Dali High

Look, Ma!

It's the Dali Report!!

As you may remember (and tried to forget), two weeks ago, I went to the L.A. County Museum of Art to see their Dali: Painting and Film exhibit. You may want to read about the exhibit in the curator's own words, here, on the LACMA website. Mostly because, I can't seem to help making stuff up, so she's probably more reliable.

I went to the exhibit as a nubile (work with me) fan of Dali's, and left feeling bitter and jaded. It was fun! I was surprised at how naive I was. I had no idea he worked in Hollywood for a variety of filmmakers, infusing their films with his wacky surrealistic sensibilities. For example, who hasn't seen Hitchcock's Spellbound? But did you realize that the images from Gregory Peck's character's subconscious, as told to his Freudian analyst (played by that plain-jane Ingrid Bergman), were created by Dali himself? Okay, sure, you may have been told this in kindergarten, but I'm from Kansas City. They didn't discuss surrealism in our school system. (But I bet you didn't know that Missouri native Thomas Hart Benton liked to taunt squirrels?)

(Did you?!)

It turns out, Dali had a number of obsessions. And I thought he was so normal and wholesome! For one thing, he was fascinated with Freudianism. He also was fascinated with certain images, which recurred in his paintings throughout his career. Those images included: ants, bicycles, elephants, knives or blades, eyeballs, and of course, his stunningly elegant flaming giraffes.


The installations were expertly displayed, of course, with the paintings and studies for a particular film displayed in the room where the film was being shown. The advancement in technology of film restoration was evident by how crisp and intense the images appeared, even when projected 20 feet above us, against seamless backdrops. Even, as it happened, after getting dizzy from looking up at them, and falling down. Still crisp! Each film was shown in its own room, with the works relevant to that film lining the surrounding walls. Viewing the canvases next to the films was an impressive and...surreal experience.




Next up:

Scout and I become scabs by writing our blogs despite the strike.