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# 10 LOVE #
Myojo 2007.04



On New Year's Eve last year, I went to an art exhibition of Salvador Dalí before the Countdown Live. It's not as if I particularly like art. I'm also not some of those fashionable people who frequent museums. But I do have an interest in this man called Dalí. I think everyone has at least once seen one of his works. His art is clearly different from other painters, with its three-dimensional and unconventional style. I'm no expert in these things, but I like this person who was regarded as a child of heresy.

Eyes wide open with a curled mustache.
Like these looks convey, he was a popular and charming character. I digress a bit from the topic, but it actually was Dalí who designed the logo of the famous lolipop Chupa Chups. Apparently he got the request for the logo at a restaurant and sat down to do the design right then and there on a paper napkin. And that became the logo of this lolipop that is loved throughout the world. Ne, isn't that charming?

His most important works are also unbelievably realistic for oil paintings, and his strange style that in those paintings makes one feel the cruelty of the world has a strong impact on people (of course, he has also painted normal wonderful pictures). His works have been described as surrealistic, as monomanic and critical, but I don't really get the meaning of those words - his pictures just attract me with their strange charm.

I wanted to know more about Dalí. So I went and studied him a bit. When I did, I stumbled over the name of a woman again and again who just can't be ignored when it comes to Dalí. Gala Éluard. Dalí's wife. If she hadn't been with him, apparently Dalí would never have become the grand personality he was. For Dalí, Gala was his beloved woman, his holy mother, but she was also his protector, his ruler and his manager.

Gala was the wife of a famous poet whom Dalí knew. Dalí had fallen deeply for Gala, and he actually robbed the poet of his wife!! The two of them got married and Dalí loved Gala until the end of his days. Clap clap. ... well, so far that was a great(?) love story, but one cannot really say that Gala also continued to love Dalí wholeheartedly. Of course, they were both lovey-dovey. But Gala was a girl who had many affairs (well, girl, she was ten years older than Dalí). Even when she had become a senile old woman, she associated with young male artists. Dalí was worried about her, but he continued to love her to the point that it was abnormal. Proof for that are the countless works of Dalí which feature Gala as motif. In his pictures often appears a woman on crutches, in other words Gala. Dalí even opened an art museum for her sake. But well, apparently Gala didn't set a foot into it even once...

Without expecting anything in return, Dalí loved this woman for the rest of his life. I wonder if love beautiful to such an extent really exists? If it was me, if I didn't have the feeling that my partner loved me back, I wouldn't be able to love this person, I guess. No matter how madly I was in love, if that person didn't turn to me, my feelings would start to cool.

Dalí continued to produce art to show his love for Gala. But as a result, his art touched the hearts of many people. Maybe someone creates art to express his love with all his heart, then this art becomes a stimulus for someone else who in turn creates his own piece of art for the person he loves. This mixture of love becomes the nurturing ground for new art. Someday I want to meet my fated someone, the person I can continue to love my whole life. It would be great if at that time I could express my love in an equally charming way as Dalí did.

Translated by riccichan

* Do not repost/retranslate w/o permission *

Labels: Kato Shigeaki, ROCK STAR