The Ghost of Vermeer of Delft Which Can Be Used As a Table, (1934)
I visited the Salvador Dalí Museum today in St. Petersburg, Florida. I love Dalí, yet at the same time I just plain think he's weird. But let's talk about the good things, first! For instance, I love the fact that he could be obsessed with the same image---ants crawling out of a palm, anything coming out of eyes, slicing eyes, a woman shaped like a bell, flowers in places of body parts, baguettes sitting on top of the head---for decades, making them reappear in different mediums of artwork. The coolest. Who says you have to come up with an entirely new idea every time? Great. So good to know! Also, I love that he mixed mediums, at times. I learned today that some of his painted works, especially the early ones, would have three-dimensional objects attached to them or sand poured on top of the paint, giving the surface an unexpectedly rough texture. And I certainly didn't know this before today, but Dalí actually made some contributions to the cinema! In the Alfred Hitchcock 1945 film Spellbound, Dalí designed Gregory Peck's extraordinarily abstract, mysterious dream sequences, which are basically huge versions of Dalí's desert-like landscapes haunted with shadows and giant, misshapen appendages.
I don't really get much out of the violence often seen in Dalí works, though. A good example is seen in the 1929 silent film Un Chien Andalou when a woman's eye is slit open---AAAAAAAA---with a knife. So gross. I also find no---forgive me---no purpose in the paintings of objects growing into other objects. I can't tell what he's trying to say to me or if he is referencing something. Paintings like Atmospheric Skull Sodomizing a Grand Piano (1934), seen here, leave me totally perplexed. It's the paintings in which I see a human form deformed in a beautiful way, such as having a growth of pink flowers instead of a head, or an extra-long leg to use as a table in my personal favorite above, The Ghost of Vermeer of Delft Which Can Be Used As a Table.
This play between the human form and Dalí's delicate, droll exaggerations of it can be seen in the most delightful way in the short film Destino, a collaboration with Disney. I'm sure that the film in its entirety can be found on YouTube somewhere, but check out the 30-second trailer here. It's a gorgeous fusion of both Dalí's signature absurdity and Disney's classic pre-CGI animation.
Photo credits: Cosmoedu.net, Movie Net
Happy primaries!
Kim
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