SALVADOR DALI Meets the Beatles is the latest - and last - exhibition at Liverpool's Mathew Street Gallery. The gallery is set to close after this exhibition by photographer Robert Whitaker.
Whitaker's 1960s images of The Beatles were taken at a time when their manager Brian Epstein was also Whitaker's manager.
But did the Beatles ever meet the Spanish surrealist artist Salvador Dali in real life? Just one did.
"I introduced Dali to Pete Brown in Paris," explains Whitaker,, in Liverpool for the Saturday opening of his exhibition. Brown, also part of the Epstein team, later took Dali to meet John Lennon in his New York apartment.
It seems Dali was a big Lennon fan. "He kept a photograph of John hanging from a coat hanger on his wall," says Whitaker.
His Beatles photographs were taken over a three year period at the request of Epstein. His Dali photographs came about through a more personal invitation.
At the age of 16 he had been given a book by his parents, cut it up to make a collage, and sent the result to Dali. An amused Dali suggested he drop by if he was ever in Spain.
But it was eight years before he made the trip and that through art historian Douglas Cooper who was planning a book on Dali. The first thing Dali said to Whitaker was, "You've been ill". He was right, Whitaker had been unwell.
But the photographer caught Dali's attention by promising to photograph the inside of his head. "How are you going to do that?" asked Dali. "By photographing every part of you, your ears, nostrils, eyes ..." explained Whitaker.
