Final wax for moustache as Dali is preserved

Press, 25 January 1989, Page 10

Final wax for moustache as Dali is preserved

NZPA-Reuter Figueras, Spain The surrealist, Salvador Dali, who stunned the world with his dream-like paintings and extravagant lifestyle, died with a flourish — demanding that his body be preserved for posterity. His body goes on display today with controversy still raging over his place in the history of art. Dali’s butler, Arturo Caminada, wept as he waxed for the last time the famous moustache of the painter who died in hospital on Monday, aged 84. Doctor Narcis Bardolet then began embalming the body of the flamboyant artist, and said his technique would preserve it for up to 300 years. The Mayor of Figueras, Mariano Lorca, said Dali had asked him privately two months ago to have his body embalmed and buried under the centre of the

huge steel and glass dome of his art museum. Dali’s body will be put on public display until the funeral this afternoon (local time). Workers started preparing his grave, including a tombstone with no name, two days before he died. Controversy raged about the last of a generation of surrealist painters who took the art world by storm in the 19305. An exhibitionist who loved to shock, Dali sought to impose a hallucinatory vision on reality and transform it with fantastic shapes and juxtapositions. The French Culture Minister, Jack Lang, called him a giant. Art dealers and critics accused him of flooding the market with cheap reproductions and failing to stop the sale of fakes. A New York art dealer, Richard Feiger, called him “a sad social climbing figure.”