I went to the Dali exhibit at the National Gallery of Victoria yesterday. Dali is one of my favorite artists. There was such an impressive range of his work, the largest collection I’ve seen so far. There was a huge collection I missed at LACMA two years ago while I was in London. I loved learning more about his collaboration with photographer Phillipe Halsman, the process of their sessions. Atomic Dali took twenty-eight attempts to achieve the end result they had wanted. This required assistants throwing the cats and buckets of water from one side of the frame on the count of three, and Dali jumping on count four. After each shot, they would have to chase the cats and ease them, then clean up the floor and whatever else had gotten wet from the water, which sometimes would be Dali himself. NGV had his skulls, Don Quixote, rhinos, lobster phone, his sketches….the only other thing I wished the exhibit had, were some of his spindly elephants. They are my favorite. And someday, I would love to see the actual beating heart he created, it’s made of rubies and gold and actually throbs by way of a tiny motor. It was created for Queen Elizabeth II, and it is ridiculous, and amazing at the same time. Everything else was incredible. His collaboration with Hitchcock for the movie “Spellbound” was given a whole room. Can you imagine those two men brainstorming together? I would love to have been a fly on the wall. When Mike Wallace interviewed Salvador Dali, he started off with this, “Salvador Dali is a self-confessed genius, with an ingenious flair for publicity. An internationally renowned modern artist, he’s also designed fur-lined bathtubs, he’s lectured with his head in a diving helmet and he claims that at the basis of his ides are cauliflowers and rhinoceros horns.” Brilliant.
