Robert Goff

Full Book Review: https://thebeerthrillers.com/2022/12/11/book-review-the-essential-salvador-dali-...

As I said earlier, and as I said in my review for The Essential Pablo Picasso (which you can read here: Book Review: The Essential Pablo Picasso by Ingrid Schaffner), I am not a huge ‘artsy fartsy smartsy’ kinda guy. I know some art, and I have seen my share of artwork (I know it when I see it), but I’m not the most intelligent about it. I took an Art Class in college (at HACC), and Amy and I did go to the Van Gogh Interactive Experience in Philadelphia this year – but still, my knowledge and understanding of art is pretty limited. I can understand (or guess) some symbols and meaning, but a lot will go over my head. I will freely admit all of this.

So books like this and The Essential Pablo Picasso and other art themed books I’ve been reading this year and the past two or three years, have been my attempts to educate myself a bit more on the subject. This is a great little, quick, easy read that helped me better understand Salvador Dali himself, and his artwork. It gives a run down of his life, as well as little off topic – but related – subject interests like his friendship with Lorca, his wife Gala, his homelife growing up, his place of birth, the Surrealism movement itself, etc. There is also artwork on nearly every other page with descriptions of the piece of work as well, which also helps get a better understanding of Dali and his works.

This was written (by Robert Goff) by someone who loves / loved and enjoys / enjoyed Salvador Dali and his works. Its not biased though, and doesn’t come off as a fanboy gushing; but as a descriptive look back over his life and works, but the ending shows why the author thinks that Dali is still worth considering, looking at, and appreciating; versus how some like Breton say he’s not worth looking into (and thats most likely due to personal reasons from Dali’s falling out with the Surrealism group)......

You can read the full book review here:

Book Review: The Essential Salvador Dali (Robert Goff)
https://thebeerthrillers.com/2022/12/11/book-review-the-essential-salvador-dali-...… (mere)

Being an attempt to elucidate with great brevity the art and life of the renowned Dali in a small-format book . The author achieves his goal pretty well, though the illustrations of the art are usually too small for any great aesthetic appreciation to be had, and it's not unusual for them to be too small to illustrate the points that he is making. He digs deep to interpret only a few of the paintings, and as for the interpretations themselves, they are often helpful, though I do wish he had gone into the 'why' of 'this represents that' instead of settling for just 'this represents that'; most of the semiotics were far from intuitive, at least to me.… (mere)