Dali's
soft paintings, with their melting faces and objects held up with crutches, have recently been linked to his impotence.
This in no way diminishes his brilliance.
Some of Dali's less surreal works are his illustrations for the Jerusalem Bible.
Recently I saw a film made about and by Dali. Narrated by Orson Welles, a good friend of the artist, it was a surreal, choppy documentary. Like much of the art of its time, it now comes across as very dated. However, the image that sticks with me was
A boulder on the beach near Dali's house the exact shape of the jellyfishlike form from The Persistence of Memory. Even surrealists, it seems, follow the dictum to "node/write/paint what you know"...