Pyrenees Journal II: Spellbound

photograph by Hallie Cohen

What was more brilliant Alfred Hitchcock choosing to use Salvador Dali to create the dream sequences in Spellbound or Dali’s creation of these iconic sequences himself? The sequences if you recall are exemplifications of surrealist technique which is not surprising since the very structure of surrealism with its interests in humor, aggression and sexuality derive from the most primal elements of all dream life. And yes the dream in the movie helped to solve the crime. If you visit the Dali Theater-Museum in Figueres you will see amongst other things a citation of Dali’s book about Millet’s  “The Angelus." The three figures in Millet’s painting a peasant, his wife and child receive shall we say an unconventional interpretation. They’re father and daughter praying for absolution from the sin of incest. Dali was a believer in extreme subjectivity and he could be deemed a proto-deconstructivist to the extent that he believed that everybody will have their own interpretations of art and reality. He called his theory the "paranoiac critical method." Derrida was a Dali clone it turns out. For example, a nude of his beloved wife Gala hangs, in the central atrium of the museum You see the real Gala in his museum, but it’s like a hologram. If you attempt to photograph it an image of Abraham Lincoln appears. In one sense it’s just recycled impressionism. But the effect is like that produced by double and triple entendres in literature. Dali, as many of the works in the Theatre-Museum reveal, was a master of illusion. He was both the patient and doctor in a life long self-analysis and in fact tried (unsuccessfully) to interest Freud in his work. His self-portrait (which faces a famous portrait he did of Picasso) shows a face with hanging skin interspersed with crutches. Underneath that is a piece of bacon and a fly. perhaps one of the flies who escaped from “The Persistence of Memory”--where time literally flies. Perhaps Dali was saying he was as fragile and easily consumed as a piece of bacon. But memory is the constant   Dali might have resisted contemporary neuroscientific investigations into the reconsolidation of memory.  From the outside the museum looks like Disney World and in fact Dali’s 7 minute animation created with Disney is on exhibit too (Dali also shared an interest in cryogenics with Walt Disney). There are huge eggs on the roof, reflecting Dali’s obsession with birth, funeral bread exemplifying his fear of death and female Oscar statues which attest to his fascination with transexuality. Is it a monument like the museum Picasso created for himself in Barcelona or a playground? But that is the point. He was a clown who famously sported Velasquez’s moustache. His Velasquez sculpture with Las Meninas emblazoned on the artist’s forehead appears in another gallery and it’s interesting to note when you visit the Picasso museum in Barcelona that there’s an youthful copy of Velasquez’s portrait of Phillip IV with the famed Dali moustache or is it the other way around? And wouldn’t that be Dali’s point?

Paris Journal III: Tromp L'Oeil

Photograph: Hallie Cohen

Tromp L’oeil: Imitations, Pastiches et Autre Illusions at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs begins with the following inscription from Cocteau’s Les Parents Terribles, “Combien d’hommes profondement distraits penetrereent dans trompe l’oiel et ne son pas revenues” (“how many deeply absent-minded men fall into tromp l’oil and don’t return”). Is that like one of those warnings about explicitly subject matter that you find at the entrance to certain shows? One of the early pieces in the exhibit is "Armoire Surrealist" (l941) whose doors literally open up into a vision of cloud filled skies.  “Un matiere peut en cache en autre” (a material with which one can capture another) is one of the subcategories with the example of “Plat Faux Bois” by Granjean Jourdain (l955) as an early example. "Le Masque d’homme barbu dit Agamemenon” is an example of the use of the use of tromp l’oeil in imitating gold. Tromp l’oeil obviously occupies a long and venerable place in art history, particularly in so far as perspective is concerned. But as a decorative technique it’s a kind of hands on surrealism, a practical application of surrealist technique. Hence, you have a Legumier  made up of tromp l’oeil asparagus which house the real thing and then an even more enchanting plate of snakes. Snakes might seem more like something in the diet of an Andre Breton or Salvador Dali. Remember Un Chien Andalou with its violent and improbably associations? But they're popular in China where this unique piece of dinnerware would undoubtedly find a huge following. 

Paris Journal I: La Renaissance et le reve

How unoriginal surrealism was! It stole all its ideas from dreams and from earlier works of art. Dali et al were great promoters and the impact of the Surrealists is such that when you are walking through “La Renaissance et le Reve,” the exhibit now running at the Musee du Luxembourg, you keep thinking how that the works of Bosch, El Greco, Bronzino, Durer amongst others exhibited epitomize twentieth century surrealism. One of the loveliest things about the show are its locutions. The same wine may be served in different bottles, but there are nuances that can’t readily be translated. Thus the curators ask “comment representer ce que reve un revuer?” "le reveur peut-il entrer en contact avec le devin?” The show also points to the fact that the image of the sleeping woman is associated with dreaming using Ghilandaio’s "Allegory of the Night,” depicting a naked woman, an hourglass, a lamp being lit and masks to make its point. Then there are the classifications of the show: “Visions de l’au-dela” (Visions of the Beyond), “La vacance de l'ame” (Journey of the Soul), “La Vie est un reve” (footnoting Calderon’s 17th century classic Life is a Dream). In the Visions de l’au-dela category you have El Greco’s “La Reve du Phillip II,” which is almost hieroglyphic in its complexity. But there are lots of royal and biblical dreams including Garofalo’s “Apparition de Sainte Pierre et Sainte Paul a l’emperor Constantine" and dreams of Jacob by Ludovic Cardi’s  and Giorgio Vasari. No exhibit of Renaissance dreaming would be replete without Bosch’s visions of apocalypse or at least one Durer dream (“The Dream of the Doctor “) and the current show even includes a book, Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: The Strife of Love in a Dream. Guess what? You can find this one on Amazon!