From the vaults: Dalí wrapping paper 1988
Reading Amanda Lear’s engaging out-of-print memoir My Life With Salvador Dalí brings back memories of a visit to the Dalí Theatre-Museum (“the largest surrealistic object in the world”) in Figueres in 1988.
In the tower of the museum, the “seedy old conjuror” (per the description by John Richardson in his waspish collection of art world pen portraits Sacred Monsters, Sacred Masters) was lying on his sickbed; Dalí died just a few months later, in January 1989.
The design of the wrapping paper provided for items bought in the gift shop included crowns, orbs and fleur-de-lys mixed with his signature and initials as well as that of his wife Gala, who had died a few years earlier.
While spending time in Spain a few years later, I was told that her domain – the Castle Of Púbol at Girona – became the venue for raves in the mid-90s.
How Catalan.
Though not a great admirer of his work, I, like many other adolescents, had been much taken with the rock-star presence Dalí wielded in the 70s via his associations with Lear and Alice Cooper, as well as such media appearances as the Aquarius documentary Hello Dalí, presented by the late Russell Harty and produced by one of the beacons of arts-based broadcasting at that time, Humphrey Burton.
Maybe that’s why a print of the 1944 portrait Galarina hangs over the desk where I write.