Salvador Dalí Had A Grass Covered Volkswagen Beetle And Did Datsun Ads

There’s a certain set of artists and paintings that have managed to escape the bounds of museums and galleries and academia and have become an integrated part of mass culture. Andy Warhol and his silkscreen prints of Marilyn Monroe, for example. Grant Wood’s dour pair of farm-implement-bearing Midwesterners in American Gothic. And, of course, our mysterious friend, Mona. I think among these iconic works we can also include Salvador Dalí’s melting clocks in The Persistence of Memory. Dalí is definitely one of the small set of artists that an average person is likely to be able to name, if you asked them to name a famous artist. Which is part of why its important to note that Dalí once made (and possibly used?) a Volkswagen Beetle covered in living grass.

Oh, and he also did some Datsun ads.

The Dalí grass-Beetle was made in 1970, and there only seems to be two or three pictures of it available online; as far as Dalí’s body of work goes, this one was not particularly significant, and came at at time fairly late in Dalí’s life when his idiosyncratic lifestyle and behaviors had almost eclipsed his actual production of artwork. Salvador Dalí became the artwork himself, his distinctive look and demeanor, the way he acted, the things he said, the whole rich eccentricity of it all. That’s why anyone who saw Dalí watering his VW on the streets of Paris must have felt it was all very on-brand.

Looking at the car, I think this Beetle started life as a 1965 or maybe 1966 car; the windshield pillars seem like the slimmer ones that were introduced in 1965, and those headlights and bumpers suggest a pre-’67 car. Well, in Europe I suppose it could be a ’67, since they kept the double-glass sloping headlights a year longer, but still. For some reason, I feel like this car is a ’65.

Those slotted wheels suggest a ’66, also, but he domed hubcaps went out in ’65, so I’m a bit conflicted here. I still think ’65, somehow?

From all accounts I’be heard, the grass was real, and actually did require watering. There must be some kind of sod under that grass, too, and that combined with the constant watering makes me suspect that this particular Beetle art car has been consumed by the cruel rust beast long ago, though I’ve not seen any records that outline the fate of this chlorophyll-enhanced Type I.

As far as why Dalí decided to do this, I think it was mostly for the spectacle of it all. Perhaps some sort of vague statement about the intersection of the natural and artificial, or something like that, too, but mostly I think Salvador just wanted people’s attention.

I do like the sort of pompadour that the car has over the windshield. Very stylish.

A couple of years later, in 1972, Dalí, seeking to fund his lavish lifestyle, took on some advertising work for Datsun. He did a painting that included a nicely-rendered Datsun 610 wagon, which I wrote about in 2020 back at the Old Site, and it seems Dalí appeared in commercials for Datsun as well:

Really, this was a pretty strange choice by Datsun; were people looking to buy fuel-efficient small imported station wagons the sort that really looked up to the world’s most famous Surrealist and problematic supporter of Spanish dictator Franco? Don’t get me wrong, it’s a bold move, I’m just curious about the thought process that led to this decision.

Dalí is part of a long tradition of VW Beetles being recast as objets d’ art, a role that I’m not sure another car has yet to fill as completely as the Beetle did. Maybe if someone crucifies themselves to a Tesla we can talk, but until then, I think the humble Beetle remains the reigning Emperor of Art-Cars.