Dali: Art Masters Series

Too out-there for Van Gogh-adoring mainstream art fans and often too pop for the avant-garde, Dali occupies a curious place in the art firmament. Baudoin’s tangled and discursive but perceptive graphic biography gives him some much-needed context. The narrative follows a troubled narcissist and exhibitionist who might well have gone mad were it not for art. Dali was a violent child–raised in the shadow of a brother (also named Salvador) who died just months before his birth in 1904–who never quite escaped his youthful terrors. Still just a teenager when he fell in with Federico Garcia Lorca and Andre Breton, Dali’s embrace of Surrealism and Freudian theories of the subconscious made him a darling of the prewar artistic set. But his Picasso-like ambition and embrace of fame led him to shrug off old relationships and embrace everything from Hollywood to Andy Warhol. Baudoin is a revered comics master in his native France, and his mercifully clear-eyed vision of Dali’s imperfections is welcome, though the rushed treatment of the artist’s postwar work leaves this otherwise smart and edgy biography feeling somewhat unfinished. (Oct.)