Dal

Painter, sculptor, writer, filmmaker, and all-round showman Salvador Dal (1904–1989) was one of the 20th century's greatest exhibitionists and eccentrics. One of the first artists to apply the insights of Freudian psychoanalysis to art, he is celebrated in particular for his surrealist practice, with such conceits as the soft watches or the lobster telephone, now hallmarks of the surrealist enterprise, and of modernism in general. Dal frequently described his paintings as hand-painted dream photographs. Their tantalizing tension and interest resides in the precise rendering of bizarre elements and incongruous arrangements. As Dal himself explained, he painted with the most imperialist fury of precision, but only to systematize confusion and thus to help discredit completely the world of reality.