16. Salvador Dali was terrified of insects and had a particular phobia of grasshoppers, a fear he used to influence his work
In his day, Salvador Dali was one of the most celebrated artists in all of Europe. Similarly, these days, he is loved the world over, admired for his ingenuity and genius. But the painter and sculptor was not always so popular. As a child growing up in Catalonia, he was bullied by boys his own age. As well as calling him names, they would throw grasshoppers at him. This had a profound and long-lasting effect. From an early age, Dali suffered from an acute phobia of grasshoppers. Even as an older man, just the sound of the insects was enough to make him tremble, as several of his contemporaries observed.
As well as this unusual phobia, Dali also most likely suffered from Ekbom’s Syndrome. This is a condition where the sufferer believes that bugs are crawling all over their body – sometimes they can see them, or sometimes they just feel them. But far from seeking treatment for his phobia, however, Dali embraced it. As with his fear of insects in general, the Spaniard used his crippling anxiety over grasshoppers to fuel his ground-breaking work. Above all, he used the insects as central motifs in many of his paintings, providing critics and art historians with a wealth of clues pointing to what was going on in his head at the time.
According to scholars, Dali used grasshoppers to signify decay and destruction. He would often paint the insects larger-than-life, exaggerating their legs and mouths. In some paintings, he even depicted grasshoppers devouring the main subjects of the work. At other times, they were used to symbolize fear in general or even the wider idea of decay. Likewise, ants in Dali’s paintings are seen as representing the ideas of death and decay, though some critics also believe he used swarms of arts to represent lust and human sexual longing. Clearly, Dali’s phobias were a creative boon, even if they did make his life hell at times.