Salad Days

Let’s call it Arcimboldo — with attitude. Those fantastical combinations of fruits, flowers, fish and vegetables constructed by the Italian artist into portraits are as compelling now as they were in the 16th century.
The super surrealist Salvador Dalí loved the weird and wondrous work of Giuseppe Arcimboldo and passed his enthusiasm on to his friend Elsa Schiaparelli. We may remember the shoe hat by “Schiap,” but her 1939 botanical headgear, made as if from juicy purple grapes nestling in green leaves, was just as surreal.