"Since I don't smoke, I decided to grow a mustache - it is better for the health. However, I always carried a jewel-studded cigarette case in which, instead of tobacco, were carefully placed several mustaches, Adolphe Menjou style. I offered them politely to my friends: "Mustache? Mustache? Mustache?"
Nobody dared to touch them. This was my test regarding the sacred aspect of mustaches."--Salvador Dali
I learned so much this weekend I cannot even begin to wrap my head around it all. You know when those college essays ask you for some fictional character or artist that has influenced you the most? Well I think I have found that artist. Maybe in college I will get the chance to study him further.
Anyways, Dali's favorite thing to do was draw rhinoceros horns. When Dali sat down to make his own version of Vermeer's Lacemaker he worked for a few hours. The only thing he had drawn was a few rhino horns. He was fascinated by them--the shape and the texture. Mostly I guess he was drawn to natural patterns, you've heard of the golden ratio I'm sure, as was he drawn to logarithmic functions. Thus the rhinoceros horns.
What is great about Dali is how you can look at a piece of his work for hours and still never decipher every detail. His work is so...daedalean. The High did a fantastic job at really showcasing his development. In this painting to the left is a picture of The Virgin Mary and Jesus in her womb. Taking time period into account, this was done around 1945 after the atomic bombs. You see Dali taking his lack of faith (he is a fallen Catholic, like myself) and trying to rebuild it. Except he is torn between science and religion. And he also has a fascination with babies in the womb, even saying that he could remember his own first 9 months. He was also fascinated with the idea that some birds hatch from an egg with no help from their mothers. So you see an egg at the top of the painting. You also see a floating ball, which is, I presume, a representation of an atom. In this he is generally confused. In his later paintings (I wish I could find them online) The Virgin Mary is no longer cracked. The baby has the ball in his right hand and The Bible in his left. Various other things also, including a rhino, a cracked atom, and a blade of wheat (he really liked wheat also).
The lecture was incredibly interesting. When I walked in, I sat down among artists, one with a shoe for a hat. It was surprising when the first presenter walked to the stage--he was wearing a molecule structure that covered his face. Actually, I really wasn't that surprised. Anyways, he talked about how he worked with Dali as his unofficial apprentice. He began telling us a story. "One day I found this remote-control car and thought, 'wow, we can turn this into an egg.' Well, I went to the Ritz and presented my idea to Dali, who looked at me and said, 'One egg? We can turn this into thirty eggs!' So Dali approached the first woman who walked by. She was holding a white plastic bag. He seized her bag, and she protested. They fought for a second or two; he just looked at her and screamed, 'I can make this bag into a masterpiece and you can't! So the bag's mine.' He ripped it from her hands and lipsticks and brushes flew on to the floor and rolled around. We went back to the hotel room and began cutting ovals out of the bag and pasted yellow cores on to them and then attached a wire to it. We went back downstairs and into the conference room. They were shooting some television show with some young actress. I feel bad for her because it was her debut, and we jumped on stage and paraded our new invention. After that we left and walked down fifth avenue. Crowds of people followed us, walking their dogs. Dali said, 'Some people walk their dogs. Well, I walk my eggs.'"
The second presenter was a woman who Dali had relations with. She must have been sixty or so, but she was certainly stuck in the past, retelling stories of how she modeled for Dali and how he had a taste for the erotic. It was a weird presentation. Just plain strange. The third presenter was a fellow artist who had worked with Dali, and her artwork was a reaction to some of his stuff. What I remember most, well next to the Pistol-Phallus (which I will find a better time and place aside from a lit blog to retell) is the Mickey-Angelo. She was a feminist at the time of the work (the above is just a sketch of it), and she discussed how it was an accurate representation of man. How Mickey Mouse was sort of the first launch into a new era (or consumerism, atomic bombs, pop-culture) just as Adam was. Furthermore, as you can recall, the painting done of Adam has a leaf over his...uh parts. When the Pope had seen the original, he told Michelangelo to make it smaller, and smaller, and then even smaller. The presenter remarked, "Well, it certainly isn't the size of a peanut. So I found the dollar sign quite fitting--as the mark of man is defined by money in our culture." It was all very funny.
She also said she had a lobster phone just like this one. She was willing to pull it out if it rang.
I haven't been to the Dali exhibit, and I probably won't be able to make it, but your entry here made me feel a bit less empty. The entry and pictures were terribly engaging, especially the part about Dali and his religion. Science and religion... they could possibly work together, but so many things seem conspired to make a person have to choose.
ReplyDelete