Salvador Dalí visited England in 1936 to give a lecture wearing a diving suit.
The occasion was the London International Surrealist Exhibition, held at the New Burlington Galleries in London. Dalí’s lecture, titled “Fantômes paranoïaques authentiques” (“Authentic Paranoiac Phantoms”), was delivered on 1 July 1936 as part of the exhibition’s programme of talks about Surrealism and the unconscious.
Dalí arrived in a deep-sea diving suit and helmet, carrying a billiard cue and accompanied by two Russian wolfhounds. He intended the costume to dramatize his claim that he was plunging deeply into the human mind. The performance nearly ended badly when the helmet restricted his breathing.
The young poet David Gascoyne helped rescue Dalí by loosening or removing the helmet. The episode became one of the defining images of the London exhibition and an early example of Dalí turning his own public appearance into performance art. The country was England, not France or the United States.