Art: Dali Goes to Rehab

Early work? Brilliant. After that, ugh--right? A new show says no

For a long time the near universal judgment on Salvador Dali was that he had outlived himself. The Surrealist work he did from 1929 to 1939 was brilliant and durable. After that came decades of repetition and kitsch, the years of his collaborations with Walt Disney-- never completed--and his magazine ads for Elsa Schiaparelli lipstick. It didn't help that from early on he was art's state-of-the-art goofball, the guy who would show up in public in a deep-sea diving suit or a Rolls- Royce filled with cauliflowers. Then came the Spanish Civil War. When it was over Picasso refused to set...

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