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.
"Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I see before me, I make more arbitrary use of color to express myself more forcefully." ~ Vincent van Gogh, in a letter to his brother Theo.
We remember him as somewhat of a madman. And to a certain extent his behavior warranted this. He cut off his ear, for love. A bit excessive, though it made for an interesting self-portrait afterwards. On another occasion he was determined to see the girl he loved but her parents would not let him in. To show them how intent he was on seeing her, he held the palm of his hand over the lamp flame and said he would not leave till he saw her. The smell of burnt flesh was not very convincing and ultimately he passed out from the pain.
This story reveals that he was indeed a man of intense passions, which poured out of him into his works, works now valued in the millions of dollars. During his lifetime he sold almost nothing, and died in a mental institution in his thirties by his own hand.
As for the source of his mental illness, psychiatrists by the score have studied his behavior and his work to identify its root causes, whether from schizophrenia or syphilis or some other variety of experience. What we know is the notion of "artist as eccentric" found a home in the pop psyche, a notion that treats artists as kooks and social misfits. Or rather, that to become a great artist you have to be a kook or misfit.
Dorothea Brande, in her outstanding volume Becoming A Writer (1934), assaults this notion head on. "The picture of the artist as a monster made up of one part vain child, one part suffering martyr and one part boulevardier is a legacy to us from the last century, and a remarkably embarrassing inheritance. There is an earlier and healthier idea of the artist than that, the idea of the genius as a man more versatile, more sympathetic, more studious than his fellows, more catholic in his tastes, less at the mercy of the ideas of the crowd."
OK, so Salvador Dali comes along and portrays this vain child-madman to the extreme and makes a fortune doing it. No comment. Brande went on to explain that there really is "an artist temperament" and it is not the same as the accounting mindset.* The book goes into detail about left brain/right brain thinking, a concept which became excessively popular in the 1980's and has filtered its way into business books, consulting, education and psychology. The notions have been with us a much longer time than many folks realize.
What Brande argues is that you do not have to be mentally unstable to be creative. In this instance she is speaking to young writers, but the same applies to creative souls in the visual arts or music as well.
Vincent Van Gogh once said, "A good picture is equivalent to a good deed." If you are in Duluth this month there are plenty of venues where you can see some good pictures... and probably there are plenty of places in your home town, too. Check out the Duluth Art Institute at the Depot. Or make your way to the Tweed up at UMD, especially if you've never been. Open your eyes and engage.
*The Myers-Briggs personality tests, developed in the 1920s and fine-tuned over time, demonstrate that indeed artists and accountants have differing personality traits that result in their engaging the world differently. It is not insanity that makes people creative.
The picture at the top of this page, titled Blue Van Gogh, is currently available as a giclee reproduction. $85 plus S&H for a limited time.
While doing background research for a story I'm working on I revisited one of my interviews with Portuguese artist Margarida Sardinha regarding her project, Symmetry's Portal. Like artists in every field we have influences. Ms. Sardinha is transparent about hers, freely pointing backward to those whose ideas have been reconfigured in her multifaceted expressions. The January interview ended with a reference to Roger Penrose, whose fascination with geometry resulted in some interesting conundrums.
I remember being a youngster looking at a Mad magazine that had a grinning Alfred E. Neuman with one of these impossible designs. I immediately set about to trying to draw this, which is not really that difficult. Yet the effect is mesmerizing. Such simplicity, yet mind-boggling optical tom-foolery.
By means of basic techniques M.C.Escher spent a lifetime producing a vast array of impossible drawings and optical conundrums. A master illusionist, the Dutch graphic artist took his inspiration from mathematics.
Here's an example of another impossible object, the Penrose Triangle.
But what happens when you build a full-sized three-dimensional model of this bizarre idea? Well, it's not just the illustration that's batty, the real life model is even moreso. As is the composition demonstrated here:
Escher is not the only artist drawn to these kinds of optical puzzles. Salvador Dali and Rene Magritte produced some stunning visual effects of their own.
No wonder magicians have so much fun fooling us. All too often things are not what they seem. It both puzzles and entertains us, and frequently leads us to contemplate life's greater mysteries. I'm thinking here of the concept of the Trinity, a unique feature of orthodox Christianity.
Meantime life goes on... all around you, within you and without you.
“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.
