Dali Planet #131: Ecole Polytechnique
The 1960s, which began with this painting, “Birth of a Divinity”, were a decade seemingly made for someone like Dali, and he didn’t disappoint. He began by embracing videotape, making “Chaos and Creation” with Philippe Halsman — piglets, motorcycles, a pair of models and Dali explaing on the phone to a museum curator why he was such a better painter than Piet Mondrian. The Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night” was not long in following his lead.
At the Ecole Polytechnique in December 1961, wearing his “Dioscures Helmet”, Dali lectured the studious and the curious on the legend of Castor and Pollux, a story he took to heart as a mirror image of himself and his own brother, who died before he was born, and extended the fable to his relationship with Gala.
