High Museum

I caught the Salvador Dali exhibit at the High Museum this past weekend. It was the final days of the exhibit and the museum was open 31 hrs straight to accommodate last minute visitors with a special $ 5 admission from Saturday midnight to Sunday 9 a.m. Our plan was to arrive at the museum at midnight to take advantage of the $ 5 admission, but it looked like others had the same idea! We were in this loooong line waiting to make the turn into the museum’s garage for free parking. After a 30 minutes wait, we decided to pay for parking at another garage. We walked to the museum and expected to walk right into the museum, but instead we found ourselves facing another line with a 2 hrs wait. Ummm, no go for us. The night was cold and windy, and we were not in the mood to wait….

I returned the next morning to catch the exhibit and I was not disappointed. Unfortunately, photography was prohibited and I cannot share the genius of Dali’s artwork.

Dali’s famous piece, ‘Persistence of Memory’ is known to all as the one with the melting clocks. I expected the piece to be huge and so I was surprised to find it is about the same size as my MacBook. Dali is a Surreal artist but after viewing this exhibit, I find he was an innovator of art. He experimented with 3 D painting, incorporated physics with religion, and may have started the modern art movement. ‘The Tiger’ is another amazing artwork that displays his technique in visual illusion. When the piece is viewed afar, it is of a tiger and within a few feet, it is of Lenin. During the 1950′s, Dali was fascinated with physics and also at the same time, he returned to Catholicism.  After the atomic bomb detonation, he believed physics supported the existence of God. Dali translated this belief in a series of Madonna paintings and in other paintings with religious symbols during this time period. Besides being a noted painter, Dali was considered a great graphic artist. He found that graphic art reprints were so much quicker to complete than one piece of oil painting. Dali’s reprints had sold well and in jest, he was quoted, ‘After breakfast, I like to start the day by earning $ 20,000′. His pen and ink series of Don Quixote was something. In one titled ‘Don Reading in His Cave’, Dali used an octopus dipped in ink and used it as a ‘brush’. And in others, a loaf of french bread was used. It is funny the ‘tools’ this artist used and it reminds me of Modern artists use of experimental mediums.

With his art techniques and his interpretation of existence through art, Salvador Dali was certainly an innovator of art, IMHO.

Dali Exhibit at The High

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