By Howard Pousner

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Salvador Dalí was such an attention grabber, he made Andy Warhol seem like he managed to eke out only 15 minutes of fame. If the Spanish surrealist were still alive today, Lady Gaga would go gaga over his ability to command the spotlight.

Dalí died in 1989, but in coming months, Atlantans will feel that the exhibitionist artist is very much with us as the High Museum of Art unfurls some Dalíesque techniques to promote its major exhibition, "Dalí: The Late Work," opening Aug. 7.

At the moment, a googly-eyed Dalí, his famous curled mustache reaching toward the clouds, stares down from 10 48-foot-wide billboards over interstates and major intersections around town. Oh, but this is only the beginning of the marketing assault.

Soon 2,500 posters with the same image will show up in storefront windows and elsewhere, and countless coasters sporting the photo will be supplied to 30 restaurants and bars. On the flip side: a coupon for $3 off admission or $10 off a membership.

In an even grander gesture, Dalí's signature mustache will be emblazoned on the nose of a Delta 757.

The famed 'stache also is a key graphic element in a different series of posters that don't even mention the High Museum or the exhibit's title, but directs viewers to the Web site www.fantasticmustache.org.

The idea of the 1,000-plus "unbranded" posters is to create a sense of intrigue about the show, especially among the 20- and 30-something demographic.

“We are hoping to target new audiences through a creative campaign that’s not in keeping with our traditional marketing efforts,” High spokeswoman Nicole Taylor explained.

The unbranded posters boast flamboyant quips including, "If you act the genius, you will be one," "I don't do drugs. I am drugs" and "The only difference between me and a madman is that I'm not mad."

The quotes are from the flamboyant surrealist who arrived in the United States in 1939 after the German occupation of France and made the country his home for a decade. Dalí was already an international art star, but that did not prevent him from courting celebrity.

"He definitely pumped up the volume when he got here," says Elliott King, the High's guest curator for "The Late Work." "I think he did want to be a celebrity. He was interested in Hollywood. He said in the '30s that the great surrealists were Walt Disney and Groucho Marx. He wanted to take these ideas of surrealism in his own art and really disseminate them to the public in a grandiose sort of way."

The mustache played a central role in that. An entire chapter in the High exhibit catalog charts its evolution from a standard pencil-thin embellishment to thickening, gravity-defying objet d'art.

"Dalí's growing status as a public figure in the United States mirrored the increasing growth of his mustache," William Jeffett writes in his essay.

In 1945, the New York Journal American's social column Cholly Knickerbocker Observes noted that Dalí's facial hair "looks like a cross between a mouse's tail and the late Kaiser Wilhelm's handle bars [and gives] Salvador the appearance of a man from the moon."

Dalí had an enthusiastic and talented partner in this otherworldly image-making. His collaborator was the Latvian-born fashion and celebrity photographer Philippe Halsman, the force behind the captivating portrait on the High Museum billboards and posters. They met in the early '40s and worked together repeatedly over three decades to propel the Dalí persona. An image that has graced thousands of dorm room walls is Halsman's "Dalí Atomicus," a study in suspended animation showing three cats flying, the artist jumping, a bucket of thrown water arching and a canvas and a chair defying gravity.

Perhaps the apex of their partnership was the 1954 book "Dalí's Mustache," which contains 30 views of the famed facial hair. Subtitled "A Photographic Interview," the book is a series of questions presumably posed by Halsman, and Dalí's clearly full-of-himself answers.

"Confidentially, aren't you an extroverted exhibitionist?" is one query.

Dalí's response, under a photo of him showing the ends of his mustache twisted all the way into his nostrils: "Nonsense, I am an ingrown introvert."

Blowups of "Dalí's Mustache" images will greet High exhibit-goers when "The Late Work" opens next month, and the next gallery is lined with black and white Halsman prints.

Like the billboards, the galleries are visually arresting. The use of the extensive Halsman imagery, though, might be seen as ironic. The exhibit, after all, takes as its mission to show that the second half of Dalí's career, after many critics dismissed him as being more consumed with self-image than with expressing anything original, has more merit than previously thought.

"That's really the backbone argument of what we're trying to show, that Dali continued to be a very serious artist," curator King explained. "That that sort of commercialism and interest in pop culture wasn't so much a negative as it something that was part of who he was as an artist."

Exhibit

"Salvador Dalí: The Late Work "

Aug. 7-Jan. 9. High Museum of Art, 1280 Peachtree St. N.E., Atlanta. 404-733-4444, www.high.org .

Coming Sunday in Living & Arts: Putting together "Dalí: The Late Work"