Which artist was more influential on modern art - Dali or Van Gogh?

I favor Dali taste wise, but I agree with you in terms of influence – in that I think the impressionist influence of Van Gogh did more to expand the nature of art than the surrealistic influence of Dali.

Here’s how I see it – Dali’s visual compositions use techniques that were readable and repeatable to express something new and interesting. Van Gogh expressed something that we saw every day in a completely new visual language, making the very idea of perception something new and interesting. The impact of the first is creative…the second revolutionary.

Van Gogh. I saw the Turner to Cezanne exhibit. Much more widespread influence than Dali.

Van Gogh.

Dali broke from the others in the Surrealist school (like Miro), and was thus more an iconoclast than an influence on those who followed him chronologically. Likewise, Van Gogh would be described as a Post-Impressionist, someone who also broke away from a larger movement. Neither had the influence of Picasso (on Modern art) or Monet (on Impressionism), although they were both giants whose work stood on its own.

Put me in the Van Gogh camp.

I’m curious. What brought on this question? Why would anyone care? They are both wonderful artists, and I’ve enjoyed both their work. Most recently I went to the Dali Museum down in Florida. I concluded that he was probably bipolar when I saw the mass of his work. Then again, I was very depressed at the time and I saw bipolarity everywhere.

I think Dali is more meganarcissistic (did I just make up that word?) than bipolar. I think they had equal influences. I don’t like to give Dali too much praise, because I feel like that’s what he was going for, and too much is given to him overall. I don’t feel much when I look at Dali’s art. He was stylistically and technically brilliant, but there isn’t a lot of heart and soul in his work in my opinion. He was more mental.