Salvador Dalí

Salvador Dalí emerges in these diary entries less through his art than through the vivid social orbit around him: a friendship Potassa expects to resume, and a dinner for roughly forty guests that the diarist remembers as an act of generosity.

Potassa and a Friendship to Resume

At Studio 54, the diarist asks Potassa whether she had ever been intimate with Dalí. She describes a past encounter in deliberately extravagant terms, then says he is returning to town and that their friendship should resume. The anecdote presents Dalí as a figure whose personal history circulates as lively social conversation, while Potassa speaks of reconnecting with him as an established friend rather than as a distant celebrity.

Potassa’s champagne-only preference adds a comic note to the exchange. The diary does not explain the history of their friendship or show whether they meet again; it records only her expectation that it will begin again when Dalí returns.

Hospitality in New York

On another occasion, Dalí invites the diarist and others to dinner at Laurent, where about forty people are gathered. The diarist characterizes him as generous toward the younger guests. The scale of the dinner gives that generosity a public, social form: Dalí brings a large group together and welcomes the young people among them.

After dinner, the young guests want to go to a party for Pelé at Xenon. The diary places Dalí’s gathering within a busy New York social scene, noting the abundance of Brazilians in the city and likening the atmosphere to Carnival. Dalí’s presence is brief, but the two anecdotes leave complementary impressions: intimate stories attached to his larger-than-life persona, and hospitality expressed through a crowded dinner.