Dali Comes Home to MoMA

Dali Comes Home to MoMA

A crowd of onlookers gathers feverishly around a softly illuminated painting. A small plaque mounted on the wall reads, “The Persistence of Memory.”

“It’s the one with the clocks!” proclaims a jubilant young boy. “The one where they’re melting!”

“I’ve seen this before, I know I have,” utters a feeble elderly woman who cocks her head sideways in a most inquisitive manner.

Salvador Dali’s work has become somewhat ubiquitous in a modern world full of people thirsty for innovation and hungry for creativity. A seminal artist in every sense of the word, Dali strove to free the mind from the mundane chains of conventionality by becoming a pioneer in the field of an artistic movement known as Surrealism. The Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan will be running an exhibition dedicated to Dali from June 29^th to September 15^th, showcasing more than 130 of the artist’s more famous pieces alongside some of his lesser known works.

Throngs and throngs of culture hungry New Yorkers feverishly work their way up to the museum’s sixth floor. Upon entering the exhibition, they are greeted by a grand wall with a short biography of the artist’s life and a brief history of the artistic movement that is synonymous with his name.

“Members of the Surrealist movement sought to undermine conscious thought and provoke and liberate desire,” it proclaims, beckoning the crowds that have clogged up the entranceway as they stop to embrace the words. Many stare inquisitively; some (like the aforementioned little boy) are too young to understand its deepness and complexity.

Upon entering the softly lit main gallery and seeing some of Dali’s most famous work gloriously arranged on display, one immediately realizes that art has no age restrictions. The intricately and brilliantly juxtaposed vibrant colors seem to dance off of the canvas.

As one might expect, the largest crowds gathered gleefully around some of the artist’s more celebrated paintings. Shades of Night Descending is an exquisite piece that seeks to combine the bitterness of solitude with the gripping enigma of the shadowy figure. His creative genius shines through his art. Autumnal Cannibalism is as provocative as it is compelling. It, like many of Dali’s pieces, seeks to warp the mind of the viewer, to somehow evoke a compelling (and sometimes dormant) sense of creativity in each and every onlooker.

The primary focus of the exhibition, however, is Dali’s contribution to cinema. Throughout his illustrious career as an artist, Dali turned to the medium of motion pictures in order to unleash his creativity. Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog) is one of Dali’s more famous cinematic collaborations featured in the exhibition, which includes a rather grotesque scene involving a woman’s eye being graphically slashed open. L’Age d’Or (The Golden Age), runs in a loop and is projected onto the walls of the gallery. It is considered by many to be one of cinema’s most influential Surrealist films.

Dali’s role in the animation of Walt Disney’s Destino is also featured quite prominently in one section of the gallery. By analyzing hand drawn sketches of different individual scenes, onlookers are able to delve into the intricate creative processes of Dali’s mind. More than nineteen years after his death, the sketches provide a certain humanizing touch to a man who vied so passionately to break the proverbial mold of conformity in art.

Dali was one of the most influential and talented artists of the twentieth century. A pioneer of Surrealism, he sought to obliterate the line between fiction and reality, between conventionality and creativity. The Salvador Dali exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art is one that assuredly should not be missed. With the date of its conclusion slowly creeping near, accommodate your desires and see it before it’s too late.