Friday, September 3, 2010

Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali was a sort of clown who made his artistic career into a long assault on the art world and its pretensions. Like Andy Warhol, he was as well known in his own time for his antics at parties and his outrageous statements to the press as for anything he painted. He mocked other artists for taking themselves too seriously -- above is Debris of an Automobile Giving Birth to a Blind Horse Biting a Telephone, a take-off on Picasso's Guernica. His hunger for attention equaled that of Madonna or Lady Gaga. He experimented with kitschy commercialism, as in this 1946 watercolor, Cleo-catra:

And yet I still find him an interesting artist. He had great skill at drawing and painting, and he used it to create striking images that linger in the mind. There is a new show of his late work at the High Museum in Atlanta, and the NY Times has a slide show. For more, you can check out this blog, Dali Planet, which explores his work. Here is one of my favorites, Nostalgic Echo:

2 comments:

peter kwee said...

Hi, do you have any info on 'Nostalgic Echo'? Like, is the painting actually dated and titled, where is the original? I'd be really grateful to know

John said...

The date is 1935, and the tower is said to recreate a feature from the landscape of his childhood, a church tower in Palamos.