Archive for March, 2008
The popularity of Salvador Dali is like a runaway train – powerful, intrusive, memorable! Sort of reminds me of Piccaso’s famous characterization of Dali’s imagination: “It’s like an outboard motor, continuously running!”
So many Dali exhibitions! From London to L.A. St. Petersburg to New York. We love it!
And now this: Istanbul’s Sakip Sabanci Museum will host the largest exhibition of Dali works ever mounted by Spain’s Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation, in a show to run from Sept. 19, 2008 – Jan. 19, 2009. Reportedly, some 270 works will be on view, including 33 oil paintings, 113 drawings and more than 100 graphics. News reports indicate that a Picasso exhibition at the same Turkish museum in 2005-2006 drew a quarter-million visitors. Why do I just know the Dali exhibition will shatter all attendance records – even those who came to see old Pablo!
Right on the money:
Dali Delighted in Divine Dollars!
It won’t be long before the annual May auctions are here, which turns your host’s thoughts to&money! The highest price ever paid at auction for a Dali painting was reportedly $4.7 million, which landed some lucky collector – at a bargain price! – the magnificent canvas with the tongue-tying title: Assumpta Corpuscularia Lapislazulina (1952).
Everything in life is relative, I suppose. But consider the collector who paid an unfathomable $135 million for Gustav Klimt’s painting, Adele Bloch-Bauer. It’s a lovely work – but a hundred and thirty-five million dollars?!
I love to imagine what a painting such as Dali’s iconic Christ of St. John of the Cross would go for, were it to be put on the auction block! Can you even begin to imagine? Or Dali’s Sacrament of the Last Supper. Or, well, any number of masterpieces by history’s greatest surrealist painter.
The Persistent Question
Of course, nothing is more provocative in talking monetary value than speculation as to what Salvador Dali’s most celebrated work – The Persistence of Memory – would garner, were it ever offered for sale. The 1931 jewel is, without question, the single most emblematic work of art – not only of surrealism as an art movement, but arguably of all 20th century painting. It’s an international treasure, synonymous with the very term Surrealism.
And – for those who were not aware of this, hold onto your hats: the New York art dealer Julien Levy purchased The Persistence of Memory shortly after it was exhibited at the Carstairs Gallery in New York City for&$250! Nope, not a misprint: two hundred and fifty dollars. I think I can hear a collective chorus of holy (expletive deleted) out there!
What would this career-defining icon of Dali’s imagination fetch today? $20 million? $50 million? $175 million?
Divine Diarrhea of Money and Gold!
Dali was unabashedly fond of money. Very, very fond of money. Of course, as is sometimes the case with extreme geniuses, he had no practical, day-to-day concept of currency. He probably couldn’t make change of a $20 bill, were he purchasing a sautéed sea urchin at Trader Vick’s!
Sometimes he’d unwittingly give outrageously large tips to New York City taxi drivers. The man who understood Einstein’s Theory of Relativity couldn’t make simple change to save his life. Some say that’s the sign of a genius, and I think, in Dali’s case, they were right.
But Dali knew two things about money: (1) symbolically, it represented a sort of alchemy in his mind – the turning of his oil paint into vast quantities of “divine” dollars and pesetas; and (2) his wealth – whether through the sale of a masterpiece or a Dali-designed Air India ashtray – meant the freedom to paint as he wished, unfettered by worries of when, and from where the next paycheck was coming.
Indeed, I recall a Q. & A. years ago in a syndicated Sunday newspaper magazine, where a reader inquired as to which artist groused that “Picasso painted too much&everywhere you go, you see a Picasso?” The answer, of course, was Salvador Dali. By comparison, said Dali, “I am content in painting a single masterpiece a year!”
It was his fortune that allowed such freedom.
Dali even went so far as to include images of money in his works. On the grandest scale is Apotheosis of the Dollar (1965), perhaps a monumental nose thumbing at Andre Breton for once sardonically making the anagram “Avida Dollars” (greedy for dollars) out of Salvador Dali’s name. A record album of the same theme, titled L’Apotheose Du Dollar racontee par Salvador Dali, features a sleeve design of a sort of volcanic eruption of gold coins.
Apotheosis of the Dollar
The magnificent ceiling panels Dali painted for his museum in Figueres, Spain, feature coins raining down from the heavens. A curious coin, partially obscured by a rock, appears in the foreground of his 1937 picture, Enchanted Beach (Long Siphon). Gold coins double as the dial holes on an old-fashioned rotary telephone in White Telephone and Ruins, a design for the Dali-Disney collaboration, Destino.
White Telephone and Ruins
Said Dali: “I love Gala better than my mother, better than my father, better than Picasso, and even better than money.”
Dali’s Most Frightening Work?
Let’s turn, now, from money to &monsters!
Dali painted his dreams – and his nightmares. Nothing was off limits, and that’s why he was the purest of the Surrealists. It didn’t matter what populated his diurnal thoughts; everything was fair game.
Surely each of us has our favorite Dali, the Dali that brings us the most pleasure. That we find most beautiful, or most amusing, or most enchanting.
But do you have one that’s the creepiest for you? The most frightening?
I do, but it’s challenging to explain precisely why. I just know that, on some unconscious level – a level whose depths and dimensions I myself am not yet aware of – it sends a shiver through me. It touches a nerve. It taunts some dark, perhaps repressed memory or fear of mine.
I’m dead serious about this.
The work is Cannibalism of the Praying Mantis of Lautreamont, 1934, a small, privately owned oil on panel. I’ve never seen it in color, but reproduced only in black and white (on page 211 of the large book, Dali – The Paintings, by Descharnes and Neret).
In part, I’ve always found the praying mantis a mysterious, bizarre, unsettling creature. After all, the female reportedly devours its mate after copulation. And yet the insect looks like it’s praying. Talk about a monster!
In part, the Dali painting sends something of a shiver through me because of the figure at left, strangling the figure at right, along with the strange protuberances, the meat chop with a bone jutting out of it at right, propped up by an untypical “meaty” looking crutch. It evokes a strange and sinister mood.
But the deal-breaker is that small figure of a doll-like child below the towering cannibalism by which she is dwarfed. It’s eerie-looking. Disquieting. Haunting. More than any other Dali painting, this one takes me back to a nightmare I don’t quite remember, but would truly love to forget. If that makes no sense – and at the same time a lot of sense – welcome to the world of Salvador Dali.
One thing is certain about Dali’s works, no matter what else people may opine or speculate: they never fail to get noticed. I’ve noticed Cannibalism of the Praying Mantis of Lautreamont for as long as I’ve seen it in books.
But I always keep my distance.
Until next time, viva Dali!
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The joy of owning great fine art is hard to put into words – a joy that is so much sweeter when you know you’re getting the real deal. The bitter taste of being stung by bogus merchandise is not so hard to put into words: “YOU’RE INDICTED!”
That’s what international investigators said today in breaking art market news that should ultimately be a good thing for the art market and those who patronize it.
An international investigation into both the production and sale of counterfeit limited edition prints, supposedly by Dali, Warhol, Picasso, Miro, Chagall and others, meant federal criminal charges against seven defendants. Three are European, four are U.S. citizens, news reports note.
U.S. and Spanish law enforcement officials announced it all today, pointing out that two separate indictments allege that the defendants – the American ones are from Florida, New York, and Illinois – sold thousands of counterfeit prints at hugely inflated, unrealistic prices. According to news sources, more than $5 million was reaped in the fraud schemes.
Patrick J. Fitzgerald, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, was reported to have said that buyers of limited editing fine art prints, “like all other buyers, are entitled to get what they pay for.”
Indeed! Which is why you must insist – as The Salvador Dali Society does – that what you pay for is impeccably documented and accurately represented. Fine art is a very special gift, a very special possession, and a very special asset. But only when it’s beyond dispute that what you’re buying is legitimate. Thus, the FBI and all the agencies involved in this sort of “sting” are to be applauded. Cleaning off the grease, grime and crumbs from the kitchen table of the art world means that those who come to feast on the joys of art ownership can be assured of nothing less than a superbly delicious meal! Let’s eat!
Sitting on Shakespeare
Once, while your humble Melting Times host was visiting with Salvador Dali in the early 1970s at New York’s St. Regis Hotel, a young man (Charles) walked into the King Cole Lounge, where Dali and several guests, including me, were seated, enjoying Dali’s chatter and charm. Dali was drinking his customary mineral water.
Charles had come to New York on the train from Boston. He was there for one expressed reason: to finally meet his idol for the first time. The teenager and budding artist brought with him a portfolio of Shakespeare etchings by Dali. He apparently hoped the surrealist Master might consider adding a personal touch to them – maybe a sketch or doodle or original signature.
Charles was extremely nervous, now in the presence of Salvador Dali, whom he truly worshipped. In fact, he was literally beginning to hyperventilate. It was getting serious, so we encouraged him to sit down and regain his composure. Unfortunately, Charles had managed to remove the delicate Shakespeare etchings from their protective portfolio, now nervously clutched in his shaky, sweaty hands.
And then – in a move as Dalinian as it was absent-minded – young Charles placed the sheaf of etchings on a chair and& sat on them! We noticed his faux pas right away, of course, but not before the damage had been done. He’d irreversibly creased at least one of the works of art.
Gala to the Rescue
There was, however, a silver lining to the young chap’s inauspicious first meeting with Dali. He had brought as a gift for Dali a poem he’d written about and for Gala – and he wrote it in Russian, at that! Smart move. Dali was moved by Charles’ creative undertaking and thoughtful language translation, so he whisked him out of the room, onto the elevator, and up to the 16th floor. For the next several hours, Charles spent time in the company of Madame Dali. I was later to learn, directly from Charles – who had since become a friend of mine – that Gala was noticeably guarded during their impromptu meeting, for, as Charles put it, “she feared that people wanted to befriend her only to ultimately get to Dali.”
That was not Charles’ intentions, but he did note that he somewhat regretted spending so much time with Gala and so little time with Dali on that unforgettable day.
3-D in the Details
When I was publicity director of the original Salvador Dali Museum in Cleveland (Beachwood), Ohio, Eleanor Morse, who co-owned that remarkable collection with her husband Reynolds, would from time to time lecture about the large Dali masterworks, to the delight of visitors who had the good fortune of being in the right place at the right time. Her talks were always lively and fun.
I recall, in 1973, Mrs. Morse talking about holograms and how Dali was long fascinated by the illusion of three-dimensionality arising from a flat surface. Holograms were all the rage in Dali’s mind at the time. Finally, he believed, technology had truly allowed a nexus between science and art, permitting the literal creation of three-dimensional depth from a flat surface.
But, pointing to Dali’s stunning self-portrait in the lower left corner of The Ecumenical Council (1960), Mrs. Morse commented that “Dali had already achieved the third dimension” in the way his hand seemed to almost project out from the flat canvas. Indeed, if you focus on this wonderful detail – absolutely one of Dali’s finest self-portraits – I think you may agree that Mrs. Morse was spot-on.
Ecumenical Council
Recalling this discussion by Eleanor Morse all those years ago recently got me to thinking about a number of other instances where details in certain Dali paintings really do seem almost hologram-like in their eye-fooling illusion of depth. A good case in point is the Dutch shoe in Perpignan Railway Station (1965). Take a look for yourself; it practically floats before the surface of the massive canvas, doesn’t it!
Another terrific example is Christ of Valles (1962); this great work features three convincing details: the crown of thorns, the drop of blood from the gash in Christ’s side, and the loin cloth – the latter looking unbelievably three-dimensional. Take a close look at all three elements and see if you don’t agree. My but this man could paint!
Button-Down Believability
Finally, I’ll never forget the first time I set eyes on The Hallucinogenic Toreador, which just might be the greatest of all Dali paintings. The original Dali Museum in Ohio was set up in chronological order, and I complied with the suggested manner of viewing the collection, starting from his works as a pre-adolescent and working my way to the late, large Ecumenical Council, Dream of Columbus, and, finally, Toreador of 1970.
Walking through Dali’s development as a surrealist and post-war Nuclear-Mystical painter, I saw The Hallucinogenic Toreador from across the room. And, spotting the white collar button on the hallucinatory bull fighter’s shirt, I remarked to a companion, “Well look at that – Dali has affixed an actual plastic button to the canvas! Very cool!”
Of course, as I approached the nearly 14-foot-high picture, I realized how foolish I was to doubt Dali’s draftsmanship, for that “add-on” button was of course scrupulously painted in such detail as to have me believing that it was a real three-dimensional object!
Moral of the story: Dali’s genius as a realist was as pronounced as his fame as a surrealist.
See you here next time – and viva Dali!
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Watch out Paris, step aside London and New York, the Middle East might just be giving these international art hubs a run for their money as the region emerges as a top advocate of the arts. Although the Middle East and cities like Dubai and Abu Dhabi have gained worldwide fame and status for their oil-dominated economies and consequential wealth, such cities now seek to diversify their culture and are actively participating in the arts as a way of doing so.
At the forefront of the Middle East’s involvement in the art world is Dubai. This city is the second largest of the seven emirates in the United Arab Emirates and currently stands as one of the world’s wealthiest countries. Because of this, the government is able and now willing to begin contributing some of its staggering wealth to its growing art community. Its annual art fai, “Art Dubai” is held every March at the Madinat Arena. This contemporary international market is the first of its kind and is quickly becoming the foundation of the growing art scene in the Middle East.
Art Dubai continues to expand and create new objectives as well, such as “The Global Art Forum” that was launched at the 2007 Art Dubai fair. The Forum I attracted forty of the top artists, museum directors/curators and other professionals to come together and discuss art today and the way in which art influences the relationship between the Middle East and the International art community. In 2008 Forum II continued on this path of discussion and covered topics such as how art acts as a business and how art attracts both public and private interest.
Another endeavor of Art Dubai is a new work and project space that was introduced in this year’s fair. It is entitled “Art Park” and is actually an underground space purely devoted to video work and installations from artists all over the world. Credit Suisse is also getting involved in the arts and the Middle East’s growing involvement by launching “Arts & Entrepreneurship” exhibition alongside Art Dubai 2008. This exhibition will display work of nineteen different artists from sixteen different countries, all of which will focus on the five core values of entrepreneurship: vision, knowledge, network, family, social responsibility. Their artwork covers a wide variety of media, from installations to oil paintings and all of which highlight the influence of art and entrepreneurship across the globe.
Following in Dubai’s footsteps is its sister Emirate, Abu Dhabi. This Emirate is also creating a name for itself in the art world by becoming the future home of two of the world’s most established and well known galleries, the Louvre and the Guggenheim.
This past July, New York’s Guggenheim Foundation revealed that it would build its largest museum to date in Abu Dhabi. The museum, “The Guggenheim Abu Dhabi”, will be designed by world renowned architect Frank Gehry, and will cost the Emirate more than four hundred million US dollars. This price actually pales in comparison to the projected two billion US dollar total Abu Dhabi will spend on the Louvre Abu Dhabi project. The creation of a second Louvre in Abu Dhabi is actually the result of a thirty-year agreement between the French Culture Minister and the head of Abu Dhabi’s tourism authority. This agreement will allow the museum to house work from some of France’s top museums, such as Musee d’Orsay and Versailles, to name a few. Louvre Abu Dhabi will also be designed by an equally impressive architect, Jean Nouvel, who intends to create the museum in the shape of a flying saucer set on the Abu Dhabi waterfront. Although it is rather simple to see the incentive Abu Dhabi finds in this extraordinary project, France too has significant reasons for creating a branch of the Louvre in the Middle East. France’s Cultural Prime Minister believes its considerable contributions and participation in Abu Dhabi/Middle East’s emergence as an art hub and will not only demonstrate it’s global involvement but hopefully strengthen its relations with the Arab world as well.
Projects such as these in the Middle East will solidify its newly acquired position as an art capital. While in the past one is quick to associate oil with the Middle East, the day is fast arriving that art will be synonymous with the Middle East as well. With the emergence of Art Dubai and the completion of the Louvre and the Guggenheim, art lovers will soon be flocking to this region of the world. It is left up to us to embrace this new addition to Middle Eastern culture so as not to miss out on the latest development in the art world.
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Spring arrives just days from now, and that turns our attentions more and more to the outdoors and, specifically, to outdoor sports. It’s difficult to imagine Salvador Dali playing sports, even though he was an avid recreational swimmer. And in his youth he got a certain pleasure leaping from high places – steps and ledges and such. Oh, and he’d occasionally jump rope wielded by two obliging children, showing off his penchant for jumping – and his youthful joi d’ vivre.
But Dali did have a connection with sports, surrealistically speaking.
Let’s take baseball, since the boys of summer will be doing their annual slug-fest before long. Dali’s mini-film with Walt Disney, Destino, featured several references to baseball, an American tradition the artist first became superficially acquainted with while he was in the U.S. during the second World War. It’s said that Dali had no real understanding of the game, but was intrigued by the pageantry and especially the uniforms, most notably that of catcher, what with the face guard and chest protector.
Melancholy, Atomic, Uranic Idyll
Baseball players – one swinging for the fences, one in catcher’s regalia, two sliding into base – show up in Melancholy, Atomic, Uranic Idyll (1945) – but here Dali uses baseballs as a metaphor for dropping bombs in one of his most unusual and poignant pictures.
A dozen years later, what leaps off Dali’s easel but Celestial Ride, a strange and wonderfully amusing canvas in which a rhinoceros with skyscraper-tall spider legs sports a TV screen on its side – televising the fast action of a baseball game.
Celestial Ride
Then, even in a wildly different medium, Dali chose Basketball Players Being Transformed into Angels as the subject and title of his 1972 hologram.
Finally, in 1954, photographer and Dali collaborator Philippe Halsman came out with a photograph of Dali gazing at the Feb. 26 edition of the New York Herald Tribune, with his mustache poking through holes in the paper’s photo of three New York Giants players.
Political Plays
The Dali-sports connection was seen a few years earlier – this time American football – in his Poetry of America, 1943. Like Melancholy, Atomic&, this work made a political statement – Dali’s belief that Africa and the Black-White race issue would galvanize (and polarize) popular and political debate, as would Pop art itself inform the culture. And here Dali symbolizes the latter – prophetically, long before Pop art was in vogue – through the hyper-realistic depiction of a bottle of Coca-Cola!
The Olympics didn’t escape Dali’s creativity either. He designed special medallions sets, in silver, gold, and platinum, for the 1984 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Cosmic Athlete of 1968 was used to commemorate the ’88 Olympics in Korea, and a detail of that painting turned up two years later in Dali’s great canvas, Hallucinogenic Toreador, a tribute to Spain’s national sport: bull fighting.
Dali also produced two sports-related lithographs, one of a football player and one of a golfer
Let’s remember, too, that among his various TV commercials was a promotion for Braniff Airlines, in which he co-”pitched” with New York Yankees pitcher Whitey Ford.
Picture of the “Sports” lithos
A very early portrait, when Dali was just 16, captures a boxer in the ring in a painting titled simply Boxer, and, at age 17, Dali painted a portrait titled Portrait of Jaume Miravitlles as a Footballer.
Dali Drama: He Really Was a ‘Leading Man’
Hollywood is chasing Dali – again.
Dali courted Hollywood moguls and freer creative spirits in the 1940s with his work on Hitchcock’s Spellbound, Disney’s Destino, and Jack and Anne Warner’s portraits, among other projects. Now, nearly 20 years since Dali’s death, Hollywood is hot on his trail again, this time with Dali at center stage.
Academy Award-winning actor Al Pacino is set to begin shooting Dali and I, based on the book of the same name by Stan Lauryssens, due out July 8 (the book, not the movie). Johnny Depp, it was just reported, is eager to star as Dali in a movie of the same name, and is actively seeking a good script about the Surrealist master. What’s more, it’s reported that actor Peter O’Toole will star in a film titled Goodbye Dali. Peter Rawley, producer of Dali, was quoted thusly in the press: “Filmmakers somehow pick up on the vibe. But three films is nothing – at one stage, we counted up to nine.”
Interestingly enough, when Dali appeared as mystery guest on the old What’s My Line? TV show, one of the blindfolded panelists asked him if he would be considered a “leading man.” Although Dali confidently answered in the affirmative, the host – after a brief huddle with Dali – clarified that it would be misleading to characterize the evening’s mystery guest as a leading man.
But not anymore. Oh, Salvador, you were so ahead of your time!
Until next time, viva Dali!
- Salvador Dalà (Spain 1904-1989). Melancholy, Atomic, Uranic Idyll. 1945. Oil on canvas. 65 x 85 cm. Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina SofÃa, Madrid. © Salvador DalÃ, Fundació Gala-Salvador DalÃ, Artists Rights Society, 2008.
- Salvador Dalà (Spain 1904-1989), Celestial Ride. 1957. Oil on canvas 185 x 83 cm. Private collection. © Salvador DalÃ, Fundació Gala-Salvador DalÃ, Artists Rights Society, 2008.
- Salvador Dalà (Spain 1904-1989) Poetry of America: The Cosmic Athletes. 1943. Oil on canvas. Private Collection, © Salvador DalÃ, Fundació Gala-Salvador DalÃ, Artists Rights Society, 2008.
- Salvador Dalà (Spain 1904-1989) Sports. 1973. Lithograph. 40 x 47.5 cm Private Collection, © Salvador DalÃ, Fundació Gala-Salvador DalÃ, Artists Rights Society, 2008.
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Did any artist of the 20th century have a more electrifying influence on the prevailing culture than Salvador Dali? No way. And it’s easy to see why. Look around you, under every rock of pop culture, around every corner of modern thought, in each cranny of everyday life.
A good way to consider Dali’s impact is simply to examine a typical day. Get up in the morning to the sound of an alarm clock – and consider how Dali’s iconic melting clocks inspired not only actual timepieces that feature the same limpid motif, but how the metaphor of time standing still – and the structured morphed into the malleable – has informed the world of advertising and music videos.
Eggs First, Then Napoleon
Ok, out of bed and time for breakfast. Dali and food: a comestible connection. His Dinners of Gala cookbook is one of the most coveted by bibliophiles. And food figured into countless Dali works. From several baskets of bread paintings to a portrait of Gala with lamb chops on her shoulder, to his provocative Dinners of Gala 12-piece mixed-media graphics suite (see the prints section of www.dalinet.com).
More specifically, that breakfast egg you may be having should remind us of how eggs figured prominently in Dali’s personal iconography. They reminded him of Gala’s breasts – and eyes. Not to mention the “super-gelatinous” intrauterine memories Dali claims to have had, in vivid detail.
And eggs dangling from a string, such as the one in Ouefs sur le Plat sans le Plat (Eggs on a Plate without the Plate), 1932, might also have been a reference to Isaac Newton’s gravitational discoveries – the scientist’s apple now supplanted by a hoisted fried egg.
What else should we have expected from the young Catalan who wrote in his autobiography that his earliest ambition was to be a cook – before, of course, he then wanted to be Napoleon!
Dali, You Can Drive My Car
Off to work you go in your car. And Dali’s grass car of the 1970s – a Volkswagen Beetle covered in grass, making the inorganic suddenly organic – was just one of his wildly paradoxical ideas, not to mention a grand opportunity for instant publicity. (NOTE: Dali never drove himself. Dali behind the wheel? Now that would be surreal!)
Of course, some of Dali’s most interesting works featured the automobile, including the painting he cited as his most oddly titled: Debris of an Automobile Giving Birth to a Blind Horse Biting a Telephone of 1938. Then there was the Rainy Taxi; his Cadillac, previously owned by Al Capone; his Clothed Automobile painting of 1941; and his historic arrival at the Sorbonne in Paris, in a Rolls Royce chockablock with cauliflower!
Back home for the evening, and the chairs and tables we enjoy remind us of his furniture designs..his designs for Mohawk carpets…his designs for floor tiles, and fabrics, and lamps, and mirrors, and ash trays, and . . .
It occurs to your humble Melting Times host that the list of Dali creations that have influenced popular culture is darn near endless. Pick a category – Dali was there:
Music: Dali designed the cover for Jackie Gleason’s Lonesome Echo album.
Fashion: dress and hat designs for Schiaparelli
Furniture: that famously erotic Mae West lips-sofa
Hosiery: Advertisements for Bryan Hosiery, appearing in Vogue and Harpar’s Bazaar
Literature: Illustrations for MacBeth, The Poems of Mao Tse Tung, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Autobiography of Bevenuto Cellini, Dante’s Divine Comedy, The Jerusalem Bible, and countless others
Macbeth
Entertainment: from his mind-blowing Dream of Venus pavilion at the 1939 World’s Fair, to his confounding press conference with glam rocker Alice Cooper (and his cylindrical hologram of Alice Cooper’s brain); to his set designs for theatrical presentations; his dream sequence in Hitchcock’s Spellbound; his appearances on TV shows like What’s My Line? And I’ve Got A Secret.
The inexhaustible list continues with a parade of commercial items that span candelabra to perfume, neckties to dinner plates, earrings to lollipop wrappers – all kinds of things. And speaking of things . . .
Surreal Things
So it’s perfectly appropriate that, on Feb. 29, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, opened a new 250-piece exhibition titled Surreal Things. Organized with London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, the exhibition deals with Surrealist objects and their relationship with commercial design. Dali, of course, figures prominently in the show – as if anyone had any doubt about that.
Dali Doppelgangers? You Read it First in ‘The Melting Times’!
The Salvador Dali Society’s Melting Times is where you read this first – a great promotional idea I believe would be the perfect way to draw further attention to the next great Dali exhibition:
HOLD A DALI LOOK-ALIKE CONTEST!
The idea recently occurred to me when I saw a promotion for the upcoming motion picture, The Love Guru, and the main actor, Mike Meyers, had a wide-eyed look, long hair, and handle bar mustache. He really didn’t look much like Dali, but he momentarily reminded me of him.
Which got me to thinking: how cool would it be if a museum planning a Dali show held a Dali look-alike competition! Imagine all the characters that would show up with scimitar-like mustaches and saucer eyes, together with the canes and capes and perhaps an ocelot or anteater in tow! It would sure garner major press coverage and create an even crazier buzz than usual, whenever the works of Salvador Dali come to town.
Just a thought.
Until next time, Viva DALI!
- Salvador Dalà (Spain 1904-1989). Persistence of Memory. 1931. Oil on canvas. 24 x 33 cm. Museum of Modern Art, New York. © Salvador DalÃ, Fundació Gala-Salvador DalÃ, Artists Rights Society, 2008.
- Salvador Dalà (Spain 1904-1989) Oeufs sur le Plat sans le Plat 1931. Oil on canvas. 60.3 x 41.9 cm © Salvador DalÃ, Fundació Gala-Salvador DalÃ, Artists Rights Society, 2008.
- Salvador Dalà (Spain 1904-1989). Car clothing (Clothed Automobile). 1941.Oil on canvas © Salvador DalÃ, Fundació Gala-Salvador DalÃ, Artists Rights Society, 2008.
- Salvador Dalà (Spain 1904-1989). Macbeth. 1946. Original drawing on paper. 20.5 x 14.7 cm. Private Collection. © Salvador DalÃ, Fundació Gala-Salvador DalÃ, Artists Rights Society, 2007.
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