Dali News
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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I wasn’t planning on posting this week, given some other Dali-related matters commanding my attention, and seeing as how I have lots of trip preparations for my upcoming attendance at the big Dali: Painting & Film exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which I’ll be attending, with my wife, on Sunday.
However, I couldn’t resist a few parting shots about our beloved mustachioed master!
Can you name the “double-Gala” work?
Ok, let’s see if you can answer this one: can you name a major Dali painting (not a drawing, watercolor or print) that feature not one but two portraits of Dali’s wife and muse, Gala? The answer appears at the end of this week’s short blog entry.
The Dali exhibitions just keep on coming!
Dali collectors, scholars and aficionados simply have to be delighted that interest seems to be at an all-time high in Salvador Dali’s brilliant, provocative, controversial and always fascinating life and work. Although the aforementioned Dali and film show at New York’s MoMA is surely the single biggest event at the moment, other exciting Dali-related events have recently been announced.
The National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia, will reportedly host “Salvador Dali: Liquid Desire,” a retrospective exhibition of more than 200 Dalis in all mediums, beginning June 13 of 2009. It’s reportedly the first time Australia has shown a full retrospective of Dali’s art. So over-the-top Dali will be thrilling them down under!
St. Regis finally gets its act together!
I’ve wondered for many years why the St. Regis Hotel – which had been Dali’s winter domicile in America for decades – had not a single vestige of the long stay by the celebrated painter. It frankly irked me. I recall stopping in at the stately hotel in the early ’90s and seeing a large sculpture in the first floor foyer area: Woman with Head of Flowers. But then a year or so later it was gone. Nothing. No sculpture. No photos. No plaque. No hint that the grand hotel was American sanctuary for so many years to one of the greatest personalities and geniuses of the century.
Now, finally – and doubtlessly inspired by the Dali exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art — the St. Regis is celebrating its affiliation with the Spanish Master by offering a unique package for the adventurous spirit with some money to spare.
For $5000, so it’s recently been reported in the press, you can buy a package that includes tickets to and a personal tour of the MoMA exhibition; a night in the suite in which Dali and Gala lived; a bottle of very special wine – Chateau Mouton Rothschild, which features a Dali-designed label; and a “Bloody Spaniard” – a special version of the popular Bloody Mary cocktail, inspired by Dali, of course, and created by St. Regis Hotel bartender Fernand Petiot in 1934.
An interesting side note is that the St. Regis was founded in 1904 – the year of Salvador Dali’s birth. That little factoid wasn’t pointed out in any of the press reports I’ve seen. I believe you’re reading in here first!
Ok, New York, I’m almost there!
Your Melting Times host is off this coming Saturday for several days in New York City and, of course, will be attending and reporting on the Dali show at the MoMA. Watch this space for my post-exhibition thoughts. Until then, and as always, viva Dali!
(Answer to the double-Gala question: you’ll find Madame Dali at the very top center of the great and massive canvas, “The Battle of Tetuan,” while another view of her is seen riding a charging horse in the middle foreground, with another familiar horseman – Salvador himself – to the left of her.)
- Salvador Dalà (Spain 1904-1989) Battle of Tetuan. 1962. Oil on canvas. 308 x 406 cm. Private Collection © Salvador DalÃ, Fundació Gala-Salvador DalÃ, Artists Rights Society, 2008.
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JULY 20, 2008
This past June 10th thru 14th, one of the world’s most prestigious art exhibitions, Art 40 Basel, took place in Basel, Switzerland. Each year this international show features contemporary works of art from over three hundred of the worlds leading galleries, spanning every continent but Antarctica. Although Art Basel is an exceptionally well known and revered show, it makes sure to include not just the already established contemporary artists but also those whom are just beginning to emerge as well known figures in the art world.
What makes Art Basel the ideal setting for an emerging artist to premier his or her works of art is that it attracts such a wide and diverse crowd. Last year approximately 60, 000 people attended this international favorite causing The New York Times to dub Art Basel as the “Olympics of the Art World”. Those who travel to Basel find it to be a quaint ancient town situated on the Rhine River between Switzerland, France, and Germany. This ideal location makes Art Basel a favorite of not only art patrons but history enthusiasts and travel lovers as well.
The actual show itself stands apart from other exhibitions because it includes theater performances, films, and a display of literary works in addition to paintings, drawings, and other more traditional works of art. In collaboration with Theater Basel, the theater program “Art on Stage” made its debut at Art Basel in 2007 and puts on performances at each years exhibition. Art Basel’s “Art Film” is a creative outlet in which viewers can better understand certain artists through films created by and about the artists themselves. In terms of literary work, Art Basel displays magazines in “Art Magazines” and other publications created by artists in “Artist Books”. Because of this variety of work those attending Art Basel are able to not only view exquisite demonstrations of talent in several Medias but also better understand the artists behind the media.
Art Basel further facilitates this growth of knowledge by hosting forums in which attendees can have open discussions with extremely knowledgeable figures in the art world. Art curators, museum directors, gallery owners, and artists alike all gather to discuss their ideas on both collecting and exhibiting art. Those attending Art Basel are encouraged to join the forum and exchange ideas. These conversations are in part what make Art Basel so influential in the art world and help it to support the flourishing of a global appreciation of creativity.
All of these contributing factors serve as enticing reasons why Art Basel is a show that anyone, from art intellectual to art amateur, can attend and not just enjoy, but also leave with a bigger and better understanding of art today.
Catherine Brooke Ambler
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If he were still with us – and you wielded the microphone or notepad?
Oh, how your humble host fantasizes more than occasionally about what I’d ask Salvador Dali, if he were still with us, and I had the opportunity to interview him! So many questions, so little time. . .
“Mr. Dali, describe how you developed superbly complex paintings, such as your huge Battle of Tetuan and Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus. Can you show us the various studies and bits of research you used to create such enduring masterpieces?”
“Mr. Dali, do you ever pray?”
“Mr. Dali, what was it like to finally fly in an airplane with your manager-secretary, Enrique Sabater, since you went virtually your entire life refusing to travel by air?”
“Mr. Dali, tell me which painting you consider your very best, from a technical point of view. And which you consider number one from its importance in 20th century painting.”
“Mr. Dali, author Alain Bosquet, in his book, Conversations with Dali, once asked you if you’d like to spank Sophia Lauren, and you said no. Why? I thought such an alluring invitation would be positively irresistible to you!”
Ok, friends – what would you ask? Let us know.
“First we take Manhattan, Then we take Berlin.”
This headline features the exact lyrics of a haunting song performed by the great vocalist, Jennifer Warnes. How unwittingly prescient of her, because while Dali is taking Manhattan with the currently running Dali & Film exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, another surrealist art collection opened July 10 in Berlin, titled Surreal Worlds.
According to one online press report, the German exhibition features 250 works by Dali, Louis Bunuel, Goya, and others. It’s being held in the Stuelerbau, a building that used to house the Egyptian Museum in Berlin, and features the Scharf-Gersternberg Collection, which has its roots in the estate of Otta Gersternberg.
Meanwhile, back in the Big Apple, the Dali & Film exhibit continues to score plenty of press. The Star-Ledger newspaper of New Jersey, under the headline, The Weird and Wonderful World of Salvador Dali, pointed up something we Dali aficionados have known for ages: Salvador Dali was well ahead of his own time.
Wrote the Star-Ledger: “…like Dali’s work for mainstream advertisers – something contemporary artists do all the time now, but that was somewhat stigmatized back in the day – the man’s innovative self-promotion did point the way into the 21st century.”
The ‘Times,’ they are a changin’
You know, there was a time when the old gray lady – the New York Times – seldom had anything nice to say about Salvador Dali. Happily, that’s changing, as more and more people – even the great and mighty Times – come to grips with an undeniable fact: Salvador Dali was a redoubtable genius.
And so, in the powerful newspaper’s June 27 review of the Dali: Paintings and Film show, they called it “inspiring,” referred to Dali’s portrait of Bunuel as “stately,” and then spent a few hundred words in distinct praise of our guy, saying Dali painted Surrealism’s “most optically precise and psychologically disturbing images.”
And this passage shows the turn-about from the days when the Times couldn’t find anything complimentary to say about the artist: “His vast pristine plains interrupted by jagged mountains, architectural ruins and variously grotesque, fraught and sexual signs of life are among painting’s most convincing portraits of the mind and its discontents.”
Finally, the Times reporter, Roberta Smith, referred to Dali’s “intensely colored” paintings that “sit on the walls like brilliant boxed jewels.” I’ll call that kind of art criticism priceless!
Taking a closer look
Guess how Dali was able to get those tall moir̩ pattern columns just right in his large canvas, Apotheosis of the Dollar of 1965? By employing the tools, resources and technology available to him during that time Рin this case a projection device. He simply set up a projector behind the canvas and projected smaller images that were magnified and transferred to the canvas via light.
It was then a matter of tracing the original image. It was a perfectly practical, logical and legitimate means to an end. And part of a painting that is one of Dali’s busiest of the large masterworks produced from 1950 to 1976. While Dali virtually wore his love of money on his sleeve with this painting, he also showed us that the master of surrealism, of the double-image, and superbly crafted painting with profound intellectual content was still as hot as ever!
And his penchant for long titles wasn’t to be denied, either, as the picture’s full title is: Salvador Dali in the Act of Painting Gala in the Apotheosis of the Dollar in which You can See on the Left Marcel Duchamp Masquerading as Louis XIV behind a Vermeerian Curtain which Is the Invisible Face, but Monumental, of Hermes by Praxiteles.
Apotheosis of the Dollar, 1965
I want to wake up in the city that never sleeps!
At long last, my better half Anne and I will be headed next weekend for New York City and the big Dali: Painting and Film exhibition at the MoMA. With notebook and pen at the ready, I’ll be recording thoughts and observations from that great institution and its even greater premier exhibition, which has been off the hook rave reviews, as already noted in this space.
I won’t be posting my usual end of week blog next week, but the week after you can expect my on-the-scene account of the big show. Plus other morsels from the never ending feast that is Salvador Domench Felipe Jacinto Dali!
Keep it surreal, and viva Dali!
- Salvador Dalà (Spain 1904-1989) Apotheosis of the Dollar. 1965. Oil on canvas. 400 x 498 cm. Private Collection © Salvador DalÃ, Fundació Gala-Salvador DalÃ, Artists Rights Society, 2008.
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Salvador Dali was especially drawn to subject matter that made a strong connection with his surrealist sensibilities. The fantasy of Don Quixote was a good example, as well as the vitality of Dante’s The Divine Comedy. Shakespearian tales, such as Macbeth and As You Like It, similarly struck a chord with the Catalan master, and the results were extraordinary.
While Dali is now considered perhaps the single greatest painter of the 20th century – together with his creative genius in other areas, such as writing in both fiction and non-fiction genres – he was also highly accomplished when it came to lithography, etching and other techniques in the medium of graphics.
An exceptional example of his creativity is the 13-piece lithographic suite,
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Alice in Wonderland, based, of course, on Lewis Carroll’s fantasy journey, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. What better point of departure for Salvador Dali than a surreal work of literary nonsense, in which Alice falls down a rabbit-hole and finds herself in a fantastic realm populated by an unlikely mélange of creatures that come alive from inanimate objects or non-human species!
The Pool of Tears
for example, where Alice eats a cake that makes her grow 9 feet tall and causing her to cry and create a pool of tears, Dali’s piece is awash in tears, with just a hint in the lower left of his oft-repeated symbol of the lost girl jumping rope.
Advice from a Caterpillar
Alice asks the caterpillar how she can get bigger and he says one side of the mushroom will make her so, while the other side would make her smaller. Dali infuses his interpretation with a large, bold, dazzling insect, shown both in colossal and diminutive size, and explosive in color and impact. Once again, the girl jumping rope – which often was a double-image of a bell in a tower in many Dali paintings – makes an appearance in this lithograph.
At the famous Mad Tea Party in Carroll’s tale, Alice becomes a guest at this wild party, along with the Hatter, the March Hare, and others. The characters give Alice various riddles and stories, and she eventually leaves, claiming it’s a stupid party. Dali chooses to express this scene by giving us his most famous symbol – the iconic melting watch – picking up the all-important and persistent theme of time in Carroll’s work, and conveying a quintessentially surreal look to the unfolding action. A touch of Freudian symbolism – such as the key in this graphic – reminds us that Dali’s uninhibited imagination was deeply informed by theories of psychoanalysis, for which Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is an ideal platform.
The Queen’s Croquet Ground
Dali does a great job with The Queen’s Croquet Ground
where, in the beautiful garden, Alice comes upon three playing cards painting the roses on a rose tree red, for they accidentally planted a white rose, which the Queen of Hearts hates. The joker’s long nose is propped up by that famous Dalinian crutch, an element seen in numerous Dali works. It’s something of a throwback to Dali’s own “adventures in childhood,” where a bifurcated tree branch he used to carry around allowed him to play the child king.
This graphic suite has long been one of the most coveted by collectors, both for the timeless and universal appeal of the story itself, and due to Salvador Dali’s ingenious interpretation of it. In citing the best of Dali’s work in the graphics medium, Alice consistently rises to the top, demonstrating the exuberance and charm of his unique interpretative abilities as the highly versatile artist he was.
That versatility was seen in 1969, the year this suite was created, when Dali was near completion of his colorful, huge, and virtually career-summarizing masterpiece, The Hallucinogenic Toreador, finished in 1970 and now considered one of his greatest accomplishments ever at the easel. A few years later, Dali’s own rabbit-hole, of sorts, was his magnificent Teatru-Museu Dali (Dali Museum) in his birthplace of Figueres, Spain – a labyrinth of serious paintings and wildly surrealistic fantasies.
- Salvador Dalà (Spain 1904-1989) Alice in Wonderland Suite.1969. Engraving, heliogravures, woodcut remarques. © Salvador DalÃ, Fundació Gala-Salvador DalÃ, Artists Rights Society, 2008.
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Heard Dali painting lately?
Next time you watch a documentary film about Dali – when he’s shown at work, which is fairly rare, but there are scenes of him painting, etching, sculpting, drawing, etc. – listen carefully. You’re more likely than not to hear a sort of ambient humming and whistling sound, usually faint but persistent, and at times fairly pronounced. That would be Dali’s nervous energy, vented in the form of a kind of buzzing bee, as it was one described by an author witnessing the Maestro at work. Dali took whistling while you work to heart!
Plagiarism? ‘On the contrary!’ declared Dali!
In some of Dali’s paintings, we find images that were borrowed from other artists’ works, or from other creative expressions. For example, did you know that the tiger (the one on the right) from Dali’s One Second Before Awakening from a Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomengranate (1944) was plucked directly from the famous PT Barnum Circus poster showing the leaping cat in the exact same pose? Check it out here.
One Second Before Awakening from a Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomengranate,1944
The bowed figures in Dali’s great canvas, Skull of Zuburan, were inspired by a 1635 painting by Zuburan, titled Die barmherziege Jungfraud. And in Dali’s 1935-’36 painting, Apparition of the Town of Delft (private collection, Switzerland), his partly surrealist landscape is clearly informed by View of Delft, the hauntingly beautiful work by Jan Vermeer, painted in 1661. See the comparison for yourself.
Skull of Zuburan
Apparition of the Town of Delft
View of Delft
Reynolds Morse once mentioned to Dali that “some timorous people looked on his classical references as plagiarism: ‘On the contrary, it is a good thing for us to remember such men!’” Dali declared.
Surrealist Success Despite an Inauspicious Beginning
Some people look adversity squarely in its not so pretty face and say, “Take that!” Then they deliver a one-two punch that has success written all over it.
That’s what Salvador Dali did. After all, consider what the young, sensitive, and impressionable boy was up against, right from the start. First, his life was preceded by the first Salvador, a brother who died of meningitis at about the age of 2. Then Dali, the future artist, was born, also named Salvador. He had to deal with pictures in the house of the first Salvador, and live with the knowledge of his parents’ grief over the first, “original” Salvador!
Then, tragically, Dali’s mother died of cancer when adolescent Dali was at the incredibly vulnerable age of 16. And finally, to confound the young man’s life even further, his father ended up marrying Dali’s mother’s sister; i.e., Dali’s aunt!
So Dali, with a young head filled with a confluence of conflicting realities that might have kept a psychotherapist busy for a long, long time, went on to take the artistic world by storm. The rest, as they say, is history. And goes to show you that, even with dicey beginnings, it is possible to become the greatest artist in history.
Cover Boy
The Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation in Spain is currently featuring an exhibition called Dali and Magazines, detailing his connection with magazines and newspapers in various ways. Check out their Web site (http://www.salvador-dali.org) for details.
This reminds me of a time when I was visiting Dali in New York, and the wall phone rang while we were in the lounge at the St. Regis Hotel (long before the days of cell phones). One of Dali’s assistants handled the call, then reported to Dali that some magazine or another was calling, interested in doing a story on Dali.
It was hard to know if Dali was sort of showing off for the crowd or not, but he hastily dismissed the inquiry as pretty much meaningless “unless they will put me on the cover,” he insisted.
Dali’s graced many magazine covers, domestic and foreign; such issues now tend to be collector’s items.
A Portrait by Dali was always a provocative proposition.
In an upcoming blog, I’m going to discuss Dali’s portraiture – a truly interesting slice of the diverse Dali pie. I’m especially inspired to do so, thanks to the recent acquisition by the Salvador Dali Society, Inc. (www.dalinet.com) of the Study for the Portrait of Mrs. Jack Warner. The ultimate oil painted from this study is one of the most detailed of all Dali portraits. Look for a glimpse into this fascinating dimension of the multi-dimensional Dali, coming soon in The Melting Times.
Portrait of Mrs. Jack Warner
Until then, and as always, viva Dali!
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Lawsuits against Louis Vuitton, MOCA about papers, not art: An obscure state law says dealers must provide authenticity documents for prints
by Mike Boehm, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
July 3, 2008
By bringing class-action lawsuits against Louis Vuitton North America and L.A.’s Museum of Contemporary Art, a Los Angeles art collector and his attorneys say they are sounding an alarm on behalf of people who shop for art prints that can cost thousands of dollars: Let the buyer be savvy, and let the seller beware.
The suits in Los Angeles Superior Court rely on an obscure chapter of the California Civil Code called the Fine Prints Act. Together Louis Vuitton and MOCA potentially are liable for millions of dollars: The law, at Code sections 1740-1745, allows triple damages for each instance in which a dealer “willfully” fails to provide documents that vouch for an art print’s authenticity.
Neither suit contends that the prints sold by Louis Vuitton and MOCA were inauthentic — only that they lacked proper written documentation and therefore had their value diminished.
In the Vuitton case, plaintiff Clint Arthur says two limited-edition prints he bought for $6,000 each were signed by Japanese Pop artist Takashi Murakami but not also numbered by the artist as promised in an accompanying certificate. MOCA, he says, provided no documentation at all for two $855 Murakami prints.
Charles Sherman, an artist-appraiser who visited MOCA’s museum store on June 22, said in an affidavit filed with the suit that he was told art prints did not come with certificates, and that “I would just have to trust them as far as the authenticity goes.”
Arthur, who sued Louis Vuitton on June 23 and MOCA on Monday, said he discovered the law on the Internet after having misgivings about the prints he had purchased last winter during the “Murakami” exhibition at MOCA’s Geffen Contemporary building.
A museum spokeswoman said Wednesday that officials would reserve comment while reviewing the suit. Meanwhile, Louis Vuitton said in a statement that Arthur’s suit is “baseless litigation,” and that he refused the company’s offer of a refund plus interest.
Daniel Engel, one of Arthur’s attorneys, said the suits were not just about one art buyer’s losses, but rather a consumer class action on behalf of all purchasers in a similar position. “What does (a refund for Arthur) do for all the other people who bought them? It would leave them hanging.”
The law on fine art prints apparently has been enforced rarely, if ever, since it went on the books in 1970, but on paper it carries considerable clout: It specifically authorizes the state attorney general, district attorneys and city attorneys to bring civil charges carrying fines of up to $1000 for each violation.
Louis Vuitton, a luxury-goods purveyor whose parent company reported a $5.4 billion profit last year, stuck its toe into the art business by partnering with Murakami to produce limited edition prints of designs he had made for Vuitton handbags. The prints were sold at a special boutique set up within the “Murakami” exhibition to highlight how art and commerce intersect in Murakami’s work.
Plaintiff’s attorneys Engel and Matthew Butterick contend that Louis Vuitton sold as many as 500 prints during the 3 1/2 month Murakami show, for a total of $4 million. MOCA, they argue, should be held liable for any prints it has sold without documentation during the last four years.
Engel said he wasn’t concerned the public might think the suit was bullying MOCA, whose alleged errors were ones of omission.
“I don’t think it’s picking on them. The focus shouldn’t be on us; it should be on whether MOCA is required to obey the law. I think MOCA will find it’s not that hard to comply and set an example.”
Dealers such as Sidney Felsen, whose Gemini G.E.L. workshop in L.A. has published and sold limited edition prints since 1965, and Martin Brown, veteran sales director of the four-store Village Gallery chain in Orange County, say that providing the information the law requires is good for business because it helps build buyer’s confidence.
“The customers should know what they’re buying,” Felsen said.
“A dealer has to be a darned fool to not provide something in writing as the the law requires,” said Joseph Nuzzolo, a Redondo Beach art dealer specializing in Salvador Dali prints. However, Nuzzolo said, the law on art prints goes only so far in protecting buyers. “Every fake I’ve ever seen has had a certificate of authenticity that was also a phony,” he said.
Steven Thomas, a Los Angeles art law attorney, said only “one or two” lawsuits have been litigated under the law, during the 1980′s — although more may have been filed and quickly settled. “Most of the time it never comes up because people aren’t aware of their rights. It has teeth, but the teeth aren’t used.”
Based on The Times’ initial report on the Louis Vuitton suit, “something like this could be charged,” said Frank Mateljan, spokesman for the Los Angeles city attorney’s office. But he said police have “limited resources,” and that the Los Angeles Police Department’s art crimes unit has concentrated on outright fraud.
“In this case it’s a little more gray, because they are selling legitimate products but the certificates aren’t as picture perfect as they should be,” he said.
mike.boehm@latimes.com
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New York Times- Reflections Through a Surrealistic Eye: Dal+¡ and the Camera
27
Jun2008
Posted by: admin
By ROBERTA SMITH
Nearly 80 years on, the famous image from “Un Chien Andalou,” which Salvador Dal+¡ and his art-school friend Luis Bu+¦uel cobbled together in Paris in April 1929, remains one of the most shocking in all cinema. A woman’s face fills the screen. A man’s left hand widens the lids of her left eye; his right begins to draw a straight razor across it. Then there is, as it were, a jump cut. The razor slices through the eye of a dead cow and gelatinous ooze tumbles forth. Yick, and whew.
Salvador Dal+¡, Fundaci+¦ Gala-Salvador Dal+¡/Artists Rights Society, New York.
A study Salvador Dal+¡ drew for a dream sequence in Alfred Hitchcock’s “Spellbound” (1944).
Such special effects are crude by today’s digital standards. But the high point of the first genuinely Surrealist film can still be churning no matter how often you see it.
At the moment that can be as often you please, thanks to “Dal+¡: Painting and Film,” a strangely piecemeal, open-ended and inspiring exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Organized by the Tate Modern in London in cooperation with the Fundaci+¦ Gala-Salvador Dal+¡ in Figueres, Spain, it has been overseen by Jodi Hauptman, a curator of drawings at MoMA, and is accompanied by an extensive film program selected by Anne Morra, an assistant curator in film. The show tracks the traffic of images, themes and ideas between Dal+¡’s films, both realized and not, and his more static efforts, including paintings, drawings, letters, illustrated notes, scenarios and other ephemera.
“Un Chien Andalou” is projected continuously in the show’s first gallery, following a batch of paintings, collages and ink drawings that Dal+¡ made from 1922 through 1931. They include a stately portrait of Bu+¦uel from 1924 done in Picasso’s neo-Classical style, and hints of things to come. A painting and drawing from 1927 feature a severed hand, like the one seen in “Un Chien Andalou” lying on a busy Parisian street being poked with a stick by a moody young woman.
The penchant for decaying flesh so present in Dal+¡’s art is literalized quite bluntly in “Un Chien Andalou.” It takes the form of two dead donkeys laid out on the strings of grand pianos. Those are harnessed to a young man trying to force his attentions on the young woman who earlier dodged the straight razor, holding him back like a combination of guilt, social constraint and fear. The cluster of scurrying ants like that stream from the stigmatalike wound in another hand in the film recur throughout the exhibition, migrating across faces, gathering in corners, exploring bodily orifices. (Also on view is a detailed letter from Bu+¦uel about how to transport ants from Spain to Paris and have them lively enough for purposes of filming.)
Born in the Catalan town of Figueres in 1904, Dal+¡ was endowed with a litany of textbook neuroses. He was named for an older brother who died the year before he was born, and he never lived down the notion that he was a poor substitute; he learned early on to use outrageous behavior to mask his shyness, inferiority complex and sexual ambivalence.
At an early age he recognized painting as his salvation, demonstrating a gift for rendering that suggested Van Eyck’s exacting skill softened by the subtle lusciousness of Vermeer. He read Freud word for word, devoured avant-garde magazines. Inspired by Bosch, de Chirico and Miro, he began to paint Surrealism’s most optically precise and psychologically disturbing images almost before he ever went to Paris. His vast pristine plains interrupted by jagged mountains, architectural ruins and variously grotesque, fraught and sexual signs of life are among painting’s most convincing portraits of the mind and its discontents.
But Dal+¡’s devotion to painting was not exclusive. There was the continuing performance that was Dal+¡ himself, with his gift for publicity and controversy, his relentless narcissism and frenetic imagination. There is his enormous body of writing: a novel, poetry, an autobiography and numerous theoretical essays. There were set designs, beginning in 1927 with those for “Mariana Pineda,” a play by another close art-school friend, the poet Federico Garc+¡a Lorca, and later for ballets by Massine and Balanchine.
He gravitated to film as soon as movies began to be shown regularly in theaters throughout Europe (including Figueres) in the late 1910s and early ’20s. Like many avant-garde artists in both Europe and America, he admired the work of Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and the Marx Brothers, especially Harpo, the silent and, for him, most Surreal sibling. (Groucho Marx noted that Dal+¡ “is in love with my brother in a nice way.”)
But mainly Dal+¡ grasped that film’s capacities for depicting irrationality in action; for dissolving, continually mutating images; and for an intensely real unreality were all ready-made for his sensibility and his desire to reach a mass audience. Dal+¡’s pristine, limitless plains were lifted almost verbatim from the implicitly surreal landscape of his beloved Catalonia, but they also had the artificiality of a Hollywood soundstage.
Nicely, the show at MoMA doesn’t sequester the films in pitch-black rooms. Their grainy or silvery grisailles flicker in full sight of Dal+¡’s often small, intensely colored paintings, which sit on the walls like brilliant boxed jewels.
As the exhibition ebbs and flows, the drawings and
films gradually supersede the paintings. Subsequent galleries display nonstop projections of “L’Age d’Or,” which Bu+¦uel and Dal+¡ made in 1930, and the somewhat questionable “Destino,” the sprightly animated short of love and loss that Dal+¡ worked on energetically for Walt Disney in 1946, only to have Disney pull the plug. It was resuscitated and completed in consultation with John Hench, one of Dal+¡’s original collaborators at Disney, in 2003, but a large batch of Dal+¡’s original sketches attest to the attempt to remain true to his ideas.
In the final gallery “Chaos and Creation,” a 1960 video of a Happening that Dal+¡ staged with the photographer Philippe Halsman, involves some nearly naked women, a few very clean pigs and an intense dislike of Mondrian. It is both a period piece and a testament to an artist striving to keep up with his times.
“Adventures in Upper Mongolia Homage to Raymond Roussel,” a largely abstract film conceived by Dal+¡ and made by the Spanish director Jos+¬ Montes-Baquer in 1975 is more original. The narration of the film’s veil-like layers and suspended patches of rusts, golds and blues concerns a journey in search of hallucinogenic mushrooms. The label informs us that the motifs are microscopic images, much enlarged, of the oxidation on the brass details of some fountain pens, and moreover that Dal+¡ urinated on them every day to accelerate the oxidation process. The film could have been made by a young Pictures appropriation artist in the 1980s.
The show’s drop-dead gallery is dominated by an enormous projection of the dream sequence Dal+¡ designed for “Spellbound,” Alfred Hitchcock’s 1944 suspense classic starring Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck. One scene of a man with a giant pair of scissors cutting a huge curtain painted with multiple eyes echoes “Un Chien Andalou.” (In fact it had been planned before Dali signed on.) In her catalog essay about the film, Sara Cochran rightly considers this an indication of how completely contemporary culture and especially Hollywood had assimilated the style and motifs of Surrealism. For all its violence, the razor scene in “Un Chien Andalou” announced an intention not only to shock but to “open” the eye to a new way of seeing. MoMA’s fragmentary yet haunting show provides a fresh view of how Dal+¡, for all his outrageousness, never stopped trying to live according to the ambition he so brutally visualized.
“Dal+¡: Painting and Film” continues through Sept. 15 at the Museum of Modern Art; (212) 708-9400, moma.org.
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