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All Eyes On Dali

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By KATHY L. GREENBERG, Tribune correspondent

Published: February 6, 2008

ST. PETERSBURG - Salvador Dali spent a lifetime plumbing the depths of his creativity. He explored a variety of art forms, such as painting, drawing, sculpture, photography and filmmaking. The relationship between his paintings and films is the focus of "Dali & Film," an upcoming exhibition at the Salvador Dali Museum.

"He was an artist who could use many different media to express himself," said William Jeffett, curator of exhibitions at the Salvador Dali Museum. "He was really curious about the range of possibilities that different media provided. One of the most important ones was film. This exhibition argues that film informed his painting."

Organized by the Tate Modern in London in collaboration with the Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation in Figueres, Spain, the show will feature more than 100 works from collections throughout Europe and the United States, including the artist's paintings, films, photographs, drawings and scripts.

The museum will present his films "Un Chien Andalou," "L'Âge d'Or" and "Destino," as well as the dream sequence in the 1945 motion picture "Spellbound."

Two of his most famous paintings will also be on exhibit: "The Persistence of Memory" (1931) and "The Metamorphosis of Narcissus" (1937).

Dali was born May 11, 1904, in Figueres. He grew up in the early age of cinema, when Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton dominated the screen, and he delighted in the slapstick comedy. His interests expanded to the mechanics of filmmaking, the techniques of capturing or manipulating images automatically, and the medium's mass appeal.

As early as 1922, he began to blend the aesthetics of film and art, blurring lines that marked which creative outlet influenced the other. Surrealism and Sigmund Freud's teachings affected his work as well.

"He observed those devices in cinema and took them back to his paintings. Funny devices crop up, like his paintings in the 1930s will have shadows cast from the outside of the painting. But we're not shown what object is casting that shadow. The device of having an off-screen shadow cast from beyond is very cinematic. Imagine that in a horror film, as a kind of foreboding, like a knife's shadow," Jeffett said.

Disturbing Imagery Appealed

In 1929 and 1930, respectively, he collaborated with Spanish director Luis Bunuel on the short films "Un Chien Andalou" and "L'Age d'Or." Dali's fascination with disturbing imagery, symbolism and dreams pervades these movies: a razor slicing through an eyeball, flies swarming dead and decaying animals, an army of ants invading a hand. During that time he painted "The First Days of Spring" and "The Persistence of Memory," in which similar surreal and fantastical ideas surfaced.

Technical advances in film in the 1930s and 1940s propelled the industry to experiment with atmosphere, fantasy and illusion (shadows, dreams, symbols, sound). Just as Dali's artistic vision complemented these trends, the Hollywood machine greatly appealed to the artist's creative and self-promotional sensibilities.

"He was interested in Hollywood because he saw film as the first truly powerful mass-media art form," Jeffett said.

In Alfred Hitchcock and Walt Disney, among others, he found a sense of camaraderie. Perhaps Dali's best-known contribution to filmdom was the Freudian dream sequence in Hitchcock's thriller "Spellbound," starring Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman.

Drawings For Disney

He developed drawings for the Disney production "Destino," but lack of funding in 1946 prohibited completion of the short animated film. Disney Studios France eventually finished the project in 2003.

After working with Bunuel, Hitchcock and Disney, Dali continued to dabble in moviemaking and translate that interest into paintings such as "Portrait of Colonel Jack Warner" (1951) and "Portrait of Laurence Oliver in the Role of Richard III" (1955). While his latter film endeavors never came to fruition (not discounting the drawings and paintings that emerged from those ideas), his surrealist interpretations strongly influenced the future of onscreen imagery.

"At the very least, 'Un Chien Andalou' has devices in it that have filtered into mainstream cinema," Jeffett said. "The shock of the famous eye scene is still powerful. Evoking those kinds of emotions is present in film today."

ON VIEW

Dali & Film

WHAT: An exhibit featuring more than 100 works, including films, photos and film scripts

WHEN: Friday through June 1; 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Wednesday and Saturday, 9:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday, 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Friday and noon to 5:30 p.m. Sunday

WHERE: Salvador Dali Museum, 1000 Third St. S., St. Petersburg; 1-800-442-3254; www.SalvadorDaliMuseum.org

ADMISSION: $15; $13.50 for age 65 and older and military; $10 for students 18 and older

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