Litte-Known Message in Dali's Original Museum Sign

I suspect few people realized it when Salvador Dali created and proudly held up his stylized Dali Museum sign when he was on hand to inaugurate the world's first Dali Museum in the Cleveland, Ohio suburb of Beachwood on March 7, 1971.

Most didn't know that the sign didn't simply read "DALI." The Surrealist genius also designed the letters so that they would, at the same time, also spell DOU, in homage to Gerard Dou, the 17th century Dutch Golden Age painter, whom Dali admired. Most particularly because Dali believed the reason Dou painted some works that seemed nearly identical was that he was an early experimenter in stereoscopy. And that inspired Dali's own stereoscopic paintings of the 1970s.

But, wait, there's more to that sign. The letters, while spelling the names of Dali and Dou, also spell GALA, Dali's wife, model and muse.

And now you know.

Dali/Picasso Exhibition Confirms Dali's Superior 'Pull'

I recently toured the wonderful Dali/Picasso, Picasso/Dali exhibition at the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida -- confirming my long-held view that Dali is infinitely more interesting than Picasso.

I'm reminded of the first time I saw Dali's magnificent "Corpus Hypercubus" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. To the left of it was, as I recall, some abstract painting, and to its right a portrait by Picasso.

I watched the watchers that day: the crowds that gathered in that particular corner of the museum. And while they gave a nod to the abstract-expressionist work, and a look at the Picasso oil, it was Dali's "Crucifixion" that galvanized their attention. In fact, most simply couldn't take their eyes off of it!

Fast-forward to Dec. 5, 2014, when my wife and I walked through the Dali/Picasso show in St. Pete.

The museum did a wonderful, unprecedented job of bringing these two Spanish titans of 20th century art together -- making convincing parallels and contrasts between them.

But for me, Picasso simply couldn't get more than a few seconds' look, while the corresponding Dali works jumped off the walls. In a word, they're simply more interesting. At least to me. Not only because of Dali's impressive technique, although that has always intrigued me.

More importantly, it's how Dali took whatever subject it may have been and translated it into a surrealist lexicon that twisted and bent all sense of normalcy and expectations -- creating a brand new way to see and imagine. One could argue that Picasso did that, too. But, for my money, not nearly as convincingly as Dali.

Dali just has more pull!

Here are Dali's and Picasso's versions of the Infanta, a subject their mutually favorite artist -- Velasquez -- legendarily portrayed:

(Images used for journalistic purposes only under Fair Use; the best places to see Salvador Dali works are the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, U.S.A. and the Teatru-Museu Dali in Figueres, Spain.)