Surrealist Mind

This past weekend my husband and I went to the MOMA to see the Dali: Painting and Film Exhibit. The collection included some of his usual work (the paintings) but also some unpublished ones, such as "Dinner in the Desert Lit by the Giraffes on Fire" - a design for the film with the Marx Brothers. I personally liked his storyboard and sketches than the actual films he made, because it offered an unpolished view of his world.

The films were in his true nature of surrealism, "anything goes". I'm sure there are a lot of hidden meanings and connotations built into each scene that made sense to him though they were totally (and sadly) lost to me. Perhaps I'm too much of a realist to embrace the free spirit. Perhaps that's the whole point - is to not understand it but to witness it.


Seeing such work as "Destino" - a piece that initially started out as an episode to be worked into Disney's feature Fantasia (1940) but only a fifteen to eighteen minutes of it got used in the original, was quite interesting. In 2003, a team of animators took Dali's sketches and the short sequence as a guide to complete the vision. It definitely has the traditional "Disney" touch and the soundtrack to go with it but it was nice to see a moving image of his painting for a change. I'm sure Dali would've probably put some other soundtrack to it, had he had the control.


Lastly, what really made me wonder what makes art really an art was amongst the paintings and the films was this one random piece that was encased preciously in the glass box, with a small label below it saying "Lobster Phone". True to its name, there it was: a black dial phone in all its glory, with a plastic lobster stuck on it. Seeing this made me believe that somewhere in his grave, Dali is chuckling at us for taking this all so seriously. (Trust me, the actual piece did NOT look as shiny and nice as this picture).

Mon, Jul 7, 2008  Permanent link