Maniac Eyeball: The Unspeakable Confessions of Salvador Dali (SOLAR ART DIRECTIVES 3)
HOW TO CONQUER PARIS I was dreaming not of love but of glory, and I knew that the road to success led through Paris. But in 1927 Paris was far from Figueras, far away, mysterious, and big. I landed there one morning with my sister and aunt, to judge its distance and size, as a boxer does during a round of studying his opponent. First I discovered Versailles (and continued to like the Escorial better) and the musty Musee Gravin waxworks. My self-confidence increased daily, but nothing essential had been accomplished. What I needed was the accolade of the only Parisian who mattered in my eyes: Pablo Picasso. I had carefully prepared my way to him. I knew that Picasso had seen one of my paintings in Barcelona, Muchacha de Espaldes (Rear View Of A Girl; known in English as Girl's Shoulder or Girl's Back), and had liked it: he had mentioned it to his dealer, Paul Rosenberg, who had written me out of the blue to ask for some photographs of my work. I had asked a friend of Lorca's, the Cuban painter Manuel Angel Ortiz, to take me to Picasso's studio. As soon as I got to 23 Rue La Botie, I knew those two jet-black button eyes of his had recognized me. I was "the other one" - the only one able to stand up to him. (In truth, now I know the world was a little too small for the two of us. Fortunately, I was still young!) I respectfully tendered a gift to him, another Figueras muchacha such as the one he had appreciated, and it took me quite a while to extricate it from its mummy's wrappings; but it was a real live painting that came out of the diapers and it seemed to me that as he looked at it, it took on a sudden new life. Picasso spent a long while, scrutinizing it minutely, and it had never looked finer to me. From that minute on, he was at great pains to dazzle me. My opening agitation was now replaced by assurance, as he took me into his studio on the floor above and for two hours kept displaying his paintings for me, the largest as well as the smallest, which he put on his easel. He went to and fro, choosing, weighing, setting up, silent and quick, stepping back, carefully inspecting his own genius but dancing his courtship dance for me alone and looking at me with long looks of complicity. We each knew who we were. Our mutual silence was charged with an electricity of the highest potential...