information:classification, structural:summarization, quality:corruption
Personality

Dalí was renowned for his eccentric and ostentatious behavior throughout his career. In 1941, the Director of Exhibitions and Publications at MoMA wrote: "The fame of Salvador Dalí has been an issue of particular controversy for more than a decade...Dalí's conduct may have been undignified, but the greater part of his art is a matter of dead earnest." When Dalí was elected to the French Academy of Fine Arts in 1979, one of his fellow academicians stated that he hoped Dalí would now abandon his "clowneries".

In 1936, at the premiere screening of Joseph Cornell 's film Rose Hobart at Julien Levy's gallery in New York City, Dalí knocked over the projector in a rage. "My idea for a film is exactly that," he said shortly afterward, "I never wrote it down or told anyone, but it is as if he had stolen it!" In 1939, while working on a window display for Bonwit Teller, he became so enraged by unauthorized changes to his work that he pushed a display bathtub through a plate glass window. In 1955, he delivered a lecture at the Sorbonne, arriving in a Rolls-Royce full of cauliflowers. To promote Robert Descharnes' 1962 book The World of Salvador Dalí, he appeared in a Manhattan bookstore on a bed, wired up to a machine that traced his brain waves and blood pressure. He would autograph books while thus monitored, and the book buyer would also be given the paper chart recording.

After World War II, Dalí became one of the most recognized artists in the world, and his long cape, walking stick, haughty expression, and upturned waxed mustache became icons of his brand. His boastfulness and public declarations of his genius became essential elements of the public Dalí persona: "every morning upon awakening, I experience a supreme pleasure: that of being Salvador Dalí".

Dalí frequently traveled with his pet ocelot Babou, even bringing it aboard the luxury ocean liner SS France.

Dalí's fame meant he was a frequent guest on television in Spain, France and the United States, including appearances on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson on 7 January 1963 The Mike Wallace Interview and the panel show What's My Line?. Dalí appeared on The Dick Cavett Show on 6 March 1970 carrying an anteater. He also appeared in numerous advertising campaigns such as Lanvin chocolates and Braniff International Airlines in 1968.