When asked about his fascination with the animal by [Dick] Cavett, the artist describes anteaters as “angelic.” A master of PR, Dalí knew well by this stage in his career the marketability of his eccentricities but even so, his longstanding affinity to anteaters does seem earnest, and certainly well-documented.
Photo: Salvador Dalí walking a giant anteater in Paris, 1969.
Funny thing-- probably my two favorite artists of all time are a Dutch guy, and a non-Dalí Spanish guy. And there's a famous / punk-ish song about one of them, alleging he was "never an asshole," and yet from the books and lit I've read... he was totally an asshole.
And the other poor bloke's story only gets more complicated over the years, as in historians seem to be increasingly entertaining the idea that Vincent was in fact murdered... and they even know who the culprit was!