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Salvador Dalí Reveals the Secret of his ‘Very Aggressive’ moustache, 1955
“My moustache is… very pointed, very aggressive.”
– Salvador Dali
In 1955, Spanish artist Salvador Dalí (11 May 1904 – 23 January 1989) talked to the BBC’s Malcolm Muggeridge (24 March 1903 – 14 November 1990) about his scorpion claw-like moustache.
Dalí’s moustached first appeared in the 1930s, and affected the style favoured by US actor Adolphe Menjou (February 18, 1890 – October 29, 1963).
Menjou in The Spanish Dancer (1923)
The moustache was Dali’s signature look, and one he took care to cultivate.
In the 1954 photobook, Dali’s Mustache: A Photographic Interview, that the artist made in collaboration with photographer Philippe Halsman (2 May 1906 – 25 June 1979), Dali said that his moustache “like the power of my imagination, continued to grow”.
And it lives on. When Dalí’s body was exhumed for a paternity test in 2017, almost three decades after his death in 1989, his whiskers were still entirely intact, “looking like clock hands reading 10.10”.
Dali in 1934
Me and My Moustache, May 4 1955
Malcolm Muggeridge: Mr Dali, We are going to talk in English, which I know is not your language. But I’m sure you’re going to manage wonderfully.
Salvador Dali: Yes, my English remain very, very problematic. But this is not so important because if somebody catch only a little piece of my idea, that is absolutely sufficient. Because Dalian ideas possess one tremendous power of germination.
Muggeridge: The first question that I want to put to you – it really ought to be about modern art but I can’t help it – there is some delicious frivolity in you that makes me ask it – how did you manage to produce those magnificent moustaches?
Dali: In the beginning of this moustache, I used one very natural product. Dates, you know the fruit? In the last moment of dinner, I not clean my finger and I put a little in my moustache and it remains for all afternoon very efficiently. But now I use one real product, very good in the Place Vendôme. It’s Hungarian wax. It’s very well-known wax. Marcel Proust use the same.
Muggeridge: Yes, but his was a little pointed one, wasn’t it. It didn’t have a splendid upturn like yours.
Dali: He used this wax but he used it in another manner or another mode in one depressing way. A little depressing and melancholic. My moustache contrarily is very gay, very pointed, very aggressive.
Photo de Marcel Proust par Otto Wegener
Muggeridge: Do you have any trouble with it at nighttime? Do you have to peg it or anything like that? Or does it stand up at night?
Dali: “I clean it every night. It’s becoming soft.
Muggeridge: So at night it droops down.
Dali: Completely, completely.
Muggeridge: And in the morning, up she goes again.
Dali: Three minutes. Only three minutes fix my moustache.
Muggeridge: Then you feel you can face the world, with that wonderful moustache standing up?
Dali: Yes, because every day becoming much more practical for my inspiration.
Muggeridge: Well, I’m fascinated to know that.
You can listen to the full interview below:
The post Salvador Dalí Reveals the Secret of his ‘Very Aggressive’ moustache, 1955 appeared first on Flashbak.
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