Dali`s museum

As I mentioned in my first blogpost, Gala Dali Theatre Museum in Figueres (in Costa Brava) was the reason I started to be interested in Dali.

There is an interesting story behind this museum:

The municipal government of Catalonia didn't want to invest as much money in art, therefore Dali could not build his own museum. However, Dali found a law that was saying that government should invest into cultural buildings which were ruined by the World War 2. For this reason Dali found a destroyed theatre and asked government to invest money in it. He named the place Gala Dali Theatre Museum saving the "theatre" in the name to appeal to government.

Dali wanted to exhibit only copies of his artworks in museum; however, Madrid insisted in supplying of real images to museum.

Now museum is one of the most attracting sightseeings in Spain. It has the most known paintings such as "Basket of Bread", sculptures such as Merlin Monroe room, jewellery and Dali`s tomb.

Overall you can feel as close to the Genius Artist as you only can! So if you decide to visit Spain, visit Museum, you will not regret! You will learn a lot more information there than you would do from any book about Dali. You can also see real paintings of Salvador Dali, not the copies!!!!!!!

Another famous museums located in St. Petersburg , FL

Here is the link  to the official web cite: http://thedali.org

From time to time you can enjoy exhibitions of Dali`s art in different other European and American cities.

Salvador Dali was, is and will be a world known genius attracting more and more people. He has achieved his main goals: became famous, rich, beloved and built his own museum.

In addition to this, Dali is an interesting person to learn about and educate others. Let`s do it together!!!!!!!!

#getinvolved #dali #salvadordali #surrealism

Paranoic-critical method and other weird inventions/ theories

Also known as paranoiac critical method, was developed by Salvador Dali, which represents spontaneous visual play, also known as "double image". Dali explained that if a person stimulates paranoia, he/she creates associative transformations. It also removes rational view of the world with irrational. This method is typical representation of surrealism.

The most common example for explaining this phenomenon:

When you look at clouds you can see different shapes: flowers, people, animals. Others can be persuaded to see the same.

Any object can be viewed from this perspective - Dali believed.

In a nutshell, there must not be any value in the meaning of reality as it may mean anything at all. (Marcel Jean)

Dali was widely using this method in his paintings.

Taken from http://www.languageisavirus.com/articles/articles.php?subaction=showcomments&id=1099110809&archive=&start_from=&ucat=#.U0WA9lW-3To

Here is an interview with Dali about the paranoiac critical method:

Most of Dali`s paintings are connected with his dreams. Here is another interesting method created by Salvador Dali:

Salvador would put a plate on the floor and fall asleep with a spoon in his hand. When falling asleep his hand became relaxed and dropped the spoon on the plate. The sound would wake Dali up, saving dreams in memory and then he painted them.

Dali believed you can bring dreams from unconscious level to conscious.

from http://www.creativitypost.com/create/salvador_dalis_creative_thinking_technique




Other inventions:

Lobster phone

Merlyn Monroe room

Famous Citations

These are the most famous citations and thoughts of Salvador Dali:

1. " I don`t do drugs, I am drugs"

2. "Surrealism is myself" ( Dali`s Moustache Dali& Halsman)

3.  " Providing the right honey for the right fly at the right time and place" ( Dali`s Moustache Dali& Halsman)

4. " Me crazy? I am certainly saner than the person who bought this book" ( Dali`s Moustache Dali& Halsman)

5. " Every morning I am awake, I experience supreme pleasure- the joy of being Salvador Dali and I ask myself what things this Salvador Dali is going to accomplish today"

6. "Have no fear of perfection - you will never reach it"

7. " The only difference between me and madman that I am not mad"

8. "There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad"

9. "Let my enemies devour each other"

10. " The secret of my influence has always been that it remained secret"

11. " Take me I am the drug; Take me I am hallucinogenic"

12. " Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing"

13. " Wars have never hurt anyone except the people who died"

14."Liking money like I like it is nothing less than mysticism. Money is a glory"

                                                                 Avida Dollars

Andre Breton was a main criticizer of Dali`s artworks. He gave Salvador Dali a nickname "Avida Dollars" which was an anagram from Salvador Dali. The anagram means greedy for money, which was kind of a truth about Dali. When Dali moved to the USA, he started his capitalist career and self-promoting. Dali was a favourite character for advertisers. 

                                                          From the article written by Mark Vallen, 2005

                                                            from weheartit.com  

Paintings

Dali painted more than 1500 masterpieces. Definitely its impossible to talk about all of them in a single post. In this post the most famous and interesting paintings will be discussed.

1. Early paintings of Salvador Dali were painted in impressionism style. When Dali`s parents wanted to hire an artist-instructor for their kid, he said that he was an impressionist and no teacher was needed for him. One of my favorite paintings of Dali in impressionism is Boat ( Commercial Sailboat Riding an Anchor in the Bay of Cadaques), which was painted in 1919.

2. Next styles which was a step in Dali`s development as an artist were Dadaism and Cubism. Pablo Picasso was one of the influences on Dali`s formation of his own art!
For example, if we look at Still Life painting, we may think that it was painted by Picasso. No, it was Dali`s work.

3. These styles lead to Salvador`s finding himself as Surrealist. When he was asked what was surrealism, Dali responded that he was Surrealism.

4.The Great Masurbator, 1929
 
Painted in surrealistic style. Here we can see such details as ants, locust, egg, and  creatures. This painting may reflect Dali`s emotions about sex, connected with fear (locust is symbol of fear in his paintings), which were created in his mind by his father.

5. Persistence of Memory, 1931

The main detail here is Dali`s famous melting watch.
The weird creature in the middle of the painting is believed to be Dali.
This painting is a clear representation of Surrealism.
The painting can be viewed through different perspectives:

        1. Dream Theory

As almost all Surrealist were explaining their art as painting from dreams, it can be conducted that melting clock can symbolize the unimportance of time in dreams. In simple words, we don't have sense of time in our dreams.

       2. It is also believed that Melting clock can be Dali`s interpretation or understanding of Einstein's  Theory of Relativity. Time is relative, maybe thats what melting watch meant?

Check out this captivating article to get more info about melting clock:

http://legomenon.com/salvador-dali-persistence-of-memory-melting-clocks-meaning.html

6. Basket of Bread, 1945

There is a smiler Dali`s painting named The Basket of Bread, 1926

Painting made in realism style. Dali wanted to persuade audience that he could become successful even if he painted in Realism.

The painting was literally finished 1 day before the war ended.


7. The Swallow`s Tail, 1983

The last painting of Salvador Dali.

Inspired by catastrophe theory invented by Rene Thom.

It is also believed that this painting was Dali`s hope to escape from death. He was inventing his own theories how to prolong life and clef was involved into his theories.

Fame and Celebrities in Dali`s Life

       Dali wanted fame and money. Dali got it. New York and Paris were asking him to make exhibitions. Dali was a star of his century. He was invited to various TV shows and interviews. He had great parties and was invited to the best dinners with the best people.

Here is one of his interviews:

The other video shows Dali on a very popular TV show What`s My Line, where people have to guess a celebrity by asking questions:

Personally I am impressed by this video. Here we can see that Dali was already very famous for his paintings. In addition to this, it tells us more about Dali from his behaviour. Dali considers himself to be a genius. From his answers he is famous of everything he does. And he actually is. In my opinion, Dali is not famous for his painting, but his paintings are famous because of Dali.

The following video shows one of the parties made by Dali in a surreal style:

Pretty extraordinary, isn't it?

So, the question is what made Dali so popular?

1. His uniqueness. Dali is a very interesting person, and he attracted attention with his behaviour, charisma, and appearance.

2. His talent. Dali was able to project his uniqueness in his art works. He had great ideas. They may seem insane, but they are grabbing attention.

3. Dali was a genius. Yes, he definitely was. He was well educated and smart. He always found new ways to achieve success.

4. Motivation. Dali had goals and he reached them by all means. We wanted to be rich and famous - he became. He made lots of efforts, tried new ways, but he never gave up!

5. And the last one, but very important. For sure right people was Dali`s asset. He got acquainted with many various famous people, who helped him to become successful!

Which celebrities was Dali acquainted with? There are many of them, but I decided to write about the most known by everyone.

1. Lorca. Spanish poet. I have already written about Dali- Lorca relationship. For more information visit this link  http://geniusdali.blogspot.ca/2014/02/little-ashes.html . PS. It is really interesting relationship!

2. Pablo Picasso. Dali was his admirer. When Dali came to Paris and visited Picasso, he said that he would visit Louvre only after the meeting with Picasso. Both artists enjoyed each others works. Picasso even connected Dali and his art dealer.

from weheartit.com

3. Sigmund Freud. As all surrealists, Dali was influenced by Freud and his psychoanalysis theory. Dali met Freud in 1938. Zweig organized this meeting.

4. The same year Dali met Coco Chanel in her house in Raquebrune, where Dali painted a lot of his art works. People believe they had an affair. Anyway they were really close. Some sources also say she was his inspiration for his jewelry collection ( from http://tinyurl.com/koxs785).

                                           Dali and Chanel. From weheartit.com

5. Dali connected Disney by himself.  He offered Disney to work together on a cartoon Destino. When Dali saw the product he was ashamed and he said no one will see it. The project was not finished, however, Dali and Disney were good friends and had something in common : they both loved money and were greedy. In 54 years later, Disney`s nephew decided to finish the project. Here is the final product, made based on Dali`s storyline:

Source: http://mentalfloss.com/article/50074/time-salvador-dali-worked-walt-disney

As far as we can see, without all these people we wouldn't know the one Dali we know now!

Love=>Gala=>Life

      It is impossible to talk about Salvador Dali without mentioning his wife Gala Dali. She is a very interesting person to talk about as well. Gala`s real name was Elena Ivanovna Diakonova. She was a Russian lady from Kazan, from a family of intellectuals. One of her friends in Russia was Marina Tsvetaeva. 

      In 1912 Elena was sent to Switzerland, where she had her tuberculosis cured. There she met her first husband Eluard. They married and had a daughter. However, Gala was not a really good mother. 

In 1929 Gala and her husband visited Salvador Dali. They started to have an affair even though Gala was 10 years older. Gala divorced her husband and moved in with Salvador, but the maintained close relationships with her previous husband. 

     Nevertheless Gala was considered a witch and whore, Dali loved her for the rest of his life. Gala Dali was spitting into faces of people she did not like. She was also a very cruel person. When Dali and Salvador did not have money and they had to live at Lydia Nogeures`s house ( Dali`s old friend), they had a bunny. Dali loved their pet very much. When they were invited to Paris, the couple didn't know what to do with their lovely animal. So one day when Dali came home after painting outside, Gala gave him a soup. When Dali finished his dinner, Gala said it was their favourite bunny in the soup.

      Salvador was encouraging her love and sex affairs with other young artist. She was even buying very expensive gifts for her lovers. For example, she gave aways Dali`s paintings and a million dollar mansion to her lover Jeff Fenholt ( he was a famous rockstar). She was his muse, love and life. Gala was responsible for selling Dali`s paintings, she worked as his agent. Dali and Gala seemed to be a happy family. However, people claimed Dali and Gala were having arguments in public and even fighting at during their last years together. 

     Gala died when she was 87 and was buried in Girona, in the house Dali bought for her. Dali could`t believe Gala has died.  The rest of his life seemed to be a torture. 

     Gala meant a lot in Salvador`s life. She loved him for his being crazy. Once, when Dali wanted to impress Gala he put turd all over his body. Gala liked this behaviour. She adored Dali`s hysterical laugh and all his fads. Dali didn't feel ashamed with Gala. He knew she was his destiny, his life. She had some magical control over him.

Dali`s Life Chronology

I found it much easier for lots of people to read not the plain long text, but facts in the point form. Today I would like to make an experiment and highlight some points about  Dali. What do you think about it? Please leave your feedback after you read this post.

      

(I didn`t include his childhood chronology as I have discussed it in my first post)

1. Before the age of 21 Dali was a spoiled child. His parents were relatively rich and could afford to buy everything for their kid. 

2. When Dali was 16 his mother died from cancer. 

3. At university Dali was pretty shy and not really a very sociable person. However, he claimed himself to be a genius from a very early age. 

4. Salvador Dali attended Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid. There he got acquainted with Lorca and Benuel. 

5. At Academy he experimented with Cubism.

6. In 1926, Dali visited Paris. There he met Pablo Picasso, whom Salvador admired. His following paintings were influenced by this meeting. 

from weheartit.com

7. Dali grows his famous moustache.

8. In 1928, Salvador Dali meets his love Gala (they love will be discussed in details in the next post). 

9. The same year Dali joined surrealist group, where he got to know Andre Breton ( leader in surrealist group).

10. Salvador`s father was against his son`s affair with a notorious woman, First of all, she was 11 years older. Secondly, people said she slept with almost all the artists. Third fact, Gala was considered to be a witch.

11. In 1934, surrealists expelled Dali from the group. However, it didn`t affect Dali`s reputation. He started to work on his own style. Included science into his new paintings.

12. During the World War 2, Dali and his wife Gala were living in USA. Salvador Dali became extremely popular in North America.

13. Dali opened his museum in 1974 in Figeures, Spain.

14. 1982 - Gala dies. Dali could`t believe Gala died. He became scared that he also would die soon. For this reason, Dali started to develop some experiments with his paintings to prolong his life. He also rejected to eat ( he had some theory it was supposed to help him to prolong his life). This lead to problems with health.

15. Great Salvador Dali died in January, 1989. He was buried in his own museum.

Source: http://www.salvadordali.com/biography/

NEXT POST ABOUT SALVADOR DALI AND HIS LOVE GALA! DON`T MISS IT!

Pray for Ukraine

This post has absolutely nothing to do with Salvador Dali. However, it is not less important. I am asking you to read this and share with your friends.

I am a Ukrainian, from the Dnipropetrovsk city ( close to Russia). BUT I AM A UKRAINIAN, NOT A RUSSIAN. The latest news made me cry for hours. I cannot believe this is happening in my dearest country. Please don't ignore this. We are good and kind people with peace and love in our hearts.

I hope you have already heard about riots and cruel government, which takes care only about their billions of dollars. Lifes of citizens mean nothing to them. You-people from developed countries know that your government works for the nation. In Ukraine it was opposite. People were tired. We want a change! We want to live in a safe country. People started peaceful riots. And our government killed over innocent 60 people. They were people who hoped, believed in a better future! These people were heroes and we will never forget about them. We pray for Ukraine. We ask you to support us. 

My poem is dedicated to the situation in Ukraine:

I can’t explain how much I love Ukraine,

The latest news is a tearful pain.

We pray, we fight, we want to die

For freedom… sun in our sky.

We want a change for better future,

We all together, tight with suture.

We live with hope in our hearts,

We`re not the targets in a darts.

Our rulers kill us on the streets,

But never will they kill the beats,

The hearts on Maidan have created.

A better future should be fated!


We also pray for Venezuela. They also have riots for freedom. They also want to make a change in their country. Venezuela, we are with you!!!!! 

Thank you all.

Books about Dali

Initially, I intended to make this blog a chronology of Dali`s life and paintings. However, every week I got to know new interesting facts about Salvador Genius. My dearest friends, knowing my love to Dali, gave me 2 books about him as my birthday gifts. As I expected, they appeared to be unusual.

Today, I would like to tell you about Dali`s Mustache. I strongly recommend it to everyone! You will read it less than in an hour, cause it does`t contain a lot of text.

Well, this book is written by Salvador Dali and Philippe Halshman. This book is dedicated to the most known part of Dali - his moustache in a very unique way. It is a photographic interview. For example :

Both authors worked hard to create this unusual book. Ideas for pictures, questions and answers came from both geniuses. Some of the photos look like they were photoshoped; however, we all know that photoshop did not exist in that period of time. The book reveals the secrets of how the photos were made.  

How do you explain this magic?

Can you imagine it was made without Photoshop? Halshman used an interesting technique: the normal portrait was made.  Dali`s face was covered with New Coccine before being printed. This is a chemical that removes some details in printing.


So, probably, all the most famous weird photos of Dali and his moustache were taken by Halshman. Dali was proud of his moustache. And know it is a part of Dali`s culture.


All the information is taken from "Dali`s Mustache" book written by Salvador Dali&Philippe Halshman.

Movie about Dali

Recently, while making my second post, I watched a movie about Dali - Little Ashes. I was really impressed with finding out some new information about Genius Salvador Dali. I would like to share my emotions and thoughts with you as well as discuss it. Although this movie has rating 6.6 out of 10 on imdb, this movie is really cool for those who are interested in Dali.

If you are interested in watching this movie, do it now and then read the rest of the post. I don`t want to tell you the whole story before you watch it.

Little Ashes reveals the relationship of Dali, Bunuel (a famous filmmaker) and Garcia Lorca (Spanish poet). The film is based on real life. 

Dali arrived to Madrid University of Fine Arts. Situation in Spain was really bad. He was pretty shy as a teenager; however, he always claimed himself to be a genius. There he met Garcia Lorca. They became very good friends....or not just friends. The film shows that Lorca tried to persuade Dali to have sexual relationship with him. During the movie, they just kissed and Dali rejected to have sex with Lorca. Lorca got angry and slept with a girl in front of Dali. The situation in Spain got only worse; for this reason, Dali left Lorca and went to Paris with Bunuel to pursue his career. "Friends" haven`t seen each other for years. One day Bunuel came back to Spain saying that Dali has changed, he is not a shy guy anymore. He is on the peak of fame. Bunuel cannot deal with Salvador anymore. Dali became too arrogant. Lorca continues to fight with the cruel government. Salvador finally invites Lorca to his place. He wants to work together again. He also wants to show his love Gala to a friend. "Friends" finally meet. Dali offers Lorca to go to US together, as he have heard about Lorca`s problems with government. Garcia cannot recognize his old shy Salvador. He knows they cannot work together any more. Lorca comes back to Spain, where he was caught by the police and shot.

Was it all real? Well... Lorca and Dali were not just friends. During his life, Dali didn't want to comment on his relationship with Lorca. However, before his death ( Dali`s), he admitted that Lorca several times tried to have sexual relationship with Dali, but Dali said no. Did Salvador tell the truth? Judging from their letters, Dali and Lorca were not just friends. They had a very intense speeches, which somehow can be a contrary to what Dali actually said. Unfortunately, we cannot know what really happened between them.

The second interesting fact, is that no one knows how Lorca actually died. When he came back to Spain, he was taken to the prison and after that he disappeared. Gossips say he was shot during the shooting. However, his body wash`t found there with the rest of shot people. Spain is still interested in where is the body of the poet and how he died. He was a remarkable and important person for Spanish culture.

Lorca and Dali in the movie Little Ashes. From weheartit.com

Top interesting and weird facts about Dali

Before I tell you more about Dali`s art works, love and career, I would like to share the most captivating facts about Salvador Dali. It will help you to understand better the mysterious and weird life of the artist or genius... Whatever you consider him to be.

1. One day at school Dali fell down the stairs. Everyone was talking about it. For this reason, Dali decided to "fall" down the stairs every day to be in the middle of attention.

2. Dali was scared of women and ants.

3. Dali didn`t sell his artworks. Gala Dali (his wife) was the one who was responsible for selling the pictures.

4. When Dali started to paint Eluard, Eluard was Gala`s husband. When Dali finished the painting, they were divorced and Gala had a love affair with Dali. ( I will tell you more about Dali and Gala in following posts).

5. Dali worked with Disney. (They have made a cartoon together). 

6. Dali was named after his dead brother ( I have already discussed it).

7. Dali created Chupa Chups logo. He didn`t take money for that. He just asked for a box of Chupa Chups a day.

Picture adopted from weheartit.com.

8. Some people gossip Dali`s wife Gala was a witch. 

9. Dali was obsessed with Hitler as a woman. Yeah...I am pretty serious. He has a painting dedicated to it The Enigma of Hitler, (1939).

10. Gala was eleven years older than Dali.

11. The difference between a person with schizophrenia and Dali is that Dali admitted he had schizophrenia.

12. Dali worked with Christian Dior to create a costume for 2045 year.

13. Dali used to come to art exhibitions in a diving suit.

14. Crater on Mercury was named after Dali.

15. Dali invented plastic coach which takes a comfortable form for a person who sits there.

16. Dali created fake nails with mirrors, so that ladies could check their look. (What a genius!)

17. His behaviour in public was not always accepted by society.

18. There is a movie about Salvador Dali Little Ashes.

19. I am addicted to Dali.

Thank you so much for your attention! I hope you liked this post.

Facts were taken from http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_some_interesting_facts_about_Salvador_Dali?#slide=1

http://www.newstatesman.com/cultural-capital/2012/11/five-things-you-didnt-know-about-salvador-dali-0

http://primaryfacts.com/841/10-salvador-dali-facts/

http://www.life123.com/arts-culture/artists/salvador-dali/facts-on-salvador-dali.shtml

and my personal knowledge I learned from museum.

WHO IS SALVADOR DALI? HOW DID HIS STORY BEGIN?

Maybe you have already heard a lot about Dali. Maybe you don`t care. Maybe you have no clue who is Dali. However, he is worth your attention. Let me prove it. When I visited Dali`s museum in Spain, I had an awesome guide, who told us a lot about this artist. I have never heard so many interesting stories about a single person. I would like to share in this first post some facts I was told there. Dali is basically a Spanish artist, who was a clear representative of surrealism. Dali is mostly known for his famous "melting clock" in the most famous painting Persistence of Memory, which I will discuss in the other post. Dali was a part of Spanish culture. Catalonian atmosphere formed Dali`s character and vision of the world. 

 His family also affected  his perception. He had an older brother whose name was also Salvador (Our famous Salvador Dali was named after his brother). However, an older child died in the young age. This tragedy lead to a weird situation in the family: Salvador`s parents sometimes talked to him as if he was his older brother. 

In addition to this, Salvador`s dad blamed himself in the child`s death. He thought his affair with a prostitute lead to syphilis. And a child died because of this disease. For this reason, Salvador`s dad was showing him freightening pictures of people with syphilis. Once he switched on the light in Salvador`s room in the middle of the night and put lots of ugly photos on the floor. The child was shocked. This trauma made Dali scared of women. The only two women he depicted were his younger sister and his first and the only love Gala. This fear was so strong that it was manifested in diverse life situations. For instance, when Dali visited Moulin Rouge (he was famous by that time), directors decided to make a surprise for their special guest at the end of the show. The dancers were supposed to end the show on Dali`s laps. It was a mistake. When it happened, Dali started to scream, pushed the girls and started to creep on the floor to the exit. Kind of weird, yeah?  And this is only the beginning of the story;)

Pictures were taken from http://weheartit.com. Information was taken from the guide`s stories in Dali`s museum.