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Sunday, August 8, 2010

What I did this weekend instead of blogging


The High Museum of Art in Atlanta opened a Salvador Dali exhibit yesterday and my wife surprised me with a trip to go see it. I've been to the Dali museums in St. Petersburg and Paris so some of the exhibits weren't new to me, but I could look at Dali all day. Heck, some of his paintings I could stare at for a week and still not figure out. This one might take a month. Other well known paintings in the exhibition include Assumpta Corpuscularia Lapislazulina, Santiago El Grande, The Madonna of Port Lligat and my personal favorite. Any time you get the chance to see Dali's Christ of St. John of the Cross in person I highly recommend you take advantage of the opportunity.


There is also a ton of Dali photography by Phillippe Halsman (Warning: link has nekkid boobies) including another favorite of mine, Avida Dollars. There sadly wasn't a print or postcard of that one, so I picked up this postcard of Dali Atomicus instead. In the audio tour there was a neat explanation of how the picture was taken after 29 tries, and this site has some hilarious outtakes from the photo shoot (and painted nekkid boobies so don't get fired). The show was very educational, I learned that pictures of rhinoceroses scare the hell out of three-year-olds and that my eight-year-old is extremely interested in art, especially the pictures I warned you about in the links above. There was sadly no Dali trading card set, so the postcard of flying Dali, water and cats will have to sate your ephemera appetite today.

I also checked out the Howard Finster collection in the folk art section. This has nothing to do with Dali, I just really like Howard Finster. A lot. I'll try to steer the post back to Dali and finish off with the video for Debaser by the Pixies. I'm not linking to Un Chien Andalou because that movie still creeps me the hell out. Dali, you scary!

6 comments:

Hackenbush said...

I wonder if the exhibit will be coming to Chicago. I hope so. There hasn't been anything new at the Art Insititute for quite a while.

SpastikMooss said...

Nice show! I had the Burning Giraffe (http://web.sbu.edu/theology/bychkov/dali_giraffe.html) up in my room junior year of undergrad...Dali made some real crazy stuff.

And I love Un Chien! My girlfriend hates it because she has a thing about eyes getting touched, but damn...crazy lil' film.

Collective Troll said...

The Dali museum in St. PEte is a second home to me... I always meet great people there... In fact I am drinking out of a Dali coffee mug right now. It says "La unica diferencia entre un loco y yo es que... Yo no estoy loco!! I love it!

Todd Uncommon said...

If you like Dali, you should check out the Disney collaboration, Destino. Cool Stuff.

deal said...

The Hallucinogenic Toreador has always been one of my favorite paintings. The museum in St Pete is a good one to keep in mind if your on a Spring Training Jaunt to any of the Tampa area teams.

I can't remember if they had trading cards when the exhibit came to Philadelphia, but they did have Dali Baseballs.

longlivethewho said...

Damn I love the Pixies.