1/11/11 Dali Day in St Pete!!!
Today's Date: 1/11/11...My nerd side can't help but think in Binary Code, Computer Code. My artistic side is thinking Art, it's thinking DALI.Today, open the new home for the Dali Museum here in Tampa Bay. The new building looks like it came from Dali's head itself. It's basically a 3 story 18-inch thick concrete box. Falling from the roof, there is an irregular giant drop (dome), inspired by Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome. But don't let the fragile feeling of glass fool you. This baby is reinforced and certified for a Category 3 hurricane. For a more detailed description, you can check out the St Pete Times article hereThe first time I saw The Persistence of Memory, I thought he was crazy. I couldn't figure out why people like him so much. Until one day, I stopped and looked. My left side of the brain started to question the meaning of it, Why he did it? What did he want to say? The more I looked the more I wanted to know him, understand him. Maybe it was his past or the present? While my left side was immersed in the logic...the right side was getting hooked. And the Dali fan was born.Photographer Philippe Halsman wanted to explore the idea of suspension in photographs and who better than Dali to help in the matter. Using the same artistic elements presents in Dali's work, or at least whichever was possible with the limitation of the medium at the time, they capture flying cats, thrown water, kicked bread and Dali in mid-air. I like to think that Halsman intentions were to capture how Dali saw the world. If we could photograph, with 1940-50s equipment, how Dali views the world, it would look like something similar to Halsman's photos. I can easily imagine Dali seeing flying cats or water jumping around him while he was painting.
Untitled, Salvador Dali, 1942
In Voluptas Mors, Philippe Halsman, 1951
Leda Atomica, Salvador Dali
Dali Atomicus, Philippe Halsman, 1948
I'm still not sure if I truly like Dali's work, but it sure fascinates me. One thing is true, it would be very interesting to see the world through his eyes.Happy Dali Day!
