How to think outside the box? A few months before Salvador Dalí died, I was in a gallery in San Francisco, which presented him. They had a video playing continuously of him rolling paper into a ball and eating it. TRUE. I was for some reason intrigued by that. The questions in my mind piled up about him. It seemed desperate when it came to artistic expression to find value in eating rolled up wads of paper. Was he going crazy or had he always been crazy or was he somehow being myopic and missing out on some extraordinary expression of artistic courage? He wasn’t he ‘in’, wasn’t he in the inner circle of knowing what makes true art? I didn’t know much about Dalí then and I confess that he seemed strange to me and, actually, a bit coo coo?

Salvador Dalí died a short time later and all I could think about was him eating paper with that crazy mustache of his.

I have since acquired several books on him to add to my art library. He was a strange guy and dare I say, twisted in many ways. I have to wonder what it takes to stand out in the art world. Does it take a little outrageous thinking to create provocative art? To some extent, I think so… yes, I think so! I guess I have to say, “Long live the twist,” sometimes, because what came from his artistic soul gave us images that are not only memorable, but thought-provoking. The goal of an artist is always to create a new way of thinking that Dalí achieved.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to suggest as a prerequisite to understanding the art that we all start eating paper. But I think that because of Dalí’s crazy gesture, that thinking outside the box, it could be what comes to mind at that moment. He may be thinking of everything, and yet it’s fun to think about doing something outrageous, doing silly things that feel like fun. Maybe going to a restaurant in a wild outfit (for you) and pretending to be someone completely different than you or I are. I don’t think paper would digest everything that well (lol), so stay away from being so over the top, okay? Think outrage though, think outside the box and let the stars in.