On Tour with Sister Wendy - Salvador Dali

Dear gentle reader, you know that I am an armchair art lover and on occassion I like to take you on an armchair tour of paintings that have some significance (no matter how fleeting) to me. I don't believe art is necessarily about what the artist is feeling and the reasons behind why a certain piece was created. I believe art is about how that piece makes you feel and react.

One artist who never fails to stimulate a response from me is Salvador Dali. I am not going to bore you with his life detail, if you want to know more you can read about him on Wikipedia here.

I was browsing the Salvador Dali Art Gallery and have chosen 4 of my favourite.

The Truck (We'll be arriving later, about five o'clock), 1983

First, this painting and its title made me laugh. I can imagine waiting, impatiently, for a delivery that never arrives on time. The second reason is that today I am going to a house warming party at five o'clock.

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Celestial Ride, 1957

The rhino has a slight robotic feel to it (almost like the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz) but as you look closely at the elongated legs and face, the rhino is still of flesh and blood. Mechanically enhanced, almost like he is the Six Million Dollar Rhino. How could not notice the TV embeded in his side, which is casually showing a baseball game.

There is almost too much for me to take in during a single viewing. I will need to set aside more time just to look at the bottom half of the painting. The more I look at it, the more it changes.

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Nude in the Desert Landscape, 1946

Again, the more you look at Nude in the Desert Landscape, the more you see. It reminds me of Carlos Castanada's The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge.

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Figure at Window, 1925

To me, this photo is that warm, humid air wind that and calmness that happens right before a thunderstorm. That is a very contemplative, calm and spiritual moment.

On a side note, this particular model was very close to Dali, until she published a biography about her times with Dali, which did not make the artist very happy. He responded by painting a "sequel" to Figure at Window, which was entitled Young Virgin Autosodomized by her Own Chastity (1954).

More Art...

La Vie, Pablo Picasso (1903)

Currently part of the collection at the Cleveland Museum of Art, http://www.clemusart.com/ has this to say about La Vie:

"In 1901, depressed over the suicide of a close friend, Picasso launched into the austere, melancholic paintings of his Blue Period (1901-1904). Only twenty-two years old and desperately poor, he restricted his palette to predominately cold colors suggestive of night, mystery, dreams, and death. His growing obsession with themes of human misery and social alienation reached its climax with La Vie (Life). The subject has been interpreted as an allegory of sacred and profane love, a reference to the cycle of life, and a symbolic representation of the life led by the modern artist.

X-radiographsof the underlayers of La Vie indicate that Picasso continued to depict himself as the artist in the painting's early stages. Before completing the composition, he repainted the standing man, replacing his facial features with those of Carles Casagemas, a close friend who had committed suicide in 1901.

X-radiographs also reveal that the seated woman in the lower center was painted over a strange scene in which a "birdman"-a human body attached to the head and wings of a bird-flies over a naked woman reclining on the ground. The meaning of this scene remains the subject of considerable speculation and debate.

Picasso's preparatory sketches for La Vie indicate that his original intention was to depict himself standing between a naked woman (his model or lover) and a canvas resting on an easel. Some sketches also include another artist who enters the studio at the far right. Picasso later replaced that man with the robed woman holding a baby. In other preparatory sketches, the naked woman beside the artist appears pregnant."

I couldn't have said it any better myself.

Candy Hearts Make Me Vomit.

Despite that blogger says the date is 13th of February, on the bottom side of the globe it is actually the 14th... So..... Happy Valentine's Day!!!

Remember: If no one sends you love today, then you aren't really loved.

And in case you are wondering, the painting is entitled "Cupid Chastised"

And This Concludes Today's Tour...

Death in the Garden (Legend)

by Paul Klee (1919)

I Thought I Was Having a Bad Day

Head of Guillontined Man

by Jean Louis Andre Theodore Gericault (1818-19)

Furnished by IKEA

Open Window, Nice

by Raoul Dufy (1928)

Sunday in the Park with George

A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte

by Georges Seurat (1884 - 86)

My first conscious awareness of this painting was when I first saw Sunday in the Park with George starring Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters. Sunday in the Park with George was written by Stephen Sondhiem and James Lapine after the two were inspired by a discussion they had regarding the Seurat painting.

This is probably the most famous painting by Seurat, who used the pointillism techinque for this painting. Pointillism does not combine colours on a pallate to create hue, but uses individual dots of varying colour that rely on the eye's perception to combine the dots to create an overall tones.

One could use pointilism as an excellent example of how all objects are inter-connected, but I will spare you the long analogy and refer you to hire a copy of I Heart Huckabees from Blockbuster.

Time to 'move on'.

You Should Only Cry in the Rain

Paris Street, Rainy Day by Gustave Caillebotte (1877)

I have always loved this painting. It is very atmospheric. One can feel the chill of the day and hear the sound of the rainwater rushing down the cobblestone streets. At the same time, I get a sense of unhappiness, a longing for a different situation, but acceptance of the reality.

What do you see, feel, hear, taste, touch, think when you see this painting?