This work is a new edition of a classic. "Diary of a Genius" stands as one of the seminal texts of Surrealism, revealing the most astonishing and intimate workings of the mind of Salvador Dali, the eccentric polymath genius who became the living embodiment of the 20th century's most intensely subversive, disturbing and influential art movement. Dali's second volume of autobiography, "Diary of a Genius" covers his life from 1952 to 1963, during which years we learn of his amour fou for his wife Gala, and their relationship both at home in Cadaques and during bizarre world travels. We also learn how Dali draws inspiration from excrement, rotten fish and Vermeer's Lacemaker to enter his 'rhinocerontic' period, preaching his post-holocaustal Gospels of nuclear mysticism and cosmogenic atavism; and we follow the labyrinthine mental journeys that lead to the creation of such paintings as the "Assumption", and his film script "The Flesh Wheelbarrow". This new expanded edition includes a brilliant and revelatory essay on Salvador Dali, and the importance of his art to the 20th century, by the author J G Ballard. This is the new expanded edition of the perennial seller. It provides an introduction by J G Ballard. Salvador Dali remains the most famous of the Surrealists, and one of the most famous artists of the 20th Century. Illustrated throughout, with chronology, this title is volume 1 of "Solar Art Directives", a new series is devoted to promoting the avant-garde.