February 19 / 7 PM / Free

“Salvador Dalí and Andy Warhol: Encounters in New York and Beyond”
Panel Discussion with Torsten Otte, Jade Albert, George Mason, Robert Heide, and William Rothlein

Salvador Dalí and Andy Warhol were two of the 20th century’s most significant and notorious artists. Led by Otte, the panelists—all witnesses of encounters between Dalí and Warhol—discuss, gossip, and reminisce about these “art celebrities” whose fame was the result of accomplished self-staging, along with the skillful marketing of their personalities and work. Otte is joined on the panel by photographer Jade Albert, who shot many photos of Dalí and Warhol together and was a photographer for Interview magazine; playwright Robert Heide, who worked with Warhol on projects including a filmed version of his play, The Bed; actor William Rothlein, a close friend of Dalí and Gala; and George Mason, a friend of Dalí and Warhol.

Warhol, who was a generation younger and a notorious partygoer who provocatively declared that he went “to the opening of anything, including a toilet seat,” occupied a spot in public awareness that Dalí had previously paved through his Surrealist antics.

What is less well known is the fact that these two wildly popular artists were in contact with one another on a regular basis throughout the 60s and 70s. In this first-ever comparative study, Torsten Otte offers a brief biography of both artists before reconstructing their encounters, which took place mainly in New York. He investigates how the artists felt about one another, exploring the extent to which Dalí and Warhol were bound by a true artist friendship, or whether competition and envy played a role.

Torsten Otte is an attorney and art historian. He is the author of a biography of Salvador Dalí, published in 2006. He lives in Berlin. Salvador Dalí and Andy Warhol: Encounters in New York and Beyond is published by Scheidegger & Spiess – University of Chicago Press and includes more than 60 photographs.

Image: Andy Warhol, Candice Bergen, and Salvador Dalí at the Metropolitan Club in New York City, March 17, 1976. Photo credit: Jade Albert