The MoMA has an exhibition on view, Dali: Painting and Film, which is more entertaining than you'd expect.
I've never really been that taken by Dali's paintings although I can most certainly appreciate surrealist ideas and work. The causes for my disinterest in his paintings are unknown. The possibilities for this include overexposure, general distaste in the way the paintings look or the one of the very things his work is lauded for: striking visualization of dreams. The images and motifs in his paintings don't reflect anything I've ever seen in my dreams and perhaps that creates an automatic disconnect in me as a viewer. The opposite rings true for me with his film work. Let's not turn this into the analysis of my dreams, though.
Vanguard Films outsourced work to Dali to assist in the creation of the dream sequence in Alfred Hitchcock's "Spellbound". Hitchcock felt that dreams on film had pretty much just been portrayed by blurriness. He wanted Dali to bust that shit up:
Dali thought Walt Disney was a "great" surrealist. Here's a little bit from a Dali/Disney collaboration that never finished, "Destino". Disney animators completed the project in 2003. I can't tell if what I find online is part of the original or later-completed work. Here's a clip, nonetheless:
Posts
3 comments:
It isn't so much about dreams but the interpretation of what's in his past dreams.
The themes are the same in all of our dreams - running, falling, every day objects being used in strange ways or altered in strange ways for no apparent reason (like that bent wheel). Dreams are troubling because they can never be understood and we can't share them accurately with each other.
I love Dali's work because he spent a lifetime examining his own dreams. I don't like either of these videos though. I like Un Chien Andalou better than both these.
I agree with you about Dali being overexposed. They made an amazing movie with him called "A Soft Self Portrait" in which he reminds me of Lee Scratch Perry. In the movie he's doing a lot of amazing things in front of the camera, saying crazy shit and acting like a madman throughout. Highly recommended.
He was a brilliant businessman without even trying. He pimped the system by making himself into a celebrity and that allowed him to do whatever he wanted to do forever and make an assload of money in the process. Good post.
I get the impression that part of what drove him to be successful, commercially and artistically, was a cooperative attitude towards other artists and mediums.
"Un Chien Andalou" is amazing. These videos I posted I enjoy because you can see how his work was respected by the most powerful players and creators. I thought it was pretty cool for Dali to jump on board with these projects and not sneer. I always imagined him being the type that would be some overprotective megalomaniac. Well, who knows what he was like during the production stages. But the final product has me thinking he was much to the contrary, actually, and rather a highly principled artist that wasn't as judgmental as you'd imagine. It's that attitude that I think will allow anyone to be true to his work and also getting major things accomplished.
Good post...I have the same level of disconnect for the same reason Allan does. I guess I am not too interested in dreams. I feel there is nothing more to them than random neurons firing.
His art has always intrigued me because he is technically quite talented. He has a high level of skill and can make canvases look like photographs. In a way, its how I look at Picasso. His teenage work demonstrated his technical mastery, but he saturated himself in themes that are a bit unconventional.
Post a Comment