Even people unfamiliar with Surrealism know Salvador Dali: his name and his wild-eyed look, heightened by that gravity-defying moustache, are almost synonymous with the movement for the general audience. Dali's paintings, distorted images executed in his signature old master technique, are hallmarks of the Surrealist credo, the embrace of the irrational. His unsettling images and dreamscapes affected the arts at every level; echoes of his work can still be seen in many advertisements and music videos, and the technique of juxtaposing familiar images with peculiar settings that seems common today began with Dali. In his lifetime, Dali was as well known for his artwork (which in addition to painting, encompassed filmmaking and theatrical productions, even clothes design) as for his persona. He blazed the trail for the artist as star (setting the scene for much of Pop art and its greatest artist/star, Andy Warhol), eagerly gobbling up...