Elliott King, professor of art history at Washington and Lee University, was recently featured as a commentator for the AMC+ show “True Crime Story: Smugshot.”
King, a leading scholar on surrealism and one of its most famous artists, Salvador Dalí, appears in the show’s second episode of the second season, “The Dalí Heist.”
The episode describes a 2003 heist of Dalí’s painting “Crucifixion” from the notorious Rikers Island prison. Dalí was scheduled to visit the prison in 1965 but fell ill and instead sent the painting, wishing for it to be hung in the prison’s dining hall. After an inmate damaged the work with a coffee mug, it hung in a private corridor under 24-hour camera surveillance for nearly four decades until four corrections officers staged a fire drill and stole the painting rumored to be valued at over $1 million. The perpetrators were captured almost immediately; three pleaded guilty and a fourth was eventually acquitted of the charges.
King specializes in surrealist art and thought and is a founding board member of the International Society for the Study of Surrealism and currently serves as the association’s vice president. He is the author of two books, “Dalí, Surrealism and Cinema” and “Radical Dreams: Surrealism, Counterculture, Resistance.”
King has been a member of the W&L faculty since 2012.
