The Tentacle: Spellbound by Salvador Dali by Kevin E. Dayhoff

The Tentacle: Spellbound by Salvador Dali by Kevin E. Dayhoff March 25, 2009

Last month I enjoyed a bit of respite from Maryland’s winter by visiting Florida. Finding myself within reasonable driving distance of St. Petersburg, I jumped at the chance to visit the Salvador Dali Museum.

Located on the waterfront in Barboro Harbor, it is the “largest collection of Dali’s work outside of Spain,” according to Peggy McKendry, the assistant to the director of the museum.

The museum, which opened in a renovated marine warehouse March 7, 1982, is the home of 2,140 pieces of Salvador Dali’s art, including 96 oil paintings and eight huge master works.

This collection began in Cleveland, OH, in 1942. Collecting Dali’s art was the lifelong passion of industrialist A. Reynolds Morse, and his wife Eleanor Reese Morse.

[…]

In recent years, I have visited art museums – from San Diego, Salt Lake City, Anchorage, Boston, Washington, and Baltimore – and I found the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg to be one of the friendliest exhibitions I have ever seen.

Everyone from Ms. McKendry, to the extremely knowledgeable docents, and even the museum guards went out of their way to make sure you knew that the museum was there to serve, entertain, and educate.

Such accessibility is critical if you are to have a meaningful experience exploring 20th century contemporary art – especially the work of Salvador Dali.

[…]

While I was doing some additional research on Dali, after I visited the museum, I had the great fortune to talk with Dan Twyman, the senior art consultant for the “Salvador Dali Society,” in Redondo Beach, CA, the owner of the website, www.salvadordaliexperts.com and a volunteer expert for the website http://www.allexperts.com/ in the fine art category.

[…]

Read the entire column here: Spellbound by Salvador Dali
Kevin Dayhoff writes from Westminster. E-mail him at kevindayhoff AT gmail.com.

http://www.thetentacle.com/ShowArticle.cfm?mydocid=3078
http://www.salvadordalimuseum.org/home.html
20090325 TT Spellbound by Salvador Dali ttked

Photo credit: 1965 Salvador Dali with ocelot and cane
Library of Congress. New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3c14985
By Roger Higgins, World Telegram staff photographer

Kevin Dayhoff www.kevindayhoff.net http://kevindayhoff.blogspot.com/

This week in The Tentacle

This week in The Tentacle

Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Spellbound by Salvador Dali
Kevin E. Dayhoff
Last month I enjoyed a bit of respite from Maryland’s winter by visiting Florida. Finding myself within reasonable driving distance of St. Petersburg, I jumped at the chance to visit the Salvador Dali Museum.

Improving Recycling
Michael Kurtianyk
We can and should do a better job of recycling here in Frederick County. Recycling means separating and collecting materials for processing and remanufacturing into new products, and the use of the products to complete this cycle.

Prostitutes and Algebra
Tom McLaughlin
Batam Island, Indonesia. – The Queens, a bar, restaurant and prostitute hangout along the waterfront of Water City, Batam Island, services the western male community. All have seen better days.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Six Years and Counting
Roy Meachum
On March 18, the gap between St. Patrick's and St. Joseph's days, New Orleans keeps on partying, defying the church calendar to celebrate three days off from Lent. Green beer flows into red wine.

When a Tax Cut Isn’t
Farrell Keough
What is truth in politics? Is it something black and white; or are there varying degrees of gradation? Obviously it is the latter. Hence the need to research and understand what is stated versus what the realities behind the action are.

Monday, March 23, 2009
As the Worm Turns
Steven R. Berryman
Last week marked a watershed in the recent history of our newly transforming “Obamanation.” The anecdotal evidence was everywhere, although highly disparate, that what had once been hope, born of its own sake, was being replaced by a more healthy skepticism.

Friday, March 20, 2009
Jennifer's Campaign Targets
Roy Meachum
By reading her sycophantic newspaper columnists, it's easy to see the shape of Jennifer Dougherty's current campaign for mayor; there were three others. Only one run for City Hall succeeded.

The Assault on Our Basic Rights
Joe Charlebois
Whether one believes in a higher being or not, our founders did. Those who finesse the issue that they may or may have not been Christians obfuscate the point. They believed in a higher being. They more importantly believed that all rights that were bestowed upon man were given by that higher being, God.

Thursday, March 19, 2009
Jennifer Again?
Patricia A. Kelly
I can’t believe she’s back – yet again. She says she’s running because she loves Frederick. A lot of us love Frederick, and we love it a lot more when she is not mayor.

Imitating a Junta…
Tony Soltero
Back when I was a child, my parents once took a long, ambitious vacation to South America. When they got home they brought back countless little treasures from the countries they visited, an album's worth of beautiful photographs, and plenty of gripping stories to share. My brothers and I couldn't get enough of them.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Think Globally, Bank Locally
Kevin E. Dayhoff
If you are banking with any of the ginormous intergalactic financial institutions that are at the center of the current financial crisis, then you are part of the problem.

Budget Cuts Affecting Local Arts Scene
Michael Kurtianyk
If current legislation is passed by the General Assembly, funding to the Maryland State Arts Council would decrease from $16.6 million to $10.6 million. This is on top of the 14 percent cut last year, used to balance the budget.

A $40 Million Ruse
Tom McLaughlin
Batam Island, Indonesia – The islands were calling me and with rhythms of music from South Pacific flowing in my mind, I elected to visit a couple of them about an hour boat ride off the coast of Singapore.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Pushkin's Winter of Discontent
Roy Meachum
Mother Nature and government frequently disagree. Washington told us clocks must be turned back February's last weekend. A sure sign of Spring? The season doesn't begin until three weeks later.

Exhibiting America’s Traits
Nick Diaz
There was a time when one, in the world of machines, could hardly hear two dirtier words than “Planned Obsolescence.” The very idea that a complex mechanical object should have a deliberately abbreviated life expectancy was nothing less than a kind of mortal sin against proper engineering.

Monday, March 16, 2009
General Assembly Journal 2009 – Volume 8
Richard B. Weldon Jr.
Granting Personhood! Yes, I know what the editor is saying. What a terrible example of poor grammar in an opening. Unfortunately, I don’t make this stuff up, I just write about it!

Where’s the “Ownership,” Mr. President?
Steven R. Berryman
During the election cycle of 2008 it became the standard rhetoric for candidate Barack Obama and his wife to distance themselves from the elements of what it meant to “be American.”

20090325 This week in The Tentacle

Kevin Dayhoff www.kevindayhoff.net http://kevindayhoff.blogspot.com/

The Tentacle: notes on Spellbound by Salvador Dali

Spellbound by Salvador Dali - The Persistence of Memory (1931)

March 25, 2009

Mentioned in my The Tentacle www.thetentacle.com column: “Spellbound by Salvador Dali," March 25, 2009 by Kevin Dayhoff http://www.thetentacle.com/ShowArticle.cfm?mydocid=3078

When I was putting that column together I had the great fortune to talk with Dan Twyman, the senior art consultant for the “Salvador Dali Society,” in Redondo Beach Ca., the owner of the well-known website, www.salvadordaliexperts.com and a volunteer expert for the website, www.allexperts.com in the fine art category.

He spent a great deal of time on the phone with me and was kind enough to go out of his way to mail me some great materials.

Of course, word limit is a constant challenge with a huge subject like Salvador Dali. I could’ve written an entire column on the work of Dan Twyman…

Anyway – getting back to “The Persistence of Memory”…

The Persistence of Memory Salvador Dalí, 1931 oil on canvas 24 × 33 cm, 9.4 × 13 in Museum of Modern Art, New York City © 2007 Salvador Dalí, Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

“The painting was first exhibited in Paris at the Galerie Pierre Colle in 1931, where it was purchased by the New York gallerist Julien Levy for $250. In 1933 it was sold to Mrs. Stanley B. Resor, who donated the piece anonymously to the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1934.” (1)

http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?object_id=79018

Museum of Modern Art gallery label text:

Dalí: Painting and Film, June 29–September 15, 2008

“Time is the theme here, from the melting watches to the decay implied by the swarming ants. The monstrous fleshy creature draped across the paintings center is an approximation of Dalís own face in profile.

“Mastering what he called "the usual paralyzing tricks of eye-fooling," Dalí painted this work with "the most imperialist fury of precision," but only, he said, "to systematize confusion and thus to help discredit completely the world of reality." There is, however, a nod to the real: The distant golden cliffs are those on the coast of Catalonia, Dalís home.”

[…]

Museum of Modern Art publication excerpts:

“The Museum of Modern Art, MoMA Highlights, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, revised 2004, originally published 1999

“The Persistence of Memory is aptly named, for the scene is indelibly memorable. Hard objects become inexplicably limp in this bleak and infinite dreamscape, while metal attracts ants like rotting flesh. Mastering what he called "the usual paralyzing tricks of eye-fooling," Dali painted with what he called "the most imperialist fury of precision," but only, he said, "to systematize confusion and thus to help discredit completely the world of reality." It is the classical Surrealist ambition, yet some literal reality is included too: the distant golden cliffs are the coast of Catalonia, Dali's home.”

[…]

19310000 The Persistence of Memory

SDOSM 20090325

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Persistence_of_Memory

Kevin Dayhoff www.kevindayhoff.net http://kevindayhoff.blogspot.com/

20070905 Special to the Westminster Eagle Edward Hopper: A stranger in a world he never made

Edward Hopper: A stranger in a world he never made

09/05/07 By Kevin E. Dayhoff

Special to The Eagle

There is a certain unexplainable enigma that draws folks back again and again to ponder the mysteries of Edward Hopper's "American Scene" paintings.

Perhaps it is Hopper's peculiar way of depicting the stark existence of the human condition in such a simple "language" which begs for questions ... yet offers no answers.

Both questions and answers are welcome when the first major Hopper exhibit in Washington, D.C. in 25 years opens this month. The Carroll County Arts is hosting a trip to the exhibit at the National Gallery on Sept. 25 (see box).

The theme of a sophisticated confrontation with psychological tension and isolation is evident in Hopper's most famous work, the 1942 "Nighthawks."

That painting, according to Hopper himself, is of "a restaurant on New York's Greenwich Avenue, where two streets meet." Perhaps prophetically, progress did away with the diner long ago.

"Nighthawks" is a painted storyboard for a film noir movie on the late night lonely lives of four mysterious characters. It is left to each viewer to provide the plot and dialogue.

The painting shows no visible entrance or exit. The characters appear trapped and highlighted in the glare of the artificial light.

Hopper died in 1967. According to the diaries of his wife, Josephine Hopper, he always explained that the "Nighthawks" painting depicted "three characters." He also admitted that he painting was "unconsciously ... painting the loneliness of a large city."

But perhaps the best explanation of the painting came from A. E. Housman, who once wrote about being "a stranger and afraid. In a world I never made."

On a recent trip to Boston, I leaped at the opportunity to see the genius of Mr. Hopper, considered by many art historians to be one of the most influential -- if not one of the most popular -- artists of the 20th century.

The exhibit at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, included much of his often overlooked earlier works, such as "New York Corner," one of his earliest oil paintings from 1913; "Two Trawlers," a watercolor from 1923-24; "Gloucester Mansion," 1924; "Box Factory, Gloucester," 1928; and "House of the Fog Horn I" from 1927.

In pieces such as 1929's "Chop Suey" -- a favorite for many Hopper aficionados; as well as "Rooms for Tourists," 1945; "Cape Cod Evening," 1939; and "Office at Night," 1940, one may gain some insight into Mr. Hopper's emphasis on the importance of the small details of life.

After being exhibited in Boston through Aug. 19, the Hopper exhibit now moves to The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., where it will be displayed Sept. 16, 2007 to Jan. 21, 2008.

In addition to the Carroll County Arts Council bus trip on Sept. 25, Hopper's work is the subject of a documentary that accompanies the exhibition's opening. In the Baltimore area, the film will be shown on MPT Channel 67, Sunday, Sept. 23 at 7:30 p.m.

Kevin Dayhoff writes from Westminster. E-mail him at: kdayhoff AT carr.org.

Copyright 1998-2007 MyWebPal.com. All rights reserved.
Contact us at webmaster@mywebpal.com
All other trademarks and Registered trademarks are property
of their respective owners.