To find an enemy’s center of gravity, you have to erase your own tendency to think in conventional terms or to assume that the other side’s center is the same as your own. When Salvador Dalí came to the United States in 1940, intent on conquering the country as an artist and making his fortune, he made a clever calculation. In the European art world, an artist had to win over the critics and make a name as “serious.” In America, though, that kind of fame would doom an artist to a ghetto, a limited circle. The real center of gravity was the American media. By wooing the newspapers, he would
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