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According to auction website eBay, Floridians really dig Spanish Surrealist Salvador Dalí. The company crunched numbers from “the top 50 most searched artists on eBay, compared with industry trends and search engine date to determine which artists were the most searched in each state.”
For once in its history, Florida fared better than the rest of America: Alabama, West Virginia and Tennessee all embarrassingly searched for “painter of light” schlock hawker, Thomas Kinkade. Congrats, guys.
The company’s findings aren’t exactly surprising. Dalí’s flamboyant personality and penchant for weird public drama — he traveled with a pet ocelot and once gifted Mia Farrow a dead rat — practically make him an honorary Florida Man. That and St. Petersburg houses one the largest collections Dalí’s art in the United States.
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The artist also partnered with Florida’s most familiar institution, Disney, on the animated film Destino. The film was originally conceived in 1945, but World War II put it on hiatus. Disney rediscovered the stills in 1999 and produced Destino as a short in 2003, long after Dalí’s death.
And since you all love Dalí with the fervor of a Google search, take a break and enjoy the bizarre seven minutes of his collaboration with Disney.
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