 19th century group of academic genre painters, among them Meissonier, Detaille and Moreau). By 1927 he was Dali, and the poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca, a friend of his youth, wrote an 'Ode to Salvador Dali.' Years later Dali claimed that Lorca had been very attracted to him and had tride to sodomize him, but had not quite managed it. Dali's thirst for scandal was unquenchable. His parents had named him Salvador "because he was the chosen one who was come to save painting from the" deadly menace of abstract art, academic Surrealism, Dadaism, and any kind of anarchic "ism" whatsoever." If he had lived during the Renaissance, his genius would have been recognized at an earlier stage and indeed considered normal. But in the twentieth century, which Dali damned as stupid, he was thought provocative, a thorn in the flesh. To this day there are many who misunderstand the provocativeness and label him insane. But Dali repeatedly declared: "... the sole difference between me and a madman is the fact that I am not mad!" Dali also said: "The difference between the Surrealists and me is that I am a Surrealist" - which is perfectly true. And he also claimed: "I have the universal curiosity of Renaissance men, and my mental jaws are constantly at work.

But I was stuck for a long time by myself at Abraham Lincoln's portrait, standing in the middle of the huge hall as people moved all around me with mostly children. I felt as if time had stopped as I watched Lincoln, facing him, while watching the woman’s back as she was looking out the window. I felt wronged, so much like Truman from the movie, standing there in the middle of the museum alone. I was wondering what would Abraham Lincoln do if he realized he was the slave in his own cotton fields, being robbed by evil thieves, nazis. I had taken numerous photos of Martina from behind, as well as silhouettes of her shadow. I remember standing there, watching as she stood in front of the window; it was almost as if she was admiring the view of the mountains from our new home, as I did take such pictures of her, with a very similar composition to that of the female depicted in the iconic Lincoln portrait looking outwards from the window. I hadn't realized how many photographs I snapped of Martina with her back turned towards me while we travelled to picturesque places. Fernanda and I walked side-by-side in utter silence, admiring painting after painting of Dali's, without exchanging a single word. Meanwhile, Luis and Martina had got lost somewhere in the museum. When I finally found her, she was taking pictures outside of the Rainy Cadillac. We both felt something was amiss without having to say it, as Fernanda knew things I didn't and vice versa. We couldn't bring ourselves to discuss it though, not because we lacked any legal authority between me and Martina, but because neither Fernanda or myself had much parental authority over the young lady. It felt like when our marriages and divorces had dissolved, it was almost as if our parenting didn't matter anymore. It was as if I were unwittingly part of a secret screenplay, like Jim Carrey's character in The Truman Show, living in a fabricated reality made solely for him. I was beginning to feel a strange nauseous feeling, as if someone was trying to force something surreal down my throat, as if I were living something not of this world, making me want to vomit onto the painted canvas of the personalised image crafted just for me. I couldn't help but wonder if Fernanda felt the same way, if she was aware of the magnitude of what was happening, or if, just like me, she was completely oblivious, occasionally getting flashes of truth or reality for a moment or two. I took some amazing photographs of her in Port Lligat in Dali's yard in the port, and in Cap Creus, but I'd rather not even try to describe them—they were almost like Dali's paintings which make all sense now. As if all the pieces are coming together. She was walking by the water and I was walking a bit further up on the same beach on pebbles, parallel to each other as we walked away from Dali's house in the port. I looked towards her and there were two boats flipped over on the two sides of my view. I told her: “Run, Bunny! Run!

Let's go over to Salvador Dali's suite at the St. Regis Hotel for a nightcap." This sounded like a surreal idea to me.