Archive for August, 2008
Dali aficionados surely are familiar with that clip of the legendary comedian, Bob Hope, expectedly seated at a dinner table during the infamous Surrealist party thrown by Salvador Dali and Gala Dali at the Del Monte Lodge in Pebble Beach, California in 1941. The scene in question shows Mr. Hope lifting a dome off a platter, and being startled at the leaping frogs that emerged!
That Dali “the performance artist” who was ahead of his time was driven home yet again by a recent program put on by Pebble Beach’s historian, Neal Hotellig, when he offered a program called “The Heritage of Pebble Beach,” held at the Monterey Maritime Museum. The program traced the area’s history, from its roots to the creation of the Del Monte Hotel.
The program, of course, included footage of the notorious Dali party, showing those amphibians leaping from Hope’s dinner plate, and other bizarre goings-on that etched that publicity and photo opportunity indelibly into the annals of Dali lore. “The Herald” newspaper of Monterey County noted that the Del Monte was “a catalyst for the development of ‘destination tourism’ in the West and the world.
Your Melting Times host has written “Herald” reporter Kevin Howe, who wrote the story referenced here, to see if he might know whether film footage exists of the entire Surrealist soiree. Various Dali video compendiums show only the Bob Hope scene and a few other snippets. However, my guess is that far more footage was shot and, presumably, preserved. I’ll let you know, if and when I hear back from Howe.
Linking the Past and the Present
Speaking of linking historical events with present-day reminiscences, I’m reminded of how Dali would often revive in a contemporary work a concept he explored decades earlier.
A case in point is Gala standing at and looking out the window in Dali’s 1976 ‘Lincoln in Dali Vision’ painting. It’s certainly not coincidence or accident that one of Dali’s best known and most important early oils was ‘Figure at a Window’ of 1925, this time using his sister Ana Maria as his model (and with clothing on!). It is truly interesting to compare the two poses – separated by more than half a century. Dali did nothing by happenstance. His public life may have seemed chaotic and frenetic at times, but when it came to his art, he was cunning, calculating, and exact.
Figure at the Window, 1932
Lincoln in Dali Vision, 1976
Dali and restaurants: a Delicious Combination:
Anyone out there have a Dali – and – restaurant story? It seems certain people who’ve had the unforgettable experience of seeing, if not meeting, Salvador Dali, did so in a restaurant. Melting Times readers with a good memory will hopefully recall my tale of the time Dali and the Morses of Cleveland (benefactors of the St. Pete Dali Museum) were dining at the old Pewter Mug restaurant in Beachwood, Ohio, just a block or two from the original Dali Museum. They overheard a couple at a nearby table, where the wife said to her husband, “Look, honey – it’s Salvador Dali!” And the husband, refusing to turn around, replied, “Yeah, dear, sure, Salvador Dali. Here. At this little restaurant in Beachwood. Right.”
Of course the King Cole Lounge of the St Regis in New York is the most famous and most popular spot where people could stop by as Dali held court there each evening during the winter months (that’s where I met with Dali on two different occasions). Dali was also a habitue of the Russian Tea Room in New York – where one of its waiters ended up serving as a model for Dali’s ‘Christopher Colombus’ painting – as well as the now defunct Trader Vic’s in Manhattan. I recall going into that restaurant years ago – subsequent to Dali’s death- and having the maitre d’ note that Mr. and Mrs. Salvador Dali were listed in their Rolodex of regular V.I.P. guests.
Laurent in New York was also a favored dining spot for Dali (I recall a press report noting that, upon his death, Dali had a left a huge unpaid tab there – well into the 5-figures, if I’m not mistaken). He also frequented Chateau Madrid on West 58th Street (I think it’s gone now); El Moracco, also in the Big Apple and, I believe, no longer in existence; and another New York favorite – La Goulue. Maxim’s was a favorite dining spot when Dali was in Paris.
Hey, all this is making me hungry. Let’s eat here again next time. Until then, Viva Dali!
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NEWSARAMA.COM : THE DALI DIMENSION
http://www.newsarama.com/tv/080730-dvd-reviews.html
By Steve Fritz
posted: 2008-07-31 06:36:00 ET
Interesting note, when Salvador Dali died in 1989, the largest proportion of books in his personal library were of science. We dont just mean everyday pop science, but the works of Einstein, Oppenheim, Heisenberg, Schroedinger, Watson & Crick, and many more. More important, in those books were the fundamentals of many of Dalis masterworks. He also spent millions of his own money to sponsor symposiums of many of the great minds of the physical sciences.
Whether drawing (literally) a connection between DNA to Jacobs Ladder, or creating a painting of his beloved Gala utilizing the proportions of the Golden Ratio, this DVD lays the claim the master surrealist was more influenced by science than he was by the likes of Freud or Andre Breton. It includes an amazing array of interviews of the man and the researchers he admired. Of course, it also includes about a hundred or so of his works to back it up.
A truly different look at one of the true great artists of the last century. If you want one of your own, you can always check out the site www.dalinet.com.
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Nineteen Years after his death, Salvador Dali remains controversial, equally pilloried for his relentless showmanship and lauded for his artistic genius. Distributed by The Salvador Dali Society, it’s not surprising that this doc virtually ignores Dali’s private life including the enormous influence of wife Gala in favour of examining the influences of science and religion on the Catalonian’s art.
Verdict: Period interviews with Dali; rare archival footage and talking head interviews with art historians and scientists sheds light on h is often indecipherable work.
Key Extras: Dali and the origin of life The fascination with anti-matter
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by Colleen Morgan
This documentary is a deeply intelligent dissection of the 20th century’s most famous Surrealist artist Salvador Dali and the influence of his art by the realm of all sciences and ologies, which fascinated him. For example, Dali’s obsession with physicist Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity influenced his famous painting of a trio of melting clocks entitled “The Persistence of Memory,” (which he later denied and instead said was influenced by the effect of Camembert cheese melting in the sun). Dali’s rebuttal was “Universal time exists i all things and is thus irrelevant.” Sexuality and symbolism, psychology and mysticism, influenced Dali’s art, as did Sigmund Freud’s psychological theories. The paranoid critical method, which Dali actually theorized, is “delirium interpretation,” aka hallucination. In other words, what you think you see in life is not necessarily the real. Heavy, yet obvious once you think about it.
A prolific writer as well as a voracious reader of books regarding the nature of all realms of the sciences, sparked especially by the Atomic Age which began in the late 1940s, affected Dali’s art to the high point of near-obsession. During the mid-1950s, religion became mixed into the picture. “I believe in God but I have no faith, Mathematics and sciences tell me that God must exist but I don’t believe it. Watson and Crick’s discovery, dissection and illustration of DNA spurred Dali’s art to another level altogether. “The only legitimate structure today is the molecular structure of deoxyribonucleic acid.” Hi, genetics!
The scope of Dali’s influences, as well as those who influenced, his contemporaries and predecessors are documented here.
I watched this DVD immediately after reviewing the Limp Bizkit DVD, and had to start it over to rewatch a couple of times because my brain had been dumbed down by the basest thud of Floridian nookie crap. Even if you are not into scientific theory, you’ll like the footage of Dali and his fantastic signature mustache in interview footage. When the film enters into Dali’s status in the ’60s and ’70s, his pop stardom begins to take form elevating him to rock star status. Four dimensional space and computer illustrations as well as the catastrophe theory were the last scientific influences in Dali’s art at the end of his life. Never mind the fact that his art and creative process are mind-blowingly featured in this mulit-award winning feature.
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I can hardly believe there’s now talk of exhuming Salvador’s body to determine, through DNA matching, if the Madrid woman who claims to be the illegitimate daughter of the 20th century’s greatest artist is the real deal, or just some whack job looking for instant, and twisted, fame. The world will be watching to see how this all plays out.
It’s intriguing, of course, on many levels. Not the least being that Dali always proclaimed he didn’t much care for “embryons.” That’s how he would refer to children: embryons. In the mid-70s documentary film, “Hello, Dali,” he noted, “No likee le embryons,” but that he was making an exception as he gestured a sign of the cross, made with his right hand, on the forehead of an infant being carried by a passer-by.
Dali was once quoted as responding to a journalist who asked why he never had any children. Dali asked the reporter to consider how crazy the children of Picasso were, then added: “Imagine what a child of Dali’s would be like!” Good point.
Now, however, if the claims of this woman turn out to be true, this may be the single most surreal chapter is the prodigious and ever-controversial life and career of the Master of Catalonia. We’ll stay on this one, for sure.
Dali Mania Means a Rising Tide that Lifts All Boats
Salvador Dali is as popular as ever. Maybe more so. When people sometimes ask me, “What do you have to write about today, given that Dali’s been gone for nearly 20 years now?” I say: “Plenty!”
Indeed, just look what’s going as I write these very words. We have the great Dali: Painting & Film exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, which opened originally in London, traveled to Los Angeles, then went to St. Petersburg, Florida before its present landing to rave reviews and enthusiastic throngs at New York’s MoMA.
No less than two, or is it three, feature films are in production, or are being cast, about Dali – most notably a movie starring Al Pacino as Dali, based on the bizarre, largely fictional book, Dali & I: The Surreal Story. The author is so preposterously non-credible, however, that I don’t believe his name is worth crediting in this space. Nevertheless, Hollywood will soon be buzzing about Dali. And, oh yes, another film about the artist is reportedly under consideration, with Johnny Depp in the lead role, though last we knew the actor was in search of a really good script. Depp and Pacino are big box office, so we’ll be watching to see how Dali plays out on the silver screen – and the bottom line.
Finally, there are several new books coming out, reportedly this fall, on the Maestro, too. Plus exhibitions planned in Turkey – a first for that country – and elsewhere.
Maybe most exciting is this fact, which I haven’t heard much buzz about, but which I’m putting in bold type here’
2009 Will Mark the 20th Anniversary of Salvador Dali’s Death!
Is it possible? It seems like only yesterday (I know that’s cliché, but it’s so damn true!) that I was huddled around my TV set, taping the many reports from around the world of the great Master’s passing on Jan. 23, 1989.
Now that date in ’09 will mark two decades since he succumbed to cardiac arrest in a Figueres hospital. Time flies as well as melts, in Salvador Dali’s world.
I have to believe this milestone anniversary will give rise to all manner of special Dali exhibitions, events and activities worldwide.
Bounty in Buffalo
It’s been a privilege and adventure to have been serving as adviser to Mrs. Edmund (Martha) Klein and her family of Williamsville, New York, near Buffalo – owners of a unique collection of 15 dedicatory drawings by Dali, plus the silver Clot Collection sculpture, St. John the Baptist, given by Dali to the late Dr. Klein.
Dr. Klein, who died at age 77 in 1999, was Dali’s personal but very private physician – and little wonder why: he was consulting with Dali on a skin disorder believed to be cancer. Neither doctor nor patient wanted to compromise the sacrosanct doctor-patient confidentiality. And with Dali’s public persona to protect, he surely wanted to keep his meetings with Dr. Klein as far off the radar as possible.
When the two did meet – in New York, Paris, and Port Lligat – Dali would bring a book or sketchpad with him and draw something expressly for Dr. Klein, who won the Lasker Award – the highest honor in American medicine – for his revolutionary work in skin cancer treatment.
Their meetings together resulted in 15 dedicatory works in total, plus the statue. The collection’s been memorialized in a catalog I had the honor and pleasure to write and produce. Press reports about the collection – which has been kept under tight security for many years – recently made international headlines. There’s an avalanche of documentation on the Dr. Edmund Klein Collection of Dali Originals, and plans are being worked out to market the drawings and sculpture, but only intact, since it’s really a page of art history in general and Dali lore in particular.
Why Dr. Klein? Because this man actually discovered a non-surgical cure for a form of skin cancer. Dali secretary Enrique Sabater’s quest to find the best led to Dr. Klein’s door, and on a lithograph, Savage Beasts of the Desert – also in the Klein Collection – Sabater inscribed it to Klein: “Pour Doctor Klein, con mi mayor afecto y admiracion” (“For Dr. Klein with my great affection and admiration”), signed Enrique Sabater and dated 4/30/76.
It’s a Dalinian world, everywhere you turn these days. Hey, no complaints from the Redondo Beach bureau! Until next time, viva Dali!
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How ironic that the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Pete is currently running an exhibition about Dali and women, given the news that broke on August 11 that a woman in Madrid has come forward to claim she’s Dali’s daughter!
Ok, before we go any further, this blogger has to say it: judging from the picture posted at www.artdaily.org, the woman looks hauntingly like the way one might picture a 52-year-old daughter of Salvador Dali to look like! In fact, to your Melting Times host’s eye, it’s uncanny. And not a wee bit scary.
Could this be? DNA tests will prove it, if they ever come out. For now, it’s unclear what’s going to happen. Here’s an excerpt from the artdaily piece:
MADRID- A 52 year old Spanish woman, Pilar A., had a DNA test made eight months ago which she hoped would help her prove that she is the daughter of famous painter Salvador Dali. The woman had a DNA test made eight months ago and her story was confirmed by Nicolas Descharnes, son of friend and biographer of Salvador Dali, Robert Descharnes.
Pilar A., whose mother had worked as a young woman at the home of a family in Barcelona who were on vacation in Cadaques, has explained that she has had two DNA tests but that the results have never been given to her, which makes her believe that she is the painters daughter. Because of this she is trying now to have a court order make an official DNA test to prove her theory.
Dali’s DNA samples were given to the scientist who made the test by the Descharnes family who kept them after the Spanish painter died.
The Descharnes family has kept silent so Pilar has now hired the services of a lawyer who has already sent the first request to see the results of the DNA test. If the family does not comply a court will order them to do so.
What you might not have known going on at the MoMA.
The big news at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is of course the great Dali: Painting and Film exhibition, which I recently attended and wrote about last time. What you may not have been aware of, however, is that the MoMA has also been running a special musical tribute to Dali.
The program is called Dali: Imagined Musical Landscapes, and museum representative Olivier Conan noted, “In his writing, Dali often mentions music as a secondary source of inspiration; he would play music while painting, but was not always forthcoming as to what exactly he listened to. His father had been a classical music aficionado, and from him Dali inherited a lasting fondness for Bach and Wagner and a deep suspicion of classical music ‘high art.’
“As a Surrealist…” Conan continued, “Dali embraced popular music forms: tango and bolero, fox-trot and chanson. He claimed a strong predilection for jazz, which he called ‘marvelously anti-artistic music,’ and also loved the traditional cobla bands of his childhood.”
Thus, every Thursday in July and August, in The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden at the MoMA, musicians – in an attempt to describe the musical context in which Salvador Dali and his art evolved – have been interpreting various aspects of Dali’s imagined musical landscape.
Skull with its Lyric Appendage Leaning on a Night Table Which Should Have the Exact Temperature of a Cardinal’s Nest, 1934
Worth a closer look . . .
As promised in previous posts here, from time to time we’ll take a closer look at various Dali works, especially ones that tend not to get as much attention in other popular or scholarly venues. Today’s work: Meditative Rose of 1958.
Meditative Rose, 1958
I’ve never found a whole lot written about this beautiful work, yet ironically I see posters of it hanging in many an office – usually but not always those of women. It simply has to be one of the calmest and most lovely canvases ever to emerge from Dali’s studio.
But some who have written critically about it (not negatively, but with a more examining eye) have suggested, and I think plausibly, that the rose here represents the internal reproduction orgasm of women. Indeed, Dali did several paintings where a bleeding rose was placed over a woman’s womb, clearly symbolizing menstruation. And Dali had always declared unabashedly that what interested him above all else was eroticism.
However, in Meditative Rose (sometimes titled merely The Rose), we are reminded quite obviously of something no one has ever disputed about the controversial Dali: his technical skill was that of a virtuoso. What a drop-dead gorgeous flower! And the drop of water on the leaf is photographic in its realism. It might also be hard to find a more tranquil scene than this one, with the huge rose hovering above a pure, clean landscape on which two lovers share a special moment. The bright red rose contrasts sharply with the blue sky background.
Whenever I confront people who say, “Oh, Dali – that crazy guy with the wild mustache, the weird pictures, and those soft watches,” I say, “Yep, all that, and more. For example, check out this painting of a rose by Dali.”
Sheer beauty, Dali style.
Until next time, my friends, viva Dali!
- Salvador Dalà (Spain 1904-1989) Skull with its Lyric Appendage Leaning on a Night Table Which Should Have the Exact Temperature of a Cardinal’s Nest. 1934. Oil on canvas. 24 x 19 cm. Salvador Dali Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida © Salvador DalÃ, Fundació Gala-Salvador DalÃ, Artists Rights Society, 2008
- Salvador Dalà (Spain 1904-1989) Meditative Rose. 1958. Oil on canvas. 36 x 28 cm. Private Collection © Salvador DalÃ, Fundació Gala-Salvador DalÃ, Artists Rights Society, 2008
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You can never really have too much money or too much sex, they say – but could Salvador Dali have had too much talent? Let me explain. In my most recent blog entry, I was talking about Dali’s great portrait of Laurence Olivier, which I saw for the first time in person at the Dali: Painting and Film exhibition at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
The thing about such works – especially when they’re under glass, such as the state of affairs with the Olivier canvas – is that they’re almost indistinguishable from very good reproductions of them. How’s that for irony!
Dali’s 1930′s declaration that his technique was “hand-painted color photography” really rang true in so many of his paintings, and that point was driven home for me upon viewing the Olivier picture. It is so precise, so exact, so devoid of discernible brushstrokes that it takes on the appearance of a high quality, slick, smooth, jewel-like reproduction.
Some would argue that it’s not “painterly,” a term I interpret to mean a work that actually does show brushstrokes – perhaps impasto, as well – and thus making it clear it’s in fact a painting and not a photographic work. It connotes a bit more spontaneity and a bit less of a cerebral exercise in technical virtuosity. In Salvador Dali’s case, his painstaking draftsmanship was so outstanding that his hand-painted color photography can almost be taken literally, even though the term is of self-contradictory.
Making the Unreal ‘Real’
Of course, it was precisely because of Dali’s extraordinary technique that he was able to make his visions so convincing. Had he not possessed such mastery of technique, he could never have pulled off the effect of making the unreal seem so real. We simply wouldn’t be hypnotized by his ideas transferred to canvas, had his technique not been characterized by nearly crystalline surfaces of, well, color photography, hand-made!
Portrait of Sir Laurence Olivier, 1955
Nature Morte Vivante, 1956
Groundbreaking for new Dali Museum may occur this fall,
But what will the package containing such a great gift look like?
It’s being reported that the $32 million capital campaign to build the new and improved Dali Museum of St. Petersburg is now three-quarters complete, so it looks like a sure thing that groundbreaking will commence this fall. But will the structure continue to look like what one Dali aficionado called it – a boxy building strangled by a glass turd? The Dalinian world will be wondering, watching, waiting…and wincing?
Beachwood Memories
After all these years (nearly 35!), people still ask me what it was like at the original Dali Museum in the Cleveland, Ohio suburb of Beachwood. It was, well, a bit strange, yet it was the beginnings of an empire.
Reynolds and Eleanor Morse had to wangle a special zoning permit to allow their famous collection to be displayed publicly (albeit by appointment only) in a commercial area such as it was (even the address was Commerce Park Road).
I remember the woefully inconspicuous, tiny little sign that read simply DALI, because a more suitable sign was not permitted. I also remember how people, who had to be buzzed into the building and then directed by intercom to come upstairs to the second floor, one-room exhibit, were often surprised to learn that an appointment was expected. “Next time, please call head,” they were politely admonished.
The museum was a single room. Across the hall was Morse’s IMS Co., a plastics injection molding business whose banal look and feel stood in dramatic contrast to the surrealist treasures that hung only a few feet on the other side of the hallway. That juxtaposition itself was surreal!
Joan Kropf, now curator of the museum, which of course relocated to St. Petersburg, Florida in 1982, was one of my colleagues in Beachwood, and we’d often handle sales together of books, postcards and other Dali materials, from behind the gift counter. Joan’s a great person who has come a long way from her more wallflower days in Ohio to her position of prominence in St. Pete.
Only a small number of visitors were allowed in the room at one time, where the art was displayed on the limited wall space and on rows of portable wooden walls, so to speak. The three huge canvases – Columbus, Ecumenical Council and Hallucinogenic Toreador – occupied a special corner of the space, which was known as the salon of the masterworks. I always liked that designation – very classy.
We were instructed to tell those who inquired about the rest of the collection that the works were “in storage.” In fact, they were kept in the Morse home, just down the road from the museum, on Chagrin Boulevard – much to the chagrin, indeed, of those who desperately wanted to see other works from the collection. One in particular that was never hung in the museum during my tenure was the magnificent Nature Morte Vivante. But I saw it several times in the Morse’s living room. What a sight to see it in that homey context. I tried to imagine waking up every day, walking to my living room, and seeing this magnificent masterpiece on my wall.
Anyway, back at the museum, it was, sadly, a nightmare when Reynolds Morse would buzz us staffers from his IMS Co. office intercom. He didn’t care who was in the museum at the time. If he was angry about something (he often was), he’d let it be known – in full earshot of museum guests. This was most embarrassing for us, but we were powerless to do anything about it. And of course we never revealed to anyone that the man behind that angry voice was the collection’s owner. Still, the man had vision and, like Dali, was ahead of his time.
Memories of Beachwood were, alas, bitter/sweet.
But from its modest beginnings, the collection is now permanently exhibited in the Dali down in Florida, and is expected to be in a spanking new facility before long, with a capital campaign underway and controversial building design plans drawing mixed reviews.
Thanks for stopping by again this week, and, until next time, viva Dali!
- Salvador Dalà (Spain 1904-1989) Portrait of Sir Laurence Olivier. 1955. Oil on canvas. 73.7 x 63 cm. Private Collection © Salvador DalÃ, Fundació Gala-Salvador DalÃ, Artists Rights Society, 2008
- Salvador Dalà (Spain 1904-1989) Portrait of Sir Laurence Olivier. 1956. Oil on canvas. 125 x 160 cm. Salvador Dali Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida © Salvador DalÃ, Fundació Gala-Salvador DalÃ, Artists Rights Society, 2008
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Your Melting Times host is just back from several days in the city that never sleeps – and which, judging from all the promotional posters on Verizon photo booths and subway trains around Manhattan and elsewhere – is delirious for Dali!
My wife and I attended the wildly popular Dali: Painting and Film exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), and one again, Sir Laurence Olivier has stolen the show. Arguably the twentieth century’s greatest actor, his portrait by Salvador Dali was – for me, anyway – the show stealer here.
Portrait of Colonel Jack Warner, 1951
Portrait of Mrs. Jack Warner, 1951
Portrait of Sir Laurence Olivier, 1955
The Olivier portrait was displayed next to Dali’s fine portrait of Jack Warner of Warner Bros. Studios fame – a painting I saw many years ago at its home at Syracuse University, just a 3-hour drive east from my home in Buffalo. As it turns out, The Salvador Dali Society, Inc. (www.dali.com) recently acquired the fine study for Dali’s portrait of Mrs. Jack Warner, the oil painting being, in my considered opinion, more impressive than the one of Jack himself.
But it’s the Olivier masterpiece that is so dramatic, with the double view of Olivier in and out of costume as Richard III – the dual images fused at the lips.
The painting technique is so sharp that – as is the case with so many oils by Dali – one almost wonders if one’s actually viewing a painting on canvas or a photograph.
Regarding the Warner portrait, I was enlightened in learning from notes displayed next to it that Dali had proposed to Warner that he produce a documentary about Dali’s book, 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship (and, too, that Dali made a pitch to Fellini to adapt his autobiography, The Secret Life of Salvador Dali).
One work I was delighted to see for the first time was Modern Rhapsody from the 7 Lively Arts series Dali painted for Broadway impresario Billy Rose (1957, Collection J. Shaflan, London).
It became more apparent to me than ever before how Dali used impasto (a heavier build-up of paint) to achieve certain effects: the positively glowing flames coming off the giraffes in Modern Rhapsody; the flowing garment of the star-struck woman; and in the Olivier portrait, the cotton-like texture of the hat’s white trim.
Modern Rhapsody, 1957
While films were shown of Dali in a performance art/demonstration with Philippe Halsman; of the visual effects of the metal part of a pen oxidized by Dali having made “divine pee-pee” on it, etc., it was of course the paintings part of the exhibition that captivated me the most.
Two delightful surprises were works whose medium was wood and painted glass: The Little Theatre, and Babauo. Visitors peering into these window-like works reminded me of the way Dali exhibitions enthrall the masses with their engaging ability to capture the imagination – young and old alike.
The Little Theatre, 1934
Babauo, 1932
Spellbound occupied a room of its own, and what was particularly interesting to me were the oil on panel set designs on which notations could be discerned: “Camera aperture” and “paint to this line.” Reminders that such works were designs intended for another medium, another purpose – the Selznick, Hitchcock classic starring Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman. These works were means to an end, so it was fascinating to see Dali in a more spontaneous mode.
For a relatively small showing of Dali originals, it was a pretty good cross-section of the artist’s great talent. Missing were any of the large masterworks, including the great religious pictures by Dali. But, yes, the MOMA’s own Persistence of Memory was on hand, which, for some, may have been their main reason for attending. I speculated with another museum visitor as to how much this iconic, century-defining painting might bring, were it put on auction today. “$20 million?” the Dali fan hypothesized. “I don’t think so,” I replied. “I’d think more like $100 million. Possibly higher.”
Intersperse throughout the above copy these images, all from the big Descharnes/Neret book; I have the page numbers noted for you for easy reference:
Dali in 3-D, Revisited and Re-imagined
It’s recently been announced that a new exhibition, Dali – Holograms & Optical Games, will be held from September 19, 2008 – January 15, 2009 – at the Dali Centre in Montmarte in Paris, France. Promoters say the show will “extend (Dali’s visual experiments’) exploration to the transformation made by the modern techniques of computer-synthesized imaging.”
“Basketball” hologram, 1972
This makes me look backwards and forward. First, back to Dali’s groundbreaking hologram exhibition in 1972-’73 at the Knoedler Gallery in New York City. I had the special privilege of being privately walked through that show, after hours, and recall Dali’s Basketball Players Metamorphosing into Angels, among other holograms. And, positioned nearby, a diving suit and helmet, recalling the one Dali wore (and nearly suffocated in!) many years earlier, during a lecture he delivered about submerging to the deepest depths of the subconscious.
The newly announced hologram exhibit in France also inspires me to think again about just what Dali would be doing today, were he still actively with us. It’s mind boggling to envision what this creative genius might have given the world, melding new technologies with his insatiable appetite for innovation. We can only speculate and dream about what would have emerged from Dali’s studio in 2008, what with the advances in computer and digital technology, and Dali’s never-waning interest in assimilating the latest of science into his tradition of great craftsmanship.
We’ll talk again in this space about other innovations by the mustachioed Spaniard who many consider the 20th century’s greatest genius…and I concur! Until next time, viva Dali!
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