From Publishers Weekly
This compact yet dazzling album, based on the collection of the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Fla., serves as an idea point of entry into the Dalian universe. Even in the early, representational, color-drenched paintings (1917-1927), one senses Dali's "violent passion for the exterior world." Then comes the sudden plunge into the irrational (1927-1928), followed by a succession of surrealist canvases in which the Catalan prestidigitator purges his fantasies, fears and obsessions. Lubar, an art professor at New York University, argues that Dali (1904-1989), too often dismissed as a reactionary, "sought nothing less than the liberation of desire through a critique of language and visuality." Judging by the evidence here, Dali's watercolors deserve to be as well known as his oils, and his sensitive, poised drawings give his febrile imagination free rein without the grandiloquence that mars some of the paintings. Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
The painting collection of the Salvador Dal! Museum in St. Petersburg, FL, is reproduced here and accompanied by a text from New York University fine arts professor Lubar. The essay breaks little new ground but does a good job of compiling and summarizing information from earlier publications, most notably Ian Gibson's The Shameful Life of Salvador Dal! (LJ 1/99), Dal!'s The Secret Life of Salvador Dal! (1942), and The Collected Writings of Salvador Dal! (Cambridge Univ., 1999). The book is most notable for the 94 full-color illustrations encompassing new acquisitions and other notable holdings. Included are several of Dal!'s best-known works and a large number of early canvasses from the 1920s. Given Dal!'s continuing popularity, this can be recommended for public and academic libraries. Kathryn Wekselman, M.Ln., Cincinnati Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Dali: the name evokes images from melting clocks to surreal landscapes. Outrageous and enigmatic, Dali remains one of the twentieth century's most popular artists. This book presents the complete paintings of the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, which houses the most comprehensive collection of Dali's art in the world. It provides a unique overview of Dali's career from his student days to his interactions with Garcia Lorca, Bunuel, and the French Surrealist movement, his postwar fascination with history, science, and mysticism, and finally, his later, more cryptic works. Robert S. Lubar provides an introduction and enlightening commentary for each of the paintings, contributing valuable new scholarship. Also included are a chronology and bibliography, making Dali: The Salvador Dali Museum Collection both a sumptuous volume of fine color reproductions of the master's paintings and a significant addition to the study of Dali.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal