Like Andy Warhol, he worked hard to create a cult of celebrity around himself. His moustache was the only rival to Van Gough's ear and Picasso's testicles. Dali worked in earnest to fulfil the two ruling chilches about artists; firstly, the concept of the Painter as Old Master, and the second of the Artist as Freak. However, he failed at displaying himself as either whilst desperately trying to prove himself as both. All of Dali's most famous works of art were painted between 1929 and 1939. Modelled on Jean-Louis Meissonier, he sought to create realism that was pressed into such extreme detail that it would subvert one's sense of reality and become surreal. This allowed Dali to make any vision seem persuasively real. He focussed on objects of impotency, runny cheese, soft watches, fried eggs, which served to create a pessimistic feeling of doom.

Critics were divided as to the quality of his work in the later years of his life alleging that he existed more as a curiosity, a relic of a once great painter, rather than a living master. Again on a parallel to Andy Warhol (and Roy Lichtenstein) his work reached the point of repetition so that his later works were merely imitations of his earlier works.