Salvador Dali Exhibit The Museum of Modern Art New York City

The Persistance of Memory, 1931 Oil on canvas The Museum of Modern Art New York City

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.

Salvador Dalí. (Spanish, 1904-1989). Retrospective Bust of a Woman. 1933 (some elements reconstructed 1970). Painted porcelain, bread, corn, feathers, paint on paper, beads, ink stand, sand, and two pens.

Like other Surrealists, Dalí constructed sculpture from disparate found objects. The genesis of this work was his discovery of an inkwell featuring the figures from Jean-Francois Millet’s painting The Angelus (1857–59). He embedded the inkwell in a loaf of bread and placed them both on an accessorized bust. The necklace is a strip of repeating images from a zoetrope, a precinematic toy that provides the illusion of movement as it rotates.

deletereply starfishred wrote on Jan 4, ’09 he was good at the surrealistic thanks laurita

editdeletereply lauritasita wrote on Jan 4, ’09 I find him to be a pretty strange fellow, but interesting.

deletereply forgetmenot525 wrote on Jan 7, ’09 This guy must have been one of the most original, innovative and eccentric artists of the twentieth century. Some of his work I love, some I don’t. He was technically brilliant as a draftsman and with his use of paint. I do wonder if it is artistically ‘right’ to preserve works like this one made from decomposing material such as bread and corn. If Dali ever intended this to grace our galleries indefinitely he would not have deliberatly chosen to make it from material that decomposes. Maybe part of what it is………….is that is is a temporary item………….maybe??

editdeletereply lauritasita wrote on Jan 7, ’09 I find I also run hot and cold with Dali. Some of his work I find very interesting especially for the time that it was done. He seemed very ahead of his time, which I find interesting. Thanks for coming, Loretta.

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