If you watched the Super Bowl you most likely saw the unusual ad featuring Andy Warhol eating a Whopper. I was on the phone with my brother at the time and he said, "Is that Andy Warhol?"
I replied, "No, he's been dead nearly 30 years. It's just a look alike."
Silly me. It was indeed Andy Warhol. Like, wow.
This morning's The Drum (an eNewsletter devoted to marketing) has a related story about the re-appearance of of another internationally famous artist, Salvador Dali. Unlike the Warhol bit, the Dali Museum has worked with the ad agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners to create an AI deepfake Dali, a computer generated resurrection, drawn from analysis of footage and writings, for the purpose of showcasing The Dali Museum.
For nearly a dozen years I flew to Tampa to help drive my mom back North after doing her winter snowbird thing there. One several of those trips I took advantage of the opportunity to visit the Tampa Museum of Art, the St Petersburg Art District or the Dali Museum.
Dali, perhaps one of the three most well-known artists of the 20th Century, had been a strong source of inspiration for me when I was a young art student. I'd often intended to see the fabulous Dali collection when it was in Cleveland, and only later delighted to discover it was now housed here in Florida.
Like the art itself, the architectural design of the museum is a worthy complement to the life of Dali. If you've never been, you owe it to yourself to make time for this treasure if you're ever in the vicinity.
Now, not only does his work live on, but he himself will live on in his own inimitable way.
In every field of endeavor there are dozens or even hundreds of names that are familiar to those who follow that sport or discipline, but only a handful whose names are actually commonly recognized by all. For example, in boxing, Muhammed Ali. Maybe Joe Louis. In baseball Joe Dimaggio became a national symbol of something bigger than baseball. In soccer, how many household names are there? Yet most people, when the hear the name Pele would associate it soccer.
In architecture there's Frank Lloyd Wright, but how many others are household names? (Howard Roark doesn't count.)
So it is that though there are thousands of 20th century artists written up in the art magazines, you can probably count on one hand the majors known by all: Picasso, Warhol, Duchamp and Dali.* Even Duchamp may be questionable, despite the fact that some art historians cite him as the most significant of these big four for having pulled the thread that unravelled modern art, resulting in art's post-modern demise. (Basquiat my now be more memorable today than even Duchamp only because a Hollywood film highlighted him, a film that featured another pop culture emblem, David Bowie.)
All this to say that if you're in London in October, there will be a major show featuring two of these art luminaries, Marcel Duchamp and Salvador Dali. Today's Art Daily featuresa story about moving Dali's Christ of Saint John of the Cross from it's home in Glasgow to London for this major show. If you click on the link it will give you a sense of the scale of this painting.
Note the dramatic angle of the cross and the figure suspended there. It hovers as if parallel to the earth, and yet the vertical post points to this body of water, which you might imagine to be the Sea og Galilee, though in point of fact it is the bay of Port Lligat where Dali lived at the time.
When Dali painted this piece in 1951-52 he said the image came to him "in a 'cosmic dream' in which I saw this image in colour and which in my dream represented the 'nucleus of the atom.' This nucleus later took on a metaphysical sense; I considered it 'the very unity of the universe,' the Christ!"" **
If you draw lines from the hands to the feet it forms a triangle, which represents the Trinity. The head forms a circle in the middle of the triangle, representing the unity of all things.
What I find interesting is how the artist was not taken seriously by many art critics when he painted this. They labeled it "kitsch", which when I was an art school student in Ohio was pretty much the ultimate insult, comparing it to cheap paintings of Elvis on velour that you might find in tourist shops. Because it wasn't "far out" like much of his other work one critic said it was a stunt.
One of the truly great painters of the past century, it's a privilege to have the Dali Museum located in the U.S. within a stone's throw of another mecca of contemporary life, Disney World. St. Petersburg is adjacent to Tampa, and a worthwhile destination there is the Dali Museum. You will not see Christ of Saint John of the Cross there, but you will see plenty to blow your mind, as the saying goes.
Meantime, art goes on all around you. Get into it. *It's interesting how one of the signs of a person's pop worth is that we call them by a single name, eg. Dylan ** I, too, had an image to me in a dream which I sketched afterward and called The God House. Writing about this here has served to prod me to consider following through on that painting some day.
This week I have been posting stories stimulated by last Saturday's excursion through the St. Petersburg Warehouse Arts District. I'd intended to visit the Dali Museum on the waterfront there, but lines were long so I took a detour, intending to go to the beach. Within a few blocks I was seduced by all these incredible murals on seemingly countless buildings and noticed that there was a thriving arts community here. I parked, did a walkabout, and came upon a place called Bartique with an open front inside which a young woman was in the process of hanging paintings for an art exhibition that would be opening later that day. Her name was Amanda Turner. I liked here work and planned to share it here, but felt it would be even more interesting if I could also share a bit of her story.
EN: How did you come to take an interest in painting?
Amanda Turner: I was a heavy drinker all of my adult life until about two and a half years ago. Immediately after quitting drinking, I started painting murals, starting with one in my bedroom. That enabled me to paint murals in a local candle shop that I was working at, and that lead to me getting commissioned to do various murals around town.
EN:A lot of people do creative work, but having shows is taking it to a new level. What prompted you to begin showing your work?
AT: It's pretty rare that I get to paint on canvas and for a while I kept telling myself that I wasn't into it, but I started doing art shows knowing that the exposure would be great, and now I LOVE doing them. The entire show is an art form for me, I feel that it's necessary to create more interaction for visitors than just showing art on canvas.
EN: That must have been a thrill to have work selected for the Dali Museum. How did that come about?
AT: The Dali Museum was such an honor, and I still can't believe I was asked to be there. There are 12 committee members at The Dali, and each got to choose a local artist to be featured at The 12 Days of Dali event at the museum, and I was chosen as one of them.
EN: Can you describe the process involved in making the peacock piece? Did you have three pieces there and what were the other two?
AT: The process for making the peacock piece was buying raw canvas from the art store, having it hand sewn to clean up the edges and then layered painting. I first started with a dark base around the edges, getting lighter and lighter as I got to the middle. I think added the "Desiderada" wording to it, and from there took a sponge to some gold paint and started dabbing it all over the painting. Then came the peacock. The trick is slow, steady and concentrated precision. My seamstress also created dowel sleeves and I custom made the banner stands as well. The other 2 were a little rushed, so I don't usually display them together anymore. They are two large peacock feathers.
EN: Where can people see more of your work? Can people buy your paintings online?
AT: I do a lot of mural work, so most of it can be found all over the streets of St. Petersburg, Florida. I currently only sell prints on my website, and as soon as I get more canvas work completed, I'll be posting more to sell. My website is www.paintthatuglything.com.
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Whether you are here, or there... or just about anywhere. art goes on all around you. Engage it.
“I don't like the idea of 'understanding' a film. I don't believe that rational understanding is an essential element in the reception of any work of art. Either a film has something to say to you or it hasn't. If you are moved by it, you don't need to have it explained to you. If not, no explanation can make you moved by it.” ~Federico Fellini
On the last day of 2011 I had the privilege of being able to visit the Dali Museum in St. Petersberg, FL. The Spanish-born painter is one the few megastars of the contemporary art world who was a household name in his own lifetime. His draftsmanship is unsurpassed, and his images astonishing, even if not always comprehensible. And perhaps it is this incomprehensibility that some people find off-putting about Dali’s work. But as Fellini stated, you do not need to understand something in order to engage it or be moved by it.
Most people define the enigmatic Dali as a surrealist, but in point of fact that would be like calling Bob Dylan a folk singer. Dylan was part of the folk music once, but it was only a phase. The same with Dali, who embraced the surrealists much the same way folk singers embraced Greenwich Village at one time.
The new Dali museum provides a well-conceived structure than enables visitors to see the phases of Dali’s work through its many progressions, from early works to anti-art, through surrealism to his nuclear mysticism and mature works. Visitors to the gallery can opt in for a walking tour or use the free headset earphones which give you more control over your pace. Each of the major works has a number on the wall that you punch in to your keypad and a narrator gives you’re the lowdown. You also have a green arrow button which you can push if you would like even more detail on the piece you are looking at.
The original Dali Museum has been drawing visitors from all over the world since opening in 1980. In January 2011 this new shrine to Dali opened its doors for a new generation of fans. There are more than 2000 pieces of art and 96 of his most influential or most important oil paintings housed here. The three-story building itself is a work of art as well as a safety zone, as it is designed to withstand even hurricanes. The Dali works are all located on the third floor. The former museum presented his paintings on the first floor, which might be susceptible to damage in the event of a major flood.
Dali’s paintings have several features that make his style compelling. First is the superb skill as a painter. Second is the sense of mystery that surrounds so many of the scenes he portrays. Third is the way he distorts all manner of things to absurd degrees. Fourth are the themes of sensuality, eroticism and mysticism that permeate so much of his work. If it was his intent to shock, he succeeds… and yet, we keep looking, trying to understand these bizarre landscapes peopled by perversity. Two other recurring themes in Dali are that of producing optical illusions using positive and negative spaces within the picture, and his repeated references to art history.
The Dali works assembled here in St. Petersburg are actually the collection of Reynolds and Eleanor Morse of Cleveland, Ohio. I remember while in college at Ohio U. having a strong desire to see the Dali collection that the Morse’s made public in Beachwood beginning in 1971. I never followed through.
After Dali graduated from the Surrealist school, he chose not to participate in the developing abstract movement, choosing instead to draw inspiration from Renaissance painters, and Gala. But my favorite pieces when I visited five years ago and this past weekend are the enormous canvases which are themselves fully developed stories. The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus is near twelve feet wide and sixteen feet tall. The Ecumenical Council and the complicated Homage to Crick and Watson are similarly enormous.
But my favorite continues to be the Hallucinogenic Toreador. According to the story (with Dali all stories are suspect as self-made mythologies) Dali purchased a box of Venus brand pencils with Venus de Milo on the box and saw a face in the shadows cast by the famous statue. Dali spent sixteen months on this remarkably complex painting.
And then there are the films. In one section of the third floor gallery we find hundreds of illustration and two large walls with movies projected onto them. Suffice it to say that the films were comical and bizarre, and due to my own time limitations I only watched a portion as the activities in the films did not imply that a storyline was in progress.
All this to say that on your next visit to Tampa, be sure to schedule a little side trip to one of the most significant collections you’ll see anywhere.
“The sole difference between me and a madman is the fact that I am not mad!” ~Salvador Dali
Without doubt he was talented. And an individualist with enormous ego. Said Dali, “At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has been growing steadily ever since.”
Was Dali’s bizarre style a put-on to increase his marketability or was he simply a madman whose talents brought him critical acclaim, despite his ludicrous behavior?
According to the Masterpiece Paintings Gallery website, "Dali's ego and need for attention were never satisfied. His thirst for scandal was unquenchable. And 'the thought of not being recognized was unbearable', he said. He used to walk through the streets of New York ringing a bell whenever he felt people were not paying him enough attention. 'Every morning when I wake up I experience an exquisite joy -- the joy of being Salvador Dali -- and I ask myself in rapture what wonderful things this Salvador Dali is going to accomplish today.'”
As an art student I found Salvador Dali’s sensational work remarkably invigorating and inspirational. Inspirational on two levels… first, his extreme attention to detail and the skill of his painterliness, and second, for the evocative quality of his imagery.
Steve Martin, in his autobiography Born Standing Up, in passing mentions an incident during a visit to the Museum of Modern Art in New York whereupon he comes across Dali's Persistence of Memory. Martin was quite surprised at how small it was. Like Martin, the first piece I saw in person was this famous painting of melting clocks. At the time, Picasso’s stunning Guernica was on the wall just before I reached Dali’s piece. Guernica is enormous, and impressive. Just around the corner Dali’s Persistence of Memory was, in contrast, a tiny little thing, yet astonishing in its detail. When you look at plates of paintings in art books, both paintings might take a page of the book, and your mind just doesn’t quite grasp the reality.
My second Dali was the shocking/fascinatingSoft Construction with Boiled Beans - Premonition of Civil War which hangs in a private collection at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This is a wonderful museum, with the Dali piece accompanied by some of Marcel Duchamp’s most significant works, a great place to hang out if you are a masterpiece.
But if you seriously want to take in more than a piece or two, I strongly recommend you visitthe Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida which is wholly dedicated to this icon of Twentieth Century Surrealism.
While visiting the Dali Museum two springs ago, a tour guide told us a story about small sculpture composed of a lobster sitting on an old fashioned telephone rack. Dali, while dining, threw the lobster over his shoulder and it landed on the phone after knocking the handheld part off the receiver. He loved the look and made it “art.” Crazy or creative?
But the story that sealed my impression that he was a bit mad was when the tour guide said he went through a brief period in which he refused to say any two sentences in a row in the same language. So he would say something in Spanish, then French, then English, then Spanish, etc. This went on for days, maybe weeks. You can imagine the conversations that followed… or didn't.
If you've never been and you're anywhere near Tampa/St. Petersburg, you owe it to yourself to visit the Dali Museum. In contrast to Persistence, you will see fifteen foot high paintings like the Hallucinogenic Torredor, along with many rooms of other major works. The Torreador alone is worth the visit.
Although among the Surrealist Movement's brightest lights in the 1930's he was eschewed by these famous artists who composed the Dada Movement because Dali was a capitalist and they were socialists. As it turns out Dali mastered the art of making money, which contributed to his legacy. On the flip side, his mass production of prints of his work resulted in scandals that in some circles has damaged his name. It may be because his definitions of truth and ethics are as ambiguous as his motivations.
Here is a YouTube film that reveals the character of Dali's mind: self absorbed and over stimulated.
