Talk:Salvador Dalí

Drawing on check anecdote, bad source

The anecdote about Dali drawing on checks betting that the restaurant owner would not cash a original work by Dali in the Personality section has no real source. Only a link to an art authenticator service who themselves give no sources. Further, due to the link being improperly archived, the page does not mention the check anecdote at all. In a reddit thread from 10 years ago someone posted the text from the authenticator service which the article was attempting to source from. Long story short, the webpage itself gave no sources of its own and, in fact, brought up the fact that a supposedly common Dali check drawing has never shown up at auction. I suggest the anecdote is removed if nobody is able to find a better source. Medibee (talk) 04:12, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

I support your change. Looks like an urban myth. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 23:54, 7 September 2023 (UTC)

Minor edit request

Hallo - with respect to 'There are two major museums devoted to Salvador Dalí's work: the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres, Spain, and the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.' Woukd someone with editing access either delete 'Spain' or add 'US' after 'Florida'. Danke. 2003:D3:FF14:3635:A521:98D8:C70E:6886 (talk) 17:43, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

The "U.S." was already present when this request was written. Mattdaviesfsic (talk) 18:31, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps IP 2003 meant the lead section? I have adjusted the wording and linking accordingly. Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 18:37, 30 December 2023 (UTC)

Babou

Babou was a male ocelot. The editors should refer to him as "he" rather than "it". 2A00:23C7:578C:2F01:39DD:B8FF:1A8:1D7 (talk) 15:14, 6 January 2024 (UTC)

Proposed change to lead

An editor has made three attempts to add the following sentence to the lead:

"Dalí's influence spans various facets of contemporary culture, having impacted fields such as art, popular culture, fashion, film, animation, advertising, photography, and literature."

I reverted the edit because the lead already contains this statement: "Dalí's artistic repertoire included painting, graphic arts, film, sculpture, design and photography, at times in collaboration with other artists. He also wrote fiction, poetry, autobiography, essays and criticism." There is no need to repeat the same information twice and the sources cited don't really establish much except that he practiced these fields.

Furthermore the lead should be a summary of the article as it stands. WP:LEAD. If the intention of the added sentence is to state as a fact that Dalí continues to be influential in these fields, then this should be added in the main part of the article with appropriate citations. (The current citations are incomplete and don't prove that Dalí continues to be influential in all these fields.) If there is a consensus to retain the new information it can then be summarised in the lead. This can be done by simply adding something like: "and continues to be influential in these fields" to the relevant sentence that already exists.

Happy to discuss Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 03:14, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

@Pboboc: Happy to discuss suggestions for compromise wording. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 03:16, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

I have combined and edited the two very similar sentences in the interests of economy. Happy to dicuss. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 22:56, 26 May 2024 (UTC)

Catalan person in the lead

Salvador Dalí was a person of Catalan origin with Spanish nationality. It is not debatable that Salvador Dalí was born in Catalonia, nor that he was Catalan. I propose to change the description in the lead to: Salvador Dalí was a Catalan painter etc. etc... from Spain. At no time am I saying that Salvador had Catalan nationality. I am describing a fact: He was Catalan. In numerous occasions he described himself as a Catalan. Panenkazo (talk) 11:16, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

Policy says otherwise: "The opening paragraph should usually provide context for that which made the person notable. In most modern-day cases, this will be the country, region, or territory where the person is currently a national or permanent resident; or, if the person is notable mainly for past events, where the person was such when they became notable." MOS:NATIONALITY

He is described as a Spanish painter and classified as such in almost all the reliable sources. He was of Spanish nationality and therefore the current description is correct. He was a Spanish painter born in Catalonia, Spain. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 11:59, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

1. Salvador Dalí become notable in Catalonia. His great fame becomes once dead at an international level. See Bio 1 and Bio 2.

2. He identifies as a Catalan and his social position was perceived as Catalan nationalist. Nobody talked about him like the Spanish painter until his death. See: [1] and [2]

3. I will change the lead description to: Salvador Dalí is spanish painter…… from Catalonia (For many administrators it is a consensus this description) and I will wait for a new consensus in this page to change it to Catalan (person) from Spain. It is no debate about this sentence. It's true. Panenkazo (talk) 12:31, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

• I think where a person's identity as Catalan is quite clear, some compromise involving Catalan and Spanish in the lead should be used. There is a faction of actual vandals who like to try and erase all mentions of Catalan on Wikipedia, and we shouldn't appease them, but we shouldn't give them anything more to delete than they already want to. And it's not incorrect to say "Spanish from Catalonia".
  Of course, there is much more to consider when we are dealing with people who 1. were around during periods when Catalonia had different levels of autonomy, and/or 2. who were/are involved in fields that could be said to be exclusively Catalan.
  Without offering an opinion, in Dalí's case, I believe many people would say that Dalí's artistic identity is part of a Catalan school. Dalí was not born in, but lived through, the Catalan Republic (1931) and the Autonomous Region of Catalonia (1931–1939) (inc. Revolutionary Catalonia from the end of the civil war until Catalonia was conquered by Franco in 1939), so for periods would have been considered 'only' Catalan. Kingsif (talk) 14:06, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

  A few points:

  1) It is irrelevant that there might be some people vandalising other articles. This article has been quite stable and correctly identifies Dali as a Spanish artist born in Catalonia, Spain.

  2) We are supposed to follow what the majority of reliable sources say. A simple google search will show that he is almost universally described as a Spanish surrealist.[3][4] (The only exceptions seem to be Catalonian nationalist websites such as Panenkazo cites above).

  3) Dali became notable as a Spanish surrealist. He is not most known as part of a "Catalan School", he became nationally and internationally famous after he moved to Madrid, lived in France, and started painting in a Surrealist style.

  4) He did not "live through" a period of Catalonian autonomy. He lived in Madrid and France during this period.

  5) There is no strong evidence that Dali identified as Catalonian rather than Spanish (or indeed as a cosmopolitan individualist). There is no doubt that he loved the region he was born in and that its landscapes inspired many of his paintings, but he certainly wasn't a Catalonian nationalist and was reviled by most Catalonians until recently. He only chose to move back to Spain when Franco was secured in power. He actively supported the Franco dictatorship during the period when Franco was suppressing Catalonian language, identity and political aspirations. Dali publicly congratulated Franco in 1975 when he executed 3 separatist terrorists saying, "Franco is the greatest hero of Spain." As a result, Dali's neighbours stoned his home and he had to flee Catalonia for the USA.

  6) Dali was a supporter of the Spanish monarchy. In his will, he left his works to the Spanish nation which alienated the regional Catalonian movement. It's only now, long after his death, that some Catalonian nationalists want to reinvent Dali as a Catalonian. [5] Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 00:15, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

  I will add that my objection to the phrasing, "Saldavor Dali was a Spanish surrealist artist from Catalonia" in the first sentence of the lead is that it is redundant. The very next sentence states that he was born in Catalonia Spain. There is no need to say this twice in the lead. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 02:02, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

Umm, it's far more accurate to say he was born in Figueres, to simple say the regional name is not so helpful to the reader. Besides he is both Spanish and Catalonian, why anyone wants to deny one or the other is absurd. Govvy (talk) 16:13, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

• I'm just going to comment that OP might want to be careful what he wishes for. I've noticed on Wikipedia that users (not saying it's him) quite often have a single purpose in shoe-horning and ethnicity into the first line of an article. And it's always for people of good reputation, never the bad. I can imagine that nobody would like to big-up the Galician origin of Mariano Rajoy and certainly not the Galician origin of Francisco Franco. Dalí made political statements and as stated above, they were strongly in favour of Francisco Franco, who cracked down on the Catalan culture. OP, do you really want to claim a man who will probably be "cancelled" soon? Unknown Temptation (talk) 17:32, 10 July 2024 (UTC)

  @Unknown Temptation: and @Aemilius Adolphin: I have to admit that your recent comments are at the same level of the works of Salvador Dalí: Surrealist. This is not about good or bad people, influential people or not, personal feelings or identity struggles. To defend my position and show that your comments are really absurd, I take ownership of other users' arguments shown in WikiProject Catalonia: @Catgirl: The word Catalan has been being systematically erased and replaced with only Spanish in the Wikipedia in Spanish and in some cases also in the Wikipedia in English. It is absolutely incomprehensible to me why this is being done, and seems rather hypocritical, as no-one would blink to have someone described as Scottish, Welsh or English - no-one replaces those statements with "British". Much the same is true of Quebecois, etc. It has even gotten to the point where in the biography of writers in Catalan, it's impossible to say so, except in the Catalan Wikipedia, thus concealing a very important aspect of a person's biography. Catalonia is a region of Spain (and also historically a small part of southern France). Why in the world can the person's provenance not be mentioned? It is very important. Catalans have an identity, within Spain, sure, but they exist, and they should be allowed to say so, and not silenced by people who think only "citizenship" (nationality as it appears on your passport) should be allowed to exist. @Davdde: Catalonia (Catalan-speaking territories) extends over 4 different European states: Spain, Andorra (where Catalan is the only official national language), France (Northern Catalonia, mostly covering the current "Département of the Pyrénées-Orientales"), and Italy/Sardinia (L'Alguer town). Many people from all those territories are identified and/or identify themselves primarily as "Catalans" independently of their concrete passport citizenship. The situation is akin to the Kurds case: Nobody would argue as generically reasonable to change all current Wikipedia entries about "Kurdish/Kurd" individuals to refer them by their "Turkey/Iran/Iraq/Syria/..." administrative citizenship (let alone given that their "citizenship state" is systematically suppressing their identity/cultural nation). Keeping the national/cultural/ethnic origin of an individual (in particular, in the case where the person is part of a national minority within the administrative state) is an important source of context and information in Wikipedia. Panenkazo (talk) 17:58, 10 July 2024 (UTC)