SALVADOR DALI Meets the Beatles was the last exhibition held at Liverpool's Mathew Street Gallery. The exhibition by renowned British photographer Robert Whitaker, best known internationally for his many photographs of The Beatles, taken between 1964 and 1966.
But did the Beatles ever meet the Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali in real life? Just one did.
"I introduced Dali to Pete Brown in Paris," explains Whitaker,, in Liverpool for the Saturday opening of his exhibition. Brown, also part of the Epstein team, later took Dali to meet John Lennon in his New York apartment.It seems Dali was a big Lennon fan. "He kept a photograph of John hanging from a coat hanger on his wall," says Whitaker.
His Beatles photographs were taken over a three year period at the request of Epstein. His Dali photographs came about through a more personal invitation.
At the age of 16 he had been given a book by his parents, cut it up to make a collage, and sent the result to Dali. An amused Dali suggested he drop by if he was ever in Spain.
But it was eight years before he made the trip and that through art historian Douglas Cooper who was planning a book on Dali. The first thing Dali said to Whitaker was, "You've been ill". He was right, Whitaker had been unwell. But the photographer caught Dali's attention by promising to photograph the inside of his head. "How are you going to do that?" asked Dali. "By photographing every part of you, your ears, nostrils, eyes ..." explained Whitaker.
Dali was game for it and many of the close-ups of the Dali physiognomy can be seen in the new exhibition.
His wide open mouth is featured often along with a shot up his nose, one ear and his hands - "People never photograph an artist's hands," says Whitaker.
His subject often suggested poses and Whitaker found him an easy man to photograph. "He told me he was a whore for the camera."
Whitaker, who took most of his photographs at Dali's Spanish home between 1967 and 1972, found the artist a delightful companion, mostly because Whitaker as a photographer was interested in art and enjoyed Dali's sometimes bizarre conversation.
Dali once told him he could photograph God by using a special pole and a copper plate camera. Alas, the photograph was never achieved but Whitaker says Dali made sense of the idea.
Whitaker was not above being a little bizarre himself, once cutting up his photographs and sending them out to sea in a box.
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