Monday, August 3, 2009

Dali and Melbourne...

Currently there's a Salvador Dali exhibition on in my
city... marvellous Melbourne.

Our art and entertainment centre, which
extends across the river.

Dali is a favourite of mine and I've always been fascinated
by his work... I love it. Well you can imagine my excitement
when one of my son's sent me a text message asking if I
would like to go to the exhibition. Of course I would.

So I sent an invite around to the rest of the family with a date
and time, asking all and sundry to join us. My son immediately
sent a text back saying "Why are you inviting the riff raff...?"
(Borderline elitist, that one.) Well as it turned out he needn't
have worried because he got offered some overtime at work,
which he accepted, and which prompts me to wonder where
culture actually sits with him.


Anyway, we went...

...here.... to see a portion of the life's work of
this man...
Salvador Dali.

Don't you just love him? You know that you're in for a
treat from someone that looks like that.

Going in...

The exhibition was excellent and had a lot of pieces that
excited me... but how do you do justice to a body of work
from a prolific artist that kept working well into his 80s?
You can't possibly have all the iconic works, but what was
there showed his growth and style changes from Dali's early
sketches and paintings as a 13 year old all the way through
his life. It wasn't all surrealism either.

One of the things I like about Dali and his work, is the humour.
Self deprecation and irony played a big part in his art, and he
embraced multimedia before the word was even invented.

Some self portraits...

At age 15.

At about 20.

Salvador being silly.

Salvador being clever.

Salvador 'hangin loose'

Salvador immortalised (tattoo).



He collaborated with many others over the years,
including this man...

Dali & Disney... what an unlikely combination... or was it?

One thing to come out of their 1949 meeting was a plan to
do an animation together, but alas it didn't get into
production... not until Disney's son decided in 2003 to revive
the project and complete it. Below is what he produced.

Destino.





Now for some more of his works...











Mouseover... to see detail of skull.
This is detail from a poster Dali did for the Army,
warning of sexually transmitted deceases.


Dali's wife, Gala, was the model for most of
his work... including this one.



The ruby heart in this broach has a movement behind
it to make the heart beat. It looks incredible.









Take a closer look at the bust of the old lady.
(Ummm, I mean the statue's head in the middle
not the bust on the lady on the left... tehe. You'll
need to find a larger image on the internet, but
its actually people standing in front of a
hole
in the wall.)



Coming out...


After the gallery, we went and had lunch in a cafe
over the river... on the way back I stopped on the
bridge and took the short video below...

A bit windy and a lot of traffic noise...
but you can hear the busker across the the street.

Cheers.


5 comments:

Savannah said...

Wow that looks fascinating. Dali's work is quite varied isn't it? I'm glad you had a great day out.

Bear said...

KayDee:
...and this is just the tip of the iceberg.

I love galleries... as a youth I spent a lot of time in them but now it's hard to find that time... maybe Butch and I will have that time in the future... I hope so.

Cheers.

Janna said...

OMG!
I love Dali!
He's got that eccentric misunderstood weirdness about him that I can really identify with. :)

WildIrishRose33 said...

His art work is definitely amazing. I've never been a huge fan though... my tastes are more along the lines of Van Gogh. Never really been sure why. Not saying I dislike Dali. Just that I like Van Gogh. :-P That's awesome that you got to go see all that art work.

Bear said...

Janna:
You and me both, Janna. :)



WildIrishRose33:
Dali was quite clearly influenced by Van Gogh in a couple of his works. He's so well known for the surrealist works, but he produced some stunning 'non-Dali' paintings too.

And yes, Tara, it was an absolute thrill to see the pieces in the flesh that I had looked at so intently in books.