I Almost...Almost...Want My Moustache Back...
It was time for some culturin'...

I've recently completed an editing session on the two short books I wrote earlier this year in order to ready them for a trip to the bosom of our government's Library of Congress.

If only I was as well traveled of late as my work will be. Only postage is far cheaper than travel and lodging...oh, and food...and all that other stuff.

In any event, I've nearly managed to pull together my ideas for a new book, and am preparing myself to start.

On the other hand, I’ve also recently completed a series of painted portraits that will soon be on display. So far, they’ve been a hit with those I’ve shared them with, and I may have snagged a commission out of it. Now on the cusp of a new literary adventure, I’ve been getting pushed back toward painting again. I’m a touch torn on which to pursue…

One of the influences toward the artistic was a show I went to the other day.

In the 7.5 years that I have occupied Los Angeles, I had yet to make it to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. It took only slightly less time and a visitor from out of town to make it to the Getty Center. This coming from a guy who spent at least one day each month at the Detroit Institute of Arts for several years. In any event, I had actually talked myself out of going on Thursday morning, when another friend asked me if I wanted to go that afternoon. Oh Serendipity…you slippery b!tch…

The show we attended was for one Salvador Dalí, the guy who André Breton wanted to eject from the surrealists but who came to personify it in the public’s eye.

Over the years, I’d developed somewhat mixed feelings about Dalí’s work, but I came to realize that it wasn’t Dalí himself that I had the problem with. Haha…it was marketing. Much like Escher, Dalí was one of those guys that got spewed all over T-shirts, mousepads, oven mitts, and stack after stack of badly reproduced coffee table books.

Granted, I’m not sure I ever saw any Dalí merch that outdid that ridiculous blow-up version of Munch’s The Scream.

Anyhow, it had diluted what I thought about Dalí’s body of work over time and with much repetition. This show, however, managed to retract many of those feelings. The fact of the matter is that all those reproductions (like with most painters) fail to capture the stunning quality of the work when you are standing in front of it.

I’ve never been a huge fan of overly colorful work. That’s just a personal thing. But Dalí captured a vibrant and electric palate that even the whimsically nightmarish quality of his subjects couldn’t render garish. The show gathered together an impressive collection of his work from museum’s around the world as well as a surprising amount of work from private collections.

Most interestingly though, it showed me how much work for film Dalí had attempted. I had seen the Bunuel films, of course, but this showed an aborted project with Fritz Lang and further sequences that were unfilmed or cut from Hitchock’s Spellbound. Even more shocking was the array of work he had completed for an animated collaboration with Walt Disney. However, what captured my eye and heart the most was an attempted collaboration with my beloved Marx Brothers. (There was an illustration of Groucho as Shiva that I would have risked imprisonment to abscond with.)

It was much of this work that I was most thankful to see as I imagine much of it has spent a fair amount of time sealed away in archives, and is rarely ever viewed by the public.

Funny enough, reading some of the exposition on the walls about the pieces and listening to some of the crowd, I was reminded of Dalí’s penchant for being spurned by some of the art world for his right wing politics and his elitism. The final marker on the way out was a quote from Andy Warhol on Dalí whose company Andy enjoyed as he felt that being with Dalí was like being with a “true artist” but that Salvador would never be caught dead in a loft. This gave me a good chuckle thinking about how many I’ve known who’ve put more effort into living up to a stereotype of an “artist” or “musician” or “poet”, etc. rather than putting the same effort into the work they did.

I won’t comment on the elitism…I already catch enough flack for that.

Which brings me back around the merchandise.

I’m sure Dalí would’ve been more than fine with it. In fact, he did some work and even appeared in several ads in his time. I always remember a passage (enough to paraphrase it) from the photo-essay “Dalí’s Moustache” when they ask him why he loves painting, and he replies “For the love of Art” but the photo on the opposite page shows him having tooled his moustache into an ‘s’ with two paintbrushes crossing it.

$.

It’s still something artist’s are expected to spurn as a distraction from the “truth” of their medium (especially the image conscious above.). But I still find that like most things in life, art too is driven by it.

After all, it’s not for nothing that the name ‘Medici’ is so often coupled with all them lovely Renaissance artists.

(Oh and for the record...haha...if you thought the Mona Lisa was small...you should see the Persistence of Memory...)

Cheers.