Through my eyes

living my life without regrets

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

Salvador Dali in St. Pete

Salvador Dali  <<< click on the name to watch some movies !
Painter

Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marqués de Dalí de Pubol, known as Salvador Dalí, was a prominent Spanish surrealist painter born in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain.
·        

·         Lived: May 11, 1904 - Jan 23, 1989 (age 84)
·         Height: 5' 8" (1.72 m)
·         Spouse: GalaDalí (m. 1934 - 1982)
·         Periods: Surrealism · Dada · Cubism · Modern art
·         Founded: Dalí Theatre and Museum · Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation
·         Education: Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando (1922 - 1926)


What can one possibly add to above? The few lines above are the barest synopsis of a life lived so far removed from my life that I have come to realize how unimportant I have been and will be. Dali was just a man, yet he showed us in visual ways how mentally puny most of us are. His mind was different. His artistic abilities were way above the norm and he was unique. Do I admire him? In a way, yes! I am not sure I would want a life that seems so ‘tortured’. I feel sure his life, as strange is it looks to me, was not an easy life. In a way he was very lonely. How could he not be, living above the rest, on the pinnacle of mental existence? Years back I went to visit his museum in Figueres, Spain. I liked what I saw then.
So when I had to have my bike serviced (new rear tire, oil change, incl. final drive) I chose the BMW dealership in Tampa, FL to do the work.
Camera's Everywhere 
Stairs full of People 
St. Petersburg is close by and is also a town that loved Dali. St. Pete’s is where the Americans (Morse Family, made their money in early plastic) built a Museum just to show Dali’s works. It is a very modern building, and has the latest of the latest gizmo’s to watch Dali’s paintings, sketches, busts, films, and whatever else he dabbled with. The lines to get in to the museum are long. Only a limited number of people are allowed in. Go early to be admitted quickly, I am not kidding, this is a sold out show, almost every day.
Dali was a true artist. He was extraordinarily flamboyant, self-assured and just plain weird. He knew it, played it up, too. Yet, he was good, a genius.

I have no idea how high is IQ was, but I am sure it was up there. His wife, Gala, was a perfect match for him. Having looked at photographs, listened to how he was enamored with her, I believe it was a good marriage.

I am not sure if Dali made fun of the viewer of his paintings by using his far out descriptions that are hideous and sound insane. The picture named “Anthropomorphic Echo“, for example.
Anthropomorphic Echo 

Full Definition of anthropomorphic
1. 1:  described or thought of as having a human form or human attributes <anthropomorphic deities>
2. 2:  ascribing human characteristics to nonhuman things <anthropomorphic supernaturalism

The Ghost of Vermeer Van Delft - Dali Salvador
is this a Vermeer ?  Hardly !
I don’t use the word Anthropomorphic in my daily use. I had to look up the meaning of the word. I am still having trouble thinking in terms of words like that. I wonder why he named pictures “Portrait of my Dead Brother” or the name “Ghost of Vermeer of Delft”. Was Dali’s thinking into the                               supernatural?








Dali painted in 1969/70 a painting called “HallucinogenicToreador” reminds me of the Hippy Drug Culture. Some of it anyway. 
Was Dali under the influence?

He read Sigmund Freud’s “The Interpretations of Dreams” in 1925 and as we can see, that reading produced some far out ‘dream scrapes’ and ideas.

After he was introduced in 1929 to Joan Miro and the idea of Surrealism, Dali’s thinking sure took a very different turn.

Because when I look at the painting of his sister (1923) I can still see ‘reality’ in her face. 
Dali's Sister
One can clearly see what his sister looked like. Yet already, on the upside down image, things start to change.
Dali’s subject matter to me was:  The Irrational    -    the world of dreams.
Dali loved Vermeer, I read that someplace. Yet when I look at the picture titled GHOST OF VERMEER (1934)   I do not see any comparable ideas.  I don’t even see any ‘Vermeer’ in the picture at all. Was Dali sane? Did he just ramble when he chose titles for his works?
The Ghost of Vermeer which can be Used as a Table 
Then the idea of the picture: “THE GHOST OF VERMEER OF DELFT WHICH CAN BE USED AS A TABLE”?   Strange!
I am not sure how you would see his exhibitions, his artwork if you were to go. I cannot tell what would impress you, what would get to you, but for me I am impressed with a lot of his works.

I know how difficult it is to draw a bicycle 


Mmmm, so much to see 

I can see much better on my iPhone 


yes, some is hard to understand 


Many things Dali worked on or showed are way above my head. The Lobster Telephone, as an example, I do not understand at all. I find it ugly and useless.
And yet, I see Dali as an artist with mostly great ideas. He shows me a reality that is not like mine. His pictures make me curious, I want to see and explore them. I am amazed how another human being sees the world and looking at the pictures depicted leaves me puzzled, sometime even a bit upset.  Mainly, however I see strangeness, unexplained lands, motifs, partial visions that I have never had.
Sodomized Piano ?
I never used any kind of drugs, so maybe that is why I cannot identify with the subjects. That is how I explain it to myself right now, but I really don’t know. Can you explain to me what the 1934 painting “ATMOSPHERIC SKULL SODOMIZING A GRAND PIANO” means, or what Dali meant by painting it ?






Melting Clocks ? 

Chain Reaction Shooting 




I never Dream like This 

Dali Titles this 'Woman', Do you get it ?

Ghostly 

What is it ?

Crawling Ants looking for Bread ?

Time Runs Away Like Water and we get Old ?



Deserted Desert 

While sitting in the Gallery I watched some of the people and took some photographs.
Ordinary Shoes
I wanted to just watch them, see how they responded to the visual impacts Dali created.  As you can see by the shoes, they were ordinary people.
The Baby is Excused
And I excuse the fat baby, because he/she has not yet developed an eye for the fine arts; but all the other people?
Look at That !  
What do you think of my comments below the pictures?
Dali left Spain in 1940, after only one year of him deciding he was no longer a Surrealist. Yes, he just decided that in 1939.
Dali lived in the U.S. between 1940 and 1947. I would have thought that Spain had little to offer him after having lived in the States. But…….no, Dali went back to his Catalan roots.  His work, his paintings changed in his older years.
Columbus Discovers America 
One day, in 1939 he woke up and no longer painted his dream world but now painted visions like “THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA BY CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS” 1958/59. He became a very Catholic believer and painted Modern looking pictures.Dali called this period of his painting Nuclear Mysticism. 
Made in America 
Dali is a mystery to me, but I respect him as a great artist. He was one of the few who truly was different from society and who could translate his world into a visual presentation. He had visions, had a different brain and St. Pete’s Museum is a great place to get to know him.

After the museum, with a new tire on the bike and the oils changed, the world was, at least for a little while, a different place to ride in. A bit Dali like!