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Dali Magazine Mall, The Villages, FL (2025)

10/02/2024

The End of the Road

All good things must come to an end, and this is the end of my posting daily Salvador Dali related stories on this page. It has been a pleasant venture for me, and I hope for you as well. This is my 619th and final post. Because of my wife’s health issues, I find that I no longer have the time necessary to devote to this project.

I sincerely appreciate and thank each of my 559 followers from all around the world for their support. It has been my pleasure to bring you these little stories!

Kermit Heim

10/01/2024

Epilog

Lee Miller Suffered
Don’t forget that when she was seven years old she was r***d by an acquaintance. She was abused by her father as a child. His abuse continued even into her adult life. Shown here are two photos by Man Ray of Lee and her father in Man’s Paris studio in 1930. Also on that trip her father took her to Sweden where he took the third photo shown here.

As a war correspondent she saw and photographed the horrors of war and the horror of the German prison camps. After the war she suffered bouts of post-traumatic stress disorder and bouts of alcoholism.

In W magazine her son Anthony describes his childhood as "It's not easy to have a relationship with an alcoholic parent... She was normally a very generous, sensitive and kind person, but when drunk she would be verbally abusive and cutting... She never hit me—she didn't need to. She could do all the damage with words."

He became distant from his mother and they never talked about her former life. It was not until after her death in 1977 that he discovered who his mother really was. There in their attic were boxes and boxes of her photographs, negatives and old issues of Vogue magazine. The cache contained 60,000 negatives and 20,000 vintage prints. Until then he says “I'd seen her as a booze-soaked, hysterical woman. I had to re-evaluate my entire attitude to her.” Even her husband (now Sir Roland Penrose) did not know about her early abuse. He said “I wish we'd known—it would have enabled us to understand."

Now thanks to her son and the Lee Miller foundation and archives that her son founded, those boxes in her attic have enabled all of us to come to know her and celebrate her life.

09/30/2024

Act IV Lee Miller Gourmet

Beginning in the 1960’s Miller becomes serious about food and cooking. She was introduced to fine dining in the 1930’s by Man Ray. She is quoted as saying “Man Ray taught me how to eat,” She enrolls in the Cordon Bleu school in Paris for six months and took an advanced Cordon Bleu course in London in 1961.

Her kitchen at Farley Farm appears quite warm and comfortable. In the kitchen and around her table sat some of the most prolific artist of the 20th century – Picasso, Miro and Man Ray. Picasso even made a tile for her that hangs on her kitchen wall.

Cooking replaced modeling and photography. She says “cooking is therapy”. It helped her fight her episodes of depression and alcoholism. Photography was a reminder of traumatic times. Perhaps that is why this prolific photographer never documented her work with food.

In 1976 Lee was diagnosed with cancer and died on July 21, 1977 at Farley house. Her home and beloved kitchen is now a museum and archive open to the public.

Her granddaughter Ami Bouhassane compiled almost 100 of Lee Miller’s recipes and made them into a book. Miller also is featured in a movie about her life.

Lee miller model, photographer, war correspondent and gourmet chef was certainly an extraordinary person.

Up Next : Epilogue

09/29/2024

Act III – War Correspondent

At the outbreak of the war Lee renews her ties with Vogue Magazine. She begins taking photos of the destruction and life in England and odd as it may seem, she took wartime fashion photos. In 1941 a book of her photos titled Grim Glory – Pictures of Britain Under Fire was produced. It showed the destruction caused by the German bombings.

Vogue Magazine was under pressure to justify it paper rationing. Life magazine photographer David Scherman suggested the magazine make Lee an accredited war correspondent for Vogue. In December of 1942 she becomes accredited. Pictured are the six accredited women war correspondents. Lee is the second from the right.

These women were expected to stay away from the front lines but Lee broke that rule on numerous occasions. During this period her photos and stories appeared in numerous issues of Vogue. The magazine featured fashion as well as war news and was able to maintain their paper ration.

In 1944 with the Liberation of Paris, she was there and announced to the world that Pablo Picasso had survived the occupation and was alive and well. You can see in the photo the happiness as two old friends meet once again.

In 1945 her book WRENS in Camera (The Women's Royal Naval Service) came out.

In 1945 as the war in Europe was about to end, Lee was at the front lines when the allies pushed into Germany. On the day Hi**er committed su***de she was with the group that seized Hi**er’s house in Munich. Lee and Life Magazine photographer David Scherman took pictures of each other bathing in Hi**er’s tub. When the allies captured the prison camps at Buchenwald and Dachau, Lee was there. Through her pictures she documented the horrors that had been committed at the prisons and the prisoner retaliation against some of the guards. In Leipzig she documented the su***de deaths of the town’s mayor with his wife and daughter. She goes to Vienna and documents the plight of the children there.

The war may have been over but not for Lee Miller. Long before they had a name and diagnosis for PTSD Lee had it. She would suffer from bouts of severe depression and alcoholism. At age 40 she discovered that she was pregnant, she divorces Aziz Eloui Bey and marries the father Roland Penrose. Two years later they purchase Farley Farm which will be their home for the rest of their lives.

09/28/2024

Intermission

After arriving in Egypt with her new husband Lee goes about an ordinary life without her camera. Two years later in 1936 she resumes her photography but only for her own pleasure in the desert of Egypt. Out of this hiatus comes two of her highly acclaimed works Portrait of Space, and From the Top of the Great Pyramid.

During the summer of 1937 she takes a trip to Paris and meets Roland Penrose. He was one of the organizers of the 1936 London International Surrealist Exhibition which brought surrealism to England and was recently divorced. He and Miller traveled to England together and then to Mougins, France for a holiday and joins old beau Man Ray and his new love Ady, Paul and Nusch Eluard, Eileen Agar and Picasso and Dora Maar. Shown are some of the photos she, Man Ray and Roland Penrose took on that trip.

Her romance with Roland Penrose develops and in June of 1939 she amicably leaves Aziz Eloui Bey and moves to England and lives with Penrose.

09/27/2024

Act II - Lee Miller Photographer

In 1929 the 22 year old Lee Miller took off for Paris (photo) and gets an apartment with best friend and old classmate Tanja Ramm (photo). Miller tracked down the 39 year old Man Ray at a night club and convinced him to let her become his studio assistant and model. Quickly their association became romantic. Man Ray got her started on her own artistic pathway and the student quickly became a collaborator. She even helped discover the ‘solarizing’ technique that was to become Ray’s calling-card. Pictured is a 1930 solarized portrait of Tanja Ramm and one with a before and after of Lee Miller.

Besides her work with Man Ray, she sets up her own photography studio in 1930. She also manages to have a leading role in artist Jean Cocteau’s 1931 film The Blood of a Poet. It is his work that can be seen on the wall of her apartment in this Man Ray photo of Lee and Tanja in bed together. She also exhibits some of her work at a Paris show.

In early 1932 she closes her Paris studio, leaves Man Ray and moves back to New York and sets up a studio. She has some of her works in two Julien Levy exhibitions. Though departed from a broken hearted Man Ray, parts of her would remain with him in two of his later most famous works. Her eye became part of his 1933 Indestructible Object. Her lips became his 1936 Observatory Time: The Lovers.

In July of 1934 Lee marries an Egyptian named Aziz Eloui Bey who she had met in Paris when Man Ray was photographing Bey’s wife at the time. After the honeymoon she closed her New York Studio, moved to Egypt and laid down her camera.

09/26/2024

Act I – Fashion Model

She was a beautiful woman. Chance and her good looks got her on to the pages of Vogue magazine. The popular story about her start as a model says that on the streets of New York she was pulled out of the path of a car by Conde Nast the publisher of Vogue who offered her a job as a model. An illustration of her by George Lepape appeared on the cover their March 15, 1927 issue. In reality LePagpe had already begun work on the cover when she was hired. She appeared in many fashion photos in Vogue over her short career as a model.

When she first moved to New York she made stock photos for the famous American photographer Edward Steichen. Steichen sold some of them to Kotex, which put one into the first menstrual hygiene ad ever to show a real person. Both the general public and Miller were horrified by the ad because at the time no decent woman would associate herself publicly with menstruation!

In 1928 she wanted to be on the other side of the camera so she left New York and moved to Paris to become a photographer.

09/25/2024

Surrealist Lee Miller

She was more than a surrealist. She was more than a photographer. She was not renowned as a great photographer until some 80,000 negatives were discovered in her attic some years after her death in 1977. Since then she has been discovered by history and has become the subject of many books and exhibitions including one in 2021 at the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg (The Woman Who Broke Boundaries). She was many things. Here’s a quick look at her life.

Formative Years

Lee (Elizabeth then Li-Li then Lee) was born in 1907 in Poughkeepsie, New York. Her early life was traumatic to say the least. At age 7 she was r***d by a family acquaintance and contracted gonorrhea and had to endure years of painful and invasive treatments. Her father was an amateur photographer and had her pose in the n**e for him. This was a practice he would continue with her into her 20’s. Behavioral issues led to her being expelled from most of the schools she attended in Poughkeepsie.

In 1925 at age 18 she went to Paris to study lighting, costume and design at L'Ecole Medgyes pour la Technique du Theatre. She returned home and attended an experimental drama program at Vassar College and then the following year enrolled at the Art Students League of New York in Manhattan to study drawing and painting.

Up Next: Act I Lee Miller Model

09/24/2024

Coming your way

I know most of my readers are Dali purists and whenever I run a post that isn’t just about Dali, I see my readership drop off. To those of you who happen to fall into this category, I’m asking you to please do yourself a favor and read my next seven posts.

These posts will deal with the life and times of Lee Miller (1907 -1977). Her life story is simply incredible. She was an American photographer, Photojournalist, war correspondent, surrealist artist, and model.

A movie of her life starring Kate Winslet was just released. You can view a preview of the movie “Lee” on You Tube. The last movie I saw in a theater was “Gone with The Wind” but I think I’ll mosey on down to our local theater and see this one and I hope you’ll enjoy my posts about this woman who broke boundaries.

09/23/2024

Lost to history

Her name was Adrienne Fidelin or just Ady to her friends. She was born in 1915 in Guadeloupe, a French-governed archipelago in the Caribbean. When she was 13 her mother was killed in a hurricane and her father died a few years later. She then moved to Paris to live with relatives.

In Paris she became a dancer at a cabaret that played Creole music. In 1934 at the age of 19 she met Man Ray who was 44 at the time. A year later she was modeling for him and the two became inseparable. During their time together, Man Ray would take over 400 photographs of Ady. Through Man Ray she became part of the Paris surrealist group. Artist Penrose described her as “the delightful girl from Guadeloupe who could swim, laugh, and dance like a brown angel.”

The September 15, 1937 issue of the American magazine Harper’s Bazaar had a full page head shot of her in a story by Paul Eluard titled “The Bushongo of Africa sends his hats to Paris,”. This photo became the first time a black model was featured on the pages of a major American fashion magazine. Ironically, this was the same week Picasso completed his painting “Femme Assise” for which she was the model.

Ady had met Picasso while with Man Ray on vacation in Mougins. Surrealist artist Eileen Agar who was also there describes Ady as a “charming creole, very young and attractive and full of laughter.” She continues “when Ady first met Picasso, she went up to him, flung her arms around his neck and said: ‘I hear you are quite a good painter’”. Pictured is Ady playfully sitting on the back of Picasso’s shoulders.

The war broke up the romance. In 1940 as German troops were occupying Paris, Man Ray was able to fly out of France to the United States but Ady wasn’t. During the war she continued to support herself dancing. With Man Ray gone and the occupation underway Ady became separated from her circle of surrealist friends. Hope of connecting again with Man Ray ended when he married Juliet Browner, an American dancer and model.

Ady ultimately married and moved with her new husband, André Art, to Albi, a small town in the south of France where, as recounted by her neighbor, she spent her last decades living a modest life. She died in obscurity on February 5, 2004.

09/22/2024

Some Nerve

Several weeks ago, one of my faithful followers of these posts, Iván Onerom Rosuas sent me a picture of Joan Gardy Artigas clipping off the end of Dali’s mustache. WHAT! That can’t be true, I’ve never heard of such a thing. I naturally asked “The Professor” if he could verify the story. He did and also sent me some pictures of the event.

Joan Gardy Artigasis was Catalan ceramist and sculptor. His father Josep Llorens Artigas worked closely with Miro and Picasso. Joan worked in Miro’s studio as a teenager and worked closely with Miro after his father retired. In later life his work as an artist of note was recognized.

It seems that in 1961 they both were at the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York. Artigas surprised Dali by sneaking up behind him and snipping off the end of Dali’s mustache. Dali’s reaction? “Look at my cosmic antennae, now I have a long one and a short one, like my testicles.” It really happened. You can’t make this stuff up!

Thanks Iván !

09/21/2024

Nusch

She was described as the quiet Surrealist. She was certainly a beautiful woman who would become a muse and inspiration to Man Ray, Rene Margritte, Joan Miro, Pablo Picasso as well as her husband Paul Eluard. She was an artist in her own right creating collages while suffering from bouts of insomnia. Only one of her collages is shown here because of FB nudity policy. See several more here .

https://lapetitemelancolie.net/2013/10/30/nusch-eluard-collages-collection-of-timothy-baum-new-york/

She was born in 1906 in Mulhouse, a small city in eastern France that at the time was part of the German Empire. Her name was Maria Benz. She supposedly got the moniker “Nusch” (German for nut) from her boyfriend at the time, Swiss artist and architect Max Bill.

She came to Paris in 1930 working as a model, actress and hypnotist’s stooge. She met Paul Eluard and Rene Crevel. Paul introduced her to the Surrealist group and she began modeling for Man Ray. This first photo of her was by Man Ray. Four years later Paul and Nusch were married.

In 1935 Paul and Man Ray collaborated on the book “Facile”. The book features Eluard’s poems integrated into 12 photographs of Nusch taken by Man Ray. Some examples are pictured here.
During the late 1930’s Eluard became very close friends with Pablo Picasso. Their close friendship lasted up to Eluard’s death in 1952. During the late 1930’s Nusch modeled for Picasso and was the subject of 5 of his drawings and paintings between 1937 and 1941 (photos). Because of the number of portraits of her it is rumored that they were lovers.

Nusch also modeled for photographers Dora Maar and Lee Miller. Her life ended tragically in 1947 on the streets of Paris when she suffered a massive fatal stroke, Months later a broken hearted Paul Eluard published a book of 11 poems integrated with 11 photographs by Man Ray and Dora Maar titled “Le Temps Débordé” (Time Overflows). He wrote it under the name of Didier Desroches saying Paul Eluard had died with Nusch.

Included here are photographs of this beautiful woman by year taken.

09/20/2024

Poor Cecile

There’s a saying “I wish I could be a fly on the wallpaper to see that”. If that was possible, you’d want to be there for Cecile’s life. The tales she could tell. Besides her mother Gala, her father Paul Eluard and Dali, she was around and interacted with most of the surrealist. Max Ernst lived in her house for several years. Picasso was her father’s best friend. He drew a picture of her. Three pictures shown here of Cecil at the beach were taken by Man Ray. In one Picasso is arranging greenery around her in a pose similar to his 1936 portrait of her. Oh, what tales she could tell.

Unfortunately she was a very private person and only sat for three interviews before her death in 2016 at age 98. Here are some selected quotes from those interviews.

"Ernst had painted on the walls of almost every room of our house,"

"My husband, a writer and shrewd businessman, rented the house from them for three months and hired a well-known restorer to peel off the wallpaper and retrieve Ernst's frescoes."

"I was never very wealthy," Her father's third wife Dominique Lemort , who married him a few months before his death in November 1952, made her waive her inheritance. Her father’s huge collection of poetry books and art was lost to her.

About Gala she said "After she met Dalí in 1929, she was not interested in me anymore. She was never very warm, even before. She was very mysterious, very secretive. I never got to meet my Russian family. I didn't even know when exactly she was born."
Of her personal life with four marriages she said “"I married and divorced easily. There was no drama, we met and parted amicably. My father was the same, and each time we had a party.”

Of her father she said "Ah, parents! I may not have had much of a mother, but at least I had a nice papa."

09/19/2024

Life Goes on

You have to feel for Paul Eluard. He takes his wife and daughter on a vacation to Spain hoping to rekindle his marriage after Max Ernst left and comes back with only his daughter. Paul was used to sharing Gala with others but to lose her to young unproven artist must have hurt. Once she got back to Paris to collect her things, Gala told him, "He is a genius, but a genius who has yet to be discovered. It's the same as when I met you in Clavadel. I have to help him. I have to stand by him so that everything inside him can come gushing out” and she left.

Now raising eleven year old Cecile is left to her grandmother and Gala seldom has any contact with her. Paul dives headlong into the Surrealist group and his poetry. He eventually becomes the number two Surrealist behind André Breton. He attends conferences and exhibitions and speaks throughout Europe as an Ambassador of the Surrealist movement.

In May of 1930 Eluard meets Nusch (Maria Benz) who was a French artist, Surrealist and model at the time for Man Ray. During the summer of 1931 Eluard, Nusch, and Rene Char visited the Gala and Dali. Pictured are several photos of that visit. Most of the photos were taken by Eluard. Gala and Paul divorced in 1932 .

Paul finally found happiness on August 21, 1934. He marries Nusch who remains as his wife until her untimely death. I have a story coming up on this most interesting lady. In the meantime here are some pictures of Paul and Nusch.

During the war years Paul becomes part of the resistance movement. Thousands of copies of his poem “Liberte” are dropped by plane over occupied France. In 1943 he co-published with three other French resistance poets “L’Honneur des Poetes”. After the war he was hailed as a national resistance hero.

On November 28, 1946 while in Switzerland he learned of Nusch’s untimely death at age 40 of a stroke. In the following years he wrote Corps Memorable for his friends Alain and Jacquelin Trutat who gave him back the will to live and “Le Temps Deborde” and “De lHorizon de Tous” which traces his journey from suffering to hope.

The remainder of his life he championed peace, self-government and liberty. On November 18, 1952 Eluard suffered a heart attack and died at his home. The French government refused to organize his funeral for political reasons so the funeral was organized by the French Communist Party. See attached newspaper coverage.

What is considered to be his best work did not come out until after his death. Beginning in 1947 and finally published in 1958 the book ”À toute épreuve” was the collaborative project of Éluard , artist Joan Miró and publisher Gérald Cramer. It is widely considered to be one of the finest artist's books of the twentieth century. The book was limited to just 130 copies.

09/18/2024

Here’s the record on Dali

Dali was everywhere, why he even graced the covers of numerous record albums. Dali even designed a cover himself in 1955 for Jackie Gleason (Lonesome Echo). The album cover itself is unremarkable but to me what is memorable is the photo on the rear of the cover. Gleason seems relaxed and Dali seems stiff and tense. I wonder what the story was there.

In 1960 a very unique magazine called Echo had Dali inside. It is unique in that it is a magazine where the stories are recorded on the pages of the magazine and you play them on a record player.
In 1967 Dali recorded a short commercial for Crédit Commercial de France titled L’Apothesse de Dollar which was used as a promotional item for customers of the bank.

Two albums that have great printed material inside are the 1962 Dali in Venice and the 1989 Etre Dieu.

One 1975 album Je Susi Fou de Dali came out at different times with three different covers. Two rock groups, Alice Cooper and The James Gang used Dali art on their covers. There are even caricature and spoof album covers. One cover was used in 1959 to promote Rock’N Roll perfume. This rare French record contained only American Rock’N Roll.

As you would expect, Dali art was the most popular item for album covers. Here are a few of them. I think it fair to say that Dali was part of a good number of record albums, not necessarily good albums but a lot of them.

09/17/2024

Georgette London Owens

I never heard of her before I ran across her name as a sometime baby sitter for Babou and a muse of Dali. Geeze if you ever met Dali did that make you a muse? Anyway I researched her and found a delightful 2019 story at a site called Marin Villages with the title Salvador Dali’s Walking Renoir – An Interview with Georgette London Owens.

Her story was so good, I’ll just let her tell it:

“I was working in New York for the St. Regis, doing some decorating and consulting work in addition to my art. Dali, who was visiting the hotel, heard me speaking French, and from down the hall beckoned me to join him, shouting out ‘you are a walking Renoir and must model for me!’

I knew who he was because of his big mustache, but at first I didn’t want to accept his offer. I told him I’d think about it, but a few days later I accepted.”

Dali loved Georgette’s wild red hair and wanted her as model for one of his Medusa paintings. To get the look he wanted he glued her hair into a wild configuration to make it look like snakes.
“After I was done posing, I couldn’t get the glue out, no matter how hard I tried,” recounted Georgette. “So Dali offered to pay for me to go to a hairdresser. The hairdresser took one look and said ‘Madame, there’s nothing to be done but to cut your hair really, really short!’ And so he did. It was so short, in fact, that I felt I had to wear a turban until it grew back in.”

Later Dali offered to paint her again, but in the n**e. We were in the middle of a reception at an art gallery in New York and he said in a loud voice that all could hear: “I will paint you n**e, Georgette."

His idea was to paint my backside and have me back up against the canvas. I turned him down. "You will regret this decision!" he told me.” With a twinkle in her eye Georgette admitted that, in fact, she has regretted it ever since!

What a nice story from a nice lady and artist!

09/16/2024

Babou

Dali was not a normal person, so what would lead us to believe that he would have a typical pet like the rest of us. He of course had a pet ocelot named Babou. Ocelots are primarily nocturnal wild cats found mainly in South and Central America. From 1972 to 1997 they were on the endangered species list because they were being killed for their fur.

I always thought that Dali’s manager at the time Captain Peter Moore got Babou for Dali but it seems more likely it was a gift from a Colombian State official. There appears to be no record of what happened to Babou and there appears to have been several Babous. He simply was just not there anymore. I just hope he met a better fate than the Dali’s pet rabbit that Gala cooked up for lunch one day. Oh yeah, one minute he was there being petted and before you could say “Jack Rabbit” there he was on the dinner table.

Stories abound about Babou frightening restaurant patrons, biting celebrities like Gina Lollobrigida, Donyale Luna and there’s a nice picture of Babou nipping Captain Moore’s nose. There’s even a book “My Life with Salvador Dali by Babou the Ocelot” and of course there is a magazine cover too. What is best are the photos of Babou in action so I’ll go short on the words and long on the photos for this post. I think the photos show wild animals are best left in the wild.

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