18 Unbelievably Weird Stories Most People Don't Know About Salvador Dali
- Photo: Joseph Pichot / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
He Was Taught To Believe He Was His Older Brother’s Reincarnation
The weirdness in Salvador Dalí’s life began almost instantly. Dalí had an older brother, also named Salvador, who was born just nine months before him but had died very early in life. Dalí’s parents once took him to his brother’s grave, and they told him that he was his brother’s reincarnation. This seems like a great way to mess up your child, and the results kind of speak for themselves. Dalí reportedly carried this belief with him for the rest of his life.
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As A Child, He Tried To Murder His Friend
Salvador Dalí could be a downright jerk when he wanted to, a personality trait that definitely started young. Dalí had a thing for masochistic pain, and he loved to throw himself down the stairs for no apparent reason. He also liked inflicting pain on others, and in one memorable incident, he randomly pushed his friend off a 15-foot high bridge and onto jagged rocks below. The friend was badly injured, but Dalí apparently showed no remorse, smiling as his friend’s mother tended to his wounds. Dalí even felt comfortable enough to sit there, eating cherries, as his friend lost copious amounts of blood.
- Photo: Carl Van Vechten / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
He Bit Right Into An Ant-Covered Bat
Sometimes, Dalí’s behavior went straight into crazy rock star territory. He was doing Ozzy Osbourne impressions long before Ozzy was even born. As a child, Dalí took in a wounded bat that he found and made it a resting spot in his family’s warehouse. Sounds sweet, right? When he returned the next day, however, Dalí found the bat being devoured by a mass of ants. Rather than being distraught, Dalí impulsively picked up the bat and bit into it and the ants, because apparently that seemed like the thing to do. Dalí found the experience quite pleasurable, and ants would continue to show up in his artwork thereafter.
- Photo: Gilberto Gomes / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 3.0
He Instigated An Art School Riot
Dalí’s precocious talents soon gained him the attention of several institutions, and he found himself attending art school at a young age. He had his first public exhibition at the age of 14, but he made more of a name for himself with his eccentricity. At art school in Madrid, he dressed bizarrely, wearing outrageously large sideburns and mimicking the style of 19th-century English aesthetes. He also became politically active; although it’s questionable how much of that was true belief and how much was Dalí wanting to cause a ruckus. He was suspended from school in 1923 for instigating a riot, and later that year, he was arrested for the first time for supposedly supporting a Separatist movement.
- Photo: Jack Mitchell / Wikimedia / CC BY-SA 4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0
He Sold Fake Hair To Yoko Ono To Avoid Witchcraft
Oddity tends to attract oddity, and so Salvador Dalí found himself within the same social circles as Yoko Ono, infamous wife of John Lennon. Ono requested that Dalí send her a clipping from his famous mustache, but Dalí wasn’t exactly happy to comply. She upped the offer to $10,000 for a strand of hair, and then Dalí was on board, but he still didn’t want to send her any actual hair. Instead, he rigged up a blade of grass to look like preserved hair, and sent that to her. His reason? Dalí seriously suspected that Ono would use the hair for witchcraft and wanted to trick her just in case.
He Had A Sort Of Sexual Thing For Hitler
Franco was not the only fascist who gained Dalí’s attention and admiration. He also had quite the thing for Hitler. That’s not a euphemism, either, as Dalí was quite up front about his sexual attraction to the Fuhrer. He claimed that Hitler turned him on and that he dreamed of Adolf in the same way that most men dreamed about women. There’s a good chance that Dalí was mainly saying these things for shock value, but he also didn’t seem to have much problem with the things Hitler was doing in Germany.
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He Once Invited Cher To An Orgy
It’s amazing that so much of Dalí’s bizarre behavior was non-sexual, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t have some kinks, too. Dalí and his wife Gala loved to host orgies, and they did so regularly. These events attracted a great number of important guests, including major artists and celebrities. In fact, Cher found herself invited to one such gathering, albeit unknowingly. Cher clued in to what was going on when she picked up what she thought was a child’s toy, and Dalí mentioned how nice it would feel on her nether regions. Cher bailed, but countless others came and went.
He Stole His Friend’s Wife
Naturally, Dalí’s love life was rife with controversy. Dalí fell head over heels for Elena Ivanovna Diakonova, a Russian woman better known as Gala. The two started a torrid love affair, but there was a slight problem, as Gala was already married to Dali’s friend and fellow painter Paul Eluard. Gala was 10 years older than Dalí, but that didn’t stop him from stealing the woman from his colleague’s arms. Oddly enough, Eluard didn’t really seem to mind, and he remained close with Dalí and Gala thereafter (and it's rumored that be remained one of Gala's many extramarital lovers). Other Surrealists saw her as a bit of a Yoko Ono figure, however.
He Publicly Claimed He Was Impotent And Scared Of Women's Bodies
Despite his marriage to Gala and intense attraction to women and their bodies, Dalí publicly maintained that he was terrified of women's genitalia. He was so afraid, he said, that he remained impotent and claimed to have been a virgin until he met Gala. He did take sexual pleasure in exposing Gala's body to others, however, and he was apparently totally fine with her many obvious extramarital sexual flings. Whether or not his impotence and virginity were fact or Dalí fiction remains up in the air; however, isn't the claim weird enough?
- Photo: Carl Van Vechten / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
While Traveling, He Tied All His Paintings To Himself With A String
Salvador Dalí knew how to make an impression. His second visit to New York, in 1934, hit the city like a hurricane. First, he made a scene by wearing a life jacket for his entire journey to New York and also attaching all of his paintings to himself via a string, which had to be annoying for the crew. When he got off the boat, Dalí waved a two-meter-long loaf of bread at the paparazzi. Finally, Dalí courted controversy at an exhibition in his honor by wearing a glass case over his chest, revealing a brassiere underneath.
- Photo: Ara Güler / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 3.0
He Was Kicked Out Of Surrealism For Allegedly Supporting Fascism
Salvador Dalí is considered by most to be the definitive Surrealist, but don’t tell that to the other Surrealists. A large group of them once held a mock trial against Dalí and formally kicked him out of the movement. How one would enforce such a ban is hard to say, but the group felt strongly enough about the matter to make their point. His fellow artists were mainly concerned with Dalí’s fascination with fascism and Francisco Franco, which also included his dalliances with one Adolf Hitler. In the late 1930s, Dalí not only painted The Enigma of Hitler, but he also claimed to have dreamed of Hitler and once wrote that "Hitler turned [him] on." For his part, Dalí denied being a Nazi and fascist sympathizer.
He Almost Suffocated To Death While Delivering A Lecture In A Scuba Suit
Sometimes, Dalí’s eccentricity got him in trouble. Mostly, this was due to others’ opinions of him, but on one occasion, he nearly died. Dalí delivered a lecture in 1936 titled “Fantomes Paranoiaques Athentiques,” or “Authentic Paranoid Ghosts.” He performed this while walking around with two Russian wolfhounds and wearing a full diving suit, an outfit meant to represent how he was “plunging into the depths” of human subconscious. Dalí became overheated in the suit, however, and he nearly suffocated before someone noticed and intervened. Given that he showed up in a scuba suit, most people likely thought the 'drowning' was just part of the show.
- Photo: Wikimedia Commons
He Had A Pet Ocelot Named Babou
Fans of TV’s Archer will be shocked to discover that Salvador Dalí also had a pet ocelot named Babou. Like the fictional Babou, Dalí’s pet was every bit the wild animal one would expect it to be, and it was known to frighten passersby. Dalí delighted in explaining to people that the ocelot was actually just a normal house cat that he had painted in an artistic style (which was totally false). Despite the difficulties in raising an ocelot, Dalí seemed to truly care for the creature, which is more than can be said of his feelings for most people.
- Photo: Herr uberman / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 3.0
He Accidentally Made His Secretaries Into Millionaires
Sometimes, Salvador Dalí’s bizarreness wasn’t even intentional. Such was the case when he accidentally made several of his employees into millionaires. Dalí was a notorious cheapskate, and, early on, he didn’t want to pay his secretaries a salary, so he compensated them with commissions on his artwork. This method of payment was relatively worthless at the time and essentially rendered the secretaries unpaid interns, but those commissions would eventually gain a lot of value. Several of his employees later cashed in their holdings for seven-figure returns, which probably makes their earlier working conditions worth it.
- Photo: Allan Warren / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 3.0
He Once Drove 1,000 Pounds Of Cauliflowers From Spain To Paris In A Rolls Royce
Salvador Dalí was often weird just for the sake of weirdness. Among his favorite things in life were cauliflowers, which are great but a weird thing to deeply love. He once drove around in Paris in a limo, handing cauliflowers to random people. But that wasn’t even his strangest cauliflower stunt. On another occasion, Dalí loaded up a Rolls Royce with 1,000 lbs of the stuff and drove them all the way from Spain to Paris. This was to make some sort of point; although no one can really say what it was.
- Photo: Philippe Halsman / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
He Created One Of His Most Famous Works By Repeatedly Throwing Cats In The Air
One of the most famous works in Dalí’s collection isn’t a painting at all but a photograph. Dali Atomicus features Dalí, a chair, and some paintings all dangling in the air, which is filled with flying cats and water. The piece looks photoshopped, but it was created long before computer editing was possible. Dalí got the shot the old-fashioned way, by having assistants throw cats and water at him until the image was perfect. It reportedly took dozens of takes, which had to be fun for the person who had to round up the cats, to say nothing of the cats themselves.
He Lost It All In 1974 To Shady Business Managers
Salvador Dalí lived long enough and was prolific enough to earn quite a fortune over his career. In 1974, however, he had a falling out with longtime British business manager Peter Moore, and that left him vulnerable. Other business types soon sold the rights to Dalí’s artwork right out from under him, leaving him nearly broke. Fortunately for Dalí, he still had many friends in the art world, and they fundraised to put him back on his feet again. Before long, Dalí was living comfortably and generating more artwork.
- Photo: Zbigniew Kresowaty / Wikimedia Commons / Open Content
When Dali Was Exhumed In 2017, His Mustache Was Fully Intact
The remains of artist Salvador Dali were exhumed from his grave at the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres, Spain in 2017 as part of an inquiry into paternity. Samples from Dali's hair, fingernails, and teeth were taken without issue, but the forensics experts who worked with Dali's body were surprised by one unique finding. When they looked upon Dali's remains, they marveled at a mustache that "preserved its classic 10-past-10 position." The dcotor who embalmed Dali when he died in 1989, Narcis Bardalet called it, "a miracle."
In the end, DNA tests revealed Dali was not the father of a woman who claimed to be his daughter. María Pilar Abel Martínez believed Dali she was the product of an affair between her mother and the eccentric artist. In a statement issued by the Dali Foundation, the results, "put an end to an absurd and artificial controversy."
