All posts tagged: Dalís

Salvador Dalí’s Largest Painting Heads to Auction

Salvador Dalí’s Largest Painting Heads to Auction

Published by José Betancourt

This month, Salvador Dalí’s largest ever painting, a monumental stage set measuring 65 by 100 feet, will head to auction in Paris. The work, which comes from a private collection, will lead Bonhams’s fourth annual sale dedicated to Surrealism on Thursday, March 26. The work is estimated to bring €200,000 – €300,000 ($236,000–$350,000). Dalí designed the 13-panel set for “Bacchanale,” a Surrealist production—for which he also wrote the libretto—created for the Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo. Key collaborators included Léonide Massine, choreographer and director of the Ballets Russes; Coco Chanel, who designed some of the costumes and accessories; and Prince Alexandre Schervachidze, legendary scenographer for the Ballets Russes, who oversaw production of the set at the company’s workshop in Monte Carlo. Related Articles The ballet had its premiere at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in November of 1939. Because of the war in Europe, Dalí was unable to attend himself, and Chanel refused to send her costumes. Nevertheless, it was well received and subsequently toured the US. The artist most synonymous with Surrealism in …

Luis Buñuel & Salvador Dalí’s Un Chien Andalou: The Short Surrealist Film That Revolutionized Cinema (1929)

Luis Buñuel & Salvador Dalí’s Un Chien Andalou: The Short Surrealist Film That Revolutionized Cinema (1929)

Published by José Betancourt

Un Chien Andalou means “an Andalu­sian dog,” though the much-stud­ied 1929 short film of that title con­tains no dogs at all, from Andalu­sia or any­where else. In fact, it alludes to a Span­ish expres­sion about how the howl­ing of an Andalu­sian sig­nals that some­one has died. And indeed, there is death in Un Chien Andalou, as well as sex, albeit death and sex as processed through the uncon­scious minds of the young film­mak­er Luis Buñuel and artist Sal­vador Dalí, whose col­lab­o­ra­tion on this endur­ing­ly strange movie did much to make their names. Two of its mem­o­rable images — among six­teen straight min­utes of mem­o­rable images — came straight from their dreams: a hand crawl­ing with ants, and a razor blade slic­ing the moon as if it were an eye. “Less than two min­utes into the pic­ture, a man — played by the stocky, unmiss­able fig­ure of Buñuel him­self — stands on a bal­cony, gaz­ing wolfish­ly at the moon,” writes New York­er film crit­ic Antho­ny Lane. “Cut to the face of a woman. Cut back to …

A Brief History of Surrealist Art: From the Bible and Ancient Egypt to Salvador Dalí’s Dream Worlds

A Brief History of Surrealist Art: From the Bible and Ancient Egypt to Salvador Dalí’s Dream Worlds

Published by José Betancourt

The term sur­re­al­ism — or rather, sur­réal­isme — orig­i­nates from the French words for “beyond real­i­ty.” That’s a zone, we may assume, reach­able by only dar­ing, and pos­si­bly unhinged, artis­tic minds. But in fact, even the most down-to-earth among us go beyond real­i­ty on a night­ly basis. We do so in our dreams, where the accept­ed mechan­ics of space and time, life and death, and cause and effect do not apply. Or rather, they’re replaced by anoth­er set of rules entire­ly, which feels per­fect­ly con­sis­tent and con­vinc­ing to us in the moment. Such “dream log­ic” may frus­trate the friends and fam­i­ly we attempt to regale with tales of our night visions, but as the sur­re­al­ists found, it could also be put to the ser­vice of endur­ing art. In the Hochela­ga video above, that chan­nel’s cre­ator Tom­mie Trelawny pro­vides a long his­to­ry of sur­re­al­ism in a short run­ning time. Trac­ing that move­men­t’s roots, he goes all the way back to the ancient cul­ture of the Aus­tralian Abo­rig­i­nals, for whom the con­cept of the “dream­time” still plays an …

Salvador Dalí’s Surreal Jewelry Designs: From Throbbing Heart Necklaces to Medusa Brooches

Salvador Dalí’s Surreal Jewelry Designs: From Throbbing Heart Necklaces to Medusa Brooches

Published by José Betancourt

Upon hear­ing the name of Sal­vador Dalí, even a total lay­man in the art world is bound to get visions of melt­ing clocks. Sur­pris­ing­ly, for an artist who showed so much self-mar­ket­ing savvy, Dalí nev­er brought an actu­al time­piece in that dis­tinc­tive­ly, even canon­i­cal­ly sur­re­al shape to mar­ket. But that hard­ly stopped Carti­er from putting out the Crash, whose dis­tort­ed shape may have always brought The Per­sis­tence of Mem­o­ry to mind, but whose name hints at the inspi­ra­tion of a watch smashed up in a car wreck. The Crash came out in swing­ing-six­ties Lon­don at its very height, by which time Dalí him­self had been design­ing real jew­el­ry for more than a quar­ter cen­tu­ry. ?si=v8xd7w6Tr3ZQzIIq You can see a few of Dalí’s jew­els in the 1960 British Pathé clip at the top of the post. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, they occu­py a realm apart from, or at least orthog­o­nal to, that of con­ven­tion­al jew­el­ry. Some of them move: Liv­ing Flower, for instance, which “opens to reveal sta­men and petals paved with dia­monds. The mech­a­nism is embed­ded in mala­chite from the …