Salvador Dali, your local eccentric

This week's freatured artist for me to say way to much about is none other than Salvador Dali. His life and works are best summed up by the word "Loony", which is layman's terms for the more artistic word "avant-garde". He was Spanish, and spent most of his life (1904 - 1989) in Spain, visiting Paris quite frequently, mostly in order to keep contacts with his fellow Surealists. He was most noticed for his eccentric characteristics (for example, this is a photo, not a painting) which often times were so dramatic that people just assumed he was a great artist even though he may not have actually been such. Most sources sight him as one of the best ten artists of the twentieth century, probably because he was a leader, not a follower. As for me, I have a hard time seperating a guy with a really colorful imagination and the ability to express it from a guy with a gift for art. I guess I can just sum it up by saying that I wasn't really moved by any of his works like I was with Picasso's. Perhaps, I'm just too much of a novice, or too much of a realist, or too much of a math nerd. Who knows? One of the sculptures I saw was his version of the Venus de Milo, which is pretty much the same as the old one, just in bronze and her body is covered with closable drawers in odd places. Art!