Pride matters: 'My class head accused me of depravity and churlishness'

As a gay teen growing up in 90s Ireland, Domhnall O’Donoghue revisits the artwork that inspired him to confront his identity

Domhnall O'Donoghue in Cadaqués where the artist Salvador Dalí lived.

Dalí was kinda rude, wasn’t he? So says an American visitor standing behind me in the sun-drenched foyer of the Salvador Dalí Theatre-Museum, positioned in the bowels of the artist’s hometown of Figueres, Catalonia.

It’s appropriate that the birthplace of this icon translates as “fig trees,” seeing as Dalí’s eclectic output was undeniably fruitful, and “kinda rude,” according to this unimpressed critic, now disappearing to the crypt below. Dalí's paintings clearly reflect his obsession with sex — subjects like impotence, self-pleasure, voyeurism, and sadomasochism are commonplace in his oeuvre.