Why George Orwell called Salvador Dali a "disgusting human being"

[mindfu]

Worthy.

[L0ki]

@GulliverFoyle

And I think you’re correct, but Jones’ own article could afford to be clearer that it’s exclusively preoccupied with Orwell’s view of Dalí and not Dalí’s own life, as the ample confusion in this thread demonstrates.

I fully accept that standards of reading comprehension can differ but I really don’t see how much more the author could have done.

I mean, it’s right there in the title of the article and the text of the article makes it equally clear.

@GulliverFoyle

This seems loaded. Others can speak for themselves, but I never called Dalí a terrible person. I did call him a severely troubled man, which I freely admit is my opinion based on what I’ve read of his singular life, and I further suggested a source in support of the opinion so others could come to their own conclusions about what sort of man he was.

Granted - that part of my post was harking back to the proposition at the beginning of my post. A hazard of trying to reply to multiple things/people in the same post.

@GulliverFoyle

Perhaps. But I saw someone linking to a passage in the autobiography and inaccurately summarizing it, and my inner pedant rebelled. Best possible use of time? Probably not.

Pedantry is fine (and yours in this case was perfectly so).

The argument that the article is rubbish because it supposedly gets minor details of the alleged incidents wrong was just so missing the basic point of the article and the essay that it hurt my head.

I appreciate that you weren’t making that claim and I should have been clearer. Mea culpa.

[Sludge]

I don’t think it’s possible to delve into his psyche without reference to his dead brother. From Six surreal facts from the life of Salvador Dali:

When Dalí was five-years-old, he was taken to the grave of his brother and told by his parents that he was the incarnation of his older sibling. His older brother, also named Salvador, had died almost nine months to the day before Dalí was born. Dalí came to believe he was his older brother’s reincarnation and featured him in several of his paintings, including Portrait of My Dead Brother.

[anon14640701]

@MaiqTheLiar

Third rate graphic artist who got away with calling himself a painter is an awful person.

I know right? You should have seen the bastard’s ungodly excuse for knife sharpening. Didn’t even use a whetstone.

[Heraclito]

@ChuckV

I don’t know why everyone’s wasting their time on this when the real scandal is Mencken’s take on Klee.

@ChuckV Was this a joke? If not, please let me know more. If so, it’s funny and even funnier because you’ve just wasted some of my employer’s valuable time on a completely unproductive Internet search.

[Mister44]

OH shit, not the knife sharping debate. Hit the deck, @Medievalist incoming!

[Grey_Devil]

[Richard_Kirk]

Oh, I know this one. Don’t press play. Trust me on this one.

[FGD135]

[ProfessorDumb]

@L0ki

As for why bring it up now (and it’s really not about picking sides in a ‘feud’), it’s reasonable to bring it up because it is a previous attempt at solving the conundrum of how to deal with the work produced by flawed human beings which a number of people are apparently currently struggling with.

I guess we just wait until the people involved are all dead and then say “Well he probably wasn’t that bad you know.”

[Medievalist]

Bah, I wanna hear about Mencken and Klee!

[petr]

According to many women who knew him Picasso was a sociopath and rapist.

[localhost]

I’ve gotten to visit Picassos birth place museum:

Picasso Birthplace Museum | Casa Natal Picasso Malaga | Andalucia.com

It’s interesting because it full of a bunch of shitty paintings and drawings. It all the stuff that was never famous and just the stuff he failed with. It brings a lot of humanity to him.

[wait_really]

@GyroMagician

A paintbrush?

Couldn’t help it

but I agree

[ChuckV]

@Heraclito

Was this a joke? If not, please let me know more. If so, it’s funny and even funnier because you’ve just wasted some of my employer’s valuable time on a completely unproductive Internet search.

Alas, yes.

[tekk]

George Bush is a painter. Not a good painter, but he seems to get some enjoyment out of it so good on him for that, just, you know, fuck him for the war crimes, the economic fuckery, the human rights violations, etc.

Also you can’t just link one bush painting:
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/04/04/article-2596874-1CD4094A00000578-341_306x423.jpg http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/74050000/jpg/_74050416_paintingscomp.jpg http://america.aljazeera.com/content/ajam/opinions/2014/4/george-w-bush-paintingsputinblairdiplomacy/jcr:content/mainpar/textimage_3/image.adapt.990.high.bush_painting_merkel.1397287738831.jpg

[Beanolini]

@Gyrofrog

Thant changed once I came across “A Nice Cup of Tea.”

‘The Moon under Water’ as well.

@FGD135

Instead of ‘It sucks’ you could say, ‘It doesn’t speak to me.’

I have a terrible feeling I might actually have said that to my kids…

[Heraclito]

@ChuckV

Alas, yes.

It doesn’t matter now. What is important is that there ought to be a Mencken commentary on Klee. I hope to release it into the wild within the week.

[anon61221983]

Counter point!

https://timedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/ursula-le-guin-dead.jpg(image larger than 4096KB)

And another…

Not to mention…

[Rita_Lynn]

I was never, ever a fan of Jackson Pollock and thought him an overrated turd until I saw this piece about him:

https://youtu.be/1U19VOF4qfs

They say something about how he has a distinct awareness of the edge of all things, including his canvas. That really struck a chord for me. There’s a lot more technique and emotion in his work than I had appreciated before.