SALVADOR DALI

"A lot of the great trends in art were things Dali anticipated. He was doing benday dot paintings before Lichtenstein, for example; he was doing shooting paintings before Niki de Saint Phalle; Coca-Cola and Mao before Warhol. There was this definite dialogue; he was the precursor to many things that are now esteemed in contemporary art. Even the merger of mass culture and high art — his Venus de Milo with Drawers from 1936, the Lobster Telephone (1936) — bring in commercial objects and say they are worthy of being high art."(Ted) Gott agrees and says that while Dali was living in the St Regis Hotel in Chelsea (which he did for six months of the year from 1949-79, renting an apartment with a studio) he would regularly hold court in the King Cole Bar downstairs."It basically became Dali's private bar," he says. "That's where he would meet all of these people. Andy Warhol and he became quite good friends; he was visited by (James) Rosenquist, Chuck Close — and a teenage Jeff Koons. Even though the official art world in many ways turned against Dali … at the same time you find this older statesman being appreciated by younger artists yet to make their mark."

-The Age
June 13 2009