anybody going to see dali in philly?

[frankiepop]

major dali exhibition in philadelphia for a few more days i believe. i was just curious who went to see it or who may still go?

[bluenoter]

More than a few more days--through May 15 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

(I don't plan to go, but who knows?)

Info. (including info. on travel packages) and ticketing here.

[Squaredancecalling Steve]

Sounds great, and there's Dali-stuff all over the city to publicize it! The steps of the museum -- the ones Stallone runs up in the first Rocky -- have been painted with Dali faces. Unfortunately, the shows were sold out while we were there last week.

[Ron Thorne]

Man, would I love to see this!

[Jimmy Cantiello]

Originally Posted by Squaredancecalling Steve

Sounds great, and there's Dali-stuff all over the city to publicize it! The steps of the museum -- the ones Stallone runs up in the first Rocky -- have been painted with Dali faces. Unfortunately, the shows were sold out while we were there last week.

Are the clocks melting all over the city?............

[Brian Olewnick]

I'm hoping to get down but dunno. Never actually been in Philly in my life!

[Jimmy Cantiello]

Nice city, Bri. You should check it out...............

[Gary Sisco]

Well, then, it's time you did, Brian!

Seriously, I consider myself hugely fortunate to have seen a major Dali show in Montreal, quite a few years back, now, late 80s, I think. If you think you know the paintings (and sculptures, at least in Montreal) from having seen them in books, think again. As always with paintings, they are an entirely different thing when you see the things themselves. I was astonished, for example, with the sheer size of some of the more famous ones that I'd seen hundreds of times in reproductions (including the most famous melting clock one).

The coolest thing at the exhibit, however, was a highly polished, steel column about four feet high, that was placed in the center of a very large ring of brown paper with what appeared to be random shapes and scrawlings on it. Wrong. When reflected in the perfectly smooth, round steel, the random shapes resolved themselves into very clear images, such as skulls and so forth. It was an amazing thing that my words aren't doing any justice to, here.

If you can go, I highly recommend that you do. Try to choose a day if you can when it's not too crowded, though, so you can make it leisurely.

My favorite reactionary.

[Brian Olewnick]

Yeah, Sal was into anamorphosis for a while.


Like a lot of kids, I imagine, Dali was the first artist I looked at seriously when I was 16 or so. Aside from his actual work, his writing and criticism were pretty insightful and I was quickly steered to painters like Velazquez, Vermeer, Raphael, Ingres, favorites to this day. He was also a champion of the neglected French and Spanish so-called academic ("pompier") painters of the 19th Century like Meissonier, Detaille and Fortuny, all of whom were well worth investigating and who, had I followed the regulation art historical guidelines, I would have completely ignored. At the same time, one naturally begins to realize that, as a painter, Dali wasn't all that amazing by comparison and eventually one's admiration for him settles into an appropriate area. I still find him pretty fascinating and think he gets generally short-shrifted by the art establishment, although the NYT review of this show (by Kimmelman, I think) was refreshingly fair-minded, pros and cons. I've found his last painting to be hauntingly beautiful:

[Gary Sisco]

Yeah, after awhile success did to him what it has done to too many. Still, seeing the paintings themselves makes one reassess one's notions about him and his work. At least it did for me. I went to Montreal for that show on a lark, really. It was as good an excuse as any for a weekend in Montreal. But the show was much, much more worthwhile than I could have imagined.

Of course, I don't live in New York, so I don't get to see major artists' work every day.

That last one is a nice one, by the way. I'd not mind having a print of it for the house. We do have a poster from the Montreal show, framed and on the wall in Bronwyn's room. It's the painting of his wife from behind, as she watches a surreal statue of herself from behind being constructed in some unimaginably huge space and distance from her.

[Jimmy Cantiello]

Gary, speaking of Philadelphia, I noticed that Bronwyn is a fan of Maxfield Parrish............

[Pete C]

Originally Posted by Jimmy Cantiello

Nice city, Bri. You should check it out...............

Yes--great city, great food, great museum (one of my favorites in the USA).

[Slurpy]

I'm lucky to have the Dali Museum right down the road from me. I've still got a few of his copy/prints up around the house. Last time I was there,
last spring I believe, was to see ROVA playing in front of the approx. 15' x 10' Hallucinogenic Toreador.



The sounds and sights were sublime.

[Squaredancecalling Steve]

An ex-girlfriend's sister was in a band in the 70s, preparing to release its first album for a major. They really dug Dali and got the label to ask him if he'd be interested in doing the cover. He was too pricey for them, but I loved Dali's terms: "$10,000, and I don't have to listen to any music!!"

[frankiepop]

funny and i read that he died with 60 million dollars in his bank acct btw.

[Gary Sisco]

Jimmy -- Good memory.

[craigz]

I go to the Philadelphia Museum frequently, and as a member, I got free tickets to the Dali show. However, it was so crowded with upper class twit-of-the-year candidates more anxious to be seen than to see that I had something of a panic attack and had to flee. You shouldn't have to wait on line to look at paintings.

[Sergio Zamora]

Anybody know anything about this?

http://www.counterpunch.org/navarro12062003.html

I've never looked into it further and this is the only article I've come across that makes those accusations. I'm sure it'd be easy to verify or disprove, but I'm lazy.

[Brian Olewnick]

Originally Posted by Sergio Zamora

Anybody know anything about this?

http://www.counterpunch.org/navarro12062003.html

I've never looked into it further and this is the only article I've come across that makes those accusations. I'm sure it'd be easy to verify or disprove, but I'm lazy.

I'm not aware of some of the particulars (maybe true, maybe not) but Dali always proclaimed his advocacy of monarchism and admiration for Franco. How much of this was serious and how much, like a great deal of his other posturing, was purely to aggravate people, I don't know. He was officially booted out of the Surrealist movement (the idea of which strikes me as rather funny, that there could ever have been an "official" Surrealist governing body) in the late 30s for refusing to sign a statement condemning Hitler. When brought before the group and asked to explain his refusal, he said something along the lines of, "I like the way the leather strap he wears looks as it's crossing his back". ie, he didn't place politics outside his general surrealist outlook. You may well disagree with this stance (I do--I'm not very partial to Surrealism as an aesthetic philosophy myself) but at least he was diving in with both feet. I've always had a sneaking hunch that his advocacy of extreme Roman Catholocism was planned along similar lines, ie, "What can I do that will piss off the art world the most?...and make me millions at the same time..."

[craigz]

It's easy to look back with hindsight and say that Dali and everyone else should have condemned the fascists, but the scope of the atrocities that we take for granted today only came to light years after they actually occurred. I'm not saying Dali was or wasn't really a fascist. If he wasn't, he certainly would not be the only person guilty of backing the wrong horse in those years. Think Lindbergh, Hearst, etc. If he was, he certainly would not be the only artist with distasteful habits or beliefs. If you like his work, that's all that matters. His personality, his press releases, and his silly moustache are irrelevent.




"Never trust a user with your television overnight." --Chrissie Hynde

[Gary Sisco]

Craig -- I'm afraid you're entirely wrong about the atrocities. They were common knowledge at the time. Then as now. People all over the world mobilized over that struggle, on all sides (and there were many more than two). Anyone who would make a serious claim that people didn't know at the time just doesn't know what he or she is talking about. That was one of the most public struggles in history -- and the last great proletarian revolution as well, in addition, often in opposition, to the simultaneous civil war (more precisely, to the way in which it was being fought or not, and for whom).

Dali was an utter reactionary, politically, and he wasn't joking about it. The Spanish didn't joke about politics, and he wasn't being a wiseass. He's far from the first, the only, or the last, artist to be artistically radical but politically reactionary. (Never mind that it's entirely possible to be a right-wing radical, obviously.) Indeed, there's not much uncommon about it at all; it's still the case today. Ditto with people who's tastes in art are radical or extreme. These things don't translate into politics very often. There's no necessary connection between them.

[Brian Olewnick]

"The difference between me and the Surrealists is that I'm a Surrealist" - Dali