AILSA CHANG, HOST:
The surrealist artist Salvador Dali was from Spain, but a new exhibit at the Dali Museum in Florida argues it was America that made him a celebrity. Cathy Carter from member station WUSF takes us there.
CATHY CARTER, BYLINE: Salvador Dali first came to the United States in 1934. When his ship docked in New York Harbor, the press was waiting. As cameras clicked, the artist dramatically untied a painting strapped to his chest, revealing a nude portrait of his wife, Gala. Resting on her shoulders was a pair of lamb chops.
JENNIFER COHEN: So he really came to the United States with a real understanding of mass media and exploited it from Day 1.
CARTER: Jennifer Cohen is a head curator at The Dali Museum, and she says the nation's 250th birthday is a good time to lean into Dali's ties to America. The artist returned to the U.S. frequently. And for eight years, he lived here full-time after escaping Europe during World War II. Hank Hine, the museum's longtime director, says America offered Dali a fresh canvas for his wild imagination.
HANK HINE: He loved the possibilities, the energy, the resources. All these things were so antithetical to the life in Europe. So he was thrilled by America.
CARTER: Dali turned up in museum shows, on Broadway as a costume designer and in storefronts along New York's Fifth Avenue. A Dali-designed window display for the department store Bonwit Teller in 1939 included a mannequin with a head made of roses and an early prototype of his now-famous Lobster Telephone. By the 1950s, Dali was seemingly everywhere in American pop culture. In the exhibit, videos show his TV appearances, from late-night talk shows to the guessing game "What's My Line?"
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "WHAT'S MY LINE?")
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Have you a mustache that is rather well-known? In fact, could you be almost caricatured just by that?
SALVADOR DALI: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Oh. Well, thank you, Arlene. Are you Salvador Dali?
JOHN DALY: Salvador Dali is right.
(APPLAUSE)
CARTER: And he was a much-used pitchman, selling products from Alka-Seltzer to an airline.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED NARRATOR: Whitey Ford and his new friend, Salvador Dali, always fly Braniff. They like our food, they like our style and they like to be on time.
DALI: When you got it, flaunt it.
WHITEY FORD: Tell them, Dali, baby.
CARTER: The artist also conquered Hollywood and worked with Alfred Hitchcock and Walt Disney. While living for a time in California, Dali and Gala often threw extravagant surrealist dinner parties, as reported in this 1941 newsreel.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED NEWSREEL NARRATOR: A puzzled guest, Bob Hope, sees the fish course served in satin slippers. Presumably, the fish is sole.
CARTER: For roughly four decades, Dali lived at the St. Regis Hotel in New York City during annual monthslong stays. He continued to paint here until failing health marked his return to Spain in the 1980s. Today, Dali remains one of the art world's most famous figures. Museum director Hine says that's thanks to a pair of influences - one, his wife, Gala, and the other, the United States.
HINE: And without those two, he would have been a moderately respected landscape painter in the coast of Spain, seen by very few people.
CARTER: Now the largest collection of Dali's paintings outside of Europe is in St. Petersburg. And as guests exit the show, they can see one of Dali's sentiments painted in big bold letters. It reads, only America had enough fresh intelligence and available energy to fulfill my hypertrophic self. For NPR News, I'm Cathy Carter in St. Petersburg, Florida.
(SOUNDBITE OF MAGGIE BJORKLUND'S "MISSING AT SEA") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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