"If Salvador Dalí's voice and discourse are characterized by their lyricism, on the other hand his writings are striking by their rawness.
The description of the bodies and the evocation of sexuality are confoundingly realistic and often touching in their simplicity. I couldn't help but be sensitive to it and it provided me with the starting point for a reflection which, in particular, links visual hyperacuity to onanism.
This book is an art critic's study that reveals the subterranean echo that Dalí's work has found among contemporary artists. We will see, on the paradoxes of narcissism, that it is also a small moral manual. My approach is objective because it is scrupulously based on the artist's writings as well as on his painted work. But I assume its subjective part, which is due to the ability I had to slip into the Dalí text.
If I have committed myself to this work, it is because this work, for a long time, has touched me deeply. I chose not to suppress or conceal this personal involvement. Isn't it the very driving force behind the understanding of a work?" Catherine Millet.
Dalí and Me is an account by art historian and controversial author Catherine Millet of a highly personal encounter with the artist’s celebrated paintings and self-reflective writings. One of the first studies of the notoriously idiosyncratic artist’s essays, this revolutionary book reveals all the narcissism, anxiety, and visual genius of the most famous—and infamous—of the surrealists.
Salvador Dalì’s (1904–89) surrealist paintings such as The Persistence of Memory and The Metamorphosis of Narcissus are internationally beloved for their unforgettable images and eccentric metaphors for the human condition. His lesser-known but equally intriguing writings, on the other hand, are remarkably coarse, describing human bodies and evocations of sexuality with a bewildering mixture of crude realism and naïve simplicity.
Based on years of scrupulous research into Dalì’s life and art yet deeply enriched by Millet’s autobiographical journey, this landmark volume uncovers the reverberations of Dalì’s influence on his friends and contemporaries. In its explorations of both Millet’s and Dalì’s inner workings, Dalì and Me ultimately becomes an argument in book form that personal involvement can be the key to understanding one of the most compelling oeuvres in art history.
