By a whisker, Dalí pulls off the ultimate publicity coup from the grave
THE story of the exhumation of Salvador Dalí gets grislier and grislier. And in a turnabout that would please the man himself, it’s also become surreal.
Dalí’s body was exhumed on Thursday night from its crypt under the Dalí Theatre Museum in Catalonia to settle a paternity suit. A 61-year-old fortune-teller named Pilar Abel claims to be Dalí’s only child and stands to inherit a quarter of his estate if DNA tests prove it.
Pilar is reported as saying that she looks so much like Dalí that ‘the only thing I’m missing is a moustache’. She may be missing a moustache, but we now discover the late painter is not.
The man who embalmed Dalí’s body back in 1989 was there at the exhumation and was able to report that his signature moustache is intact, in the ‘ten past ten’ position, achieving for itself the kind of immortality that the painter would have loved.
The Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation, which administers the artist’s estate, is furious about the exhumation. But while Pilar may end up with nothing, the foundation will make a mint on this affair. At present the Dalí museum sees 4,000 visitors a day. But now that everyone knows the moustache is there, the place will be mobbed.