Salvador Dali- Culture and Context

Overview of the book:

The title is Dali it’s an art in focus book.

It’s written by Frank Weyers

Published in 2005.

 

Book itself.

Small- easy to carry around.

Not many pages for a non reader like me works well.

Information is relevant and interesting on each page.

I really liked how it touched on everything about Salvador Dali’s life. In my talk I just wanted to talk about some of the parts I thought were really interesting and important with reading this book.

 

=Salvador Dali’s life and work are linked. Many Events in his life produced an immediate result in his work and numerous pictures can only be deciphered with the help of knowing parts of Dali’s life.

 

Quick Facts about the Artist-

Full Name-Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dali

Homeland- Catalan province in Spain, which is a subject that recurs in his early works.

At a young age he was taught fundamentals of drawing and composition. He tried his hand at Impressionist style. (Impressionist techniques-

 

Dali developed individual terminology signs and symbols:

-decaying donkey or ants devouring a corpse which isn’t even close to the number of signs in Dali’s paintings.

 

Career-

At the age of only 14, had first exhibition at the Municipal theatre in Figueres where Dali was born.

Student years- Dali liked to paint objects from different angles and was interested in Impressionism. (which I can relate to now with him trying to figure out his style and testing out the different ones out there to find his own)

 

Un Chien Andalou-

was the film that Luis Bunuel and Dali wrote the screen play for. This work occupies an important position in film history with the medium of the design principles. The famous scene where there is a razor sliced an eye.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsPlJTVzP3g

First Surrealist film with the scenes following no logistic, which was the underlying rule to the film. The film was shown in a private screening with surrealists and different types of people. It was a turning point in surrealist history. 

 

Surrealism-

“critical paranoia” the method where you split your vision in two directions.You have the creative dream state – to have a waking dream. This artistic process was his own personal style which made him world famous.

 

“Surreal objects with symbolic functions”- Marcel Duchamp had already shown the way. (with his bicycle wheels and bottle rack on stands and calling them art) But Surreal objects- was the traditional concept of sculpture without any rules. Dali'

 

Vision of war-

The Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936- that Dali produced a series of painting approaching the war and in other works there is references to political situations. The best paintings are the picture puzzles with left power to the imagination.

 

In Exile-

Dali’s painting had the maturity and assurance that gained him recognition both from Europe and the U.S.A. He was Exiled (removed that was enforced for 8 years to America.) Dali, wrote number of books; illustrations; fashion and store window decorations. Avida Dollars an anagram of Dali’s name which he commercial his work at this time – with doing jewellery etc.

 Exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1941- by Miro and Dali. 

Nuclear Mysticism-

At this time Dali’s focus’s on two ideas-

The scientific phenomena and atomic theory and came up with the concept of nuclear or atomic painting. With also exploring his religious roots more into Catholicism.

 (Catholicism= Catholic believes)

Fascinated by matter being made up of tiny particles he began to dissolve shapes of his motifs. He wanted to show the part visible and bring his work into line with science view.

 

 

Pictures and my opinions -

Poetry of America-

Some of Dali’s pictures show the problems and myths of American society. The poetry of America has been a condemnation of the racism of whites towards the black population. He is surpose to be a footballer who gives birth to a new man who balances an egg as a symbol of new order.

 

Melancholy Atomic and Uranium Idyll-

Due to the shock of the Atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Producing this picture the motifs from the Surrealist period and in the foreground.

Soft watch being eaten by ants. Figure of a small boy. Also added in you can see the American side that has been added into the painting with baseball players pocket watches. Etc.

Louise Saxton-

Louise Saxton has a major interest in culture; there is always an element that is from a different culture that is really intriguing. Louise did an under grad in print making where she showed us charcoal on gessoed paper the images where around images from women’s weekly in the 60’s. She only kept the clothing of the textiles of theses because of the room they were taking at her home. Which I really liked seeing it was more traditional style drawing.

 

The people that Louise drew inspiration from was Marcel Duchamp; Meret Oppenheim; Helen Fuller; Andy Warhol; Elizabeth Gower are just some of the people that would make you understand the people behind her work. The research of theses people and how powerful and personal some of there art is makes you understand more where Louise draws from culture. 

2001-Enevelop which was  an 500 piece installation, at Linden, St Kilda Center. It was in response that was inspired by “The Rüstem  Pasha Mosque” where she used recycled business envelopes embossel with lace onto rag paper.  Islamic blue and white tiling secret from Japanese clothing lining. The envelops all have different unique patterns on them. 

2004 ArtPlay-, which is a children’s, art space where artists come in and teacher children something about their practice. She taught the children the skill of embossing, which was the technique behind her envelope installation. The children got a template that they cut out and used recycle envelopes then embossed and laced onto rag paper. They stuck them on the wall and you can see with the photo that Louise brought in that they were all different even with them using the same template. 

 

 

Louise went to Malaysia for a month where she did a small journal with 70 drawings that were around the studio she was staying at. In 2007 Tim Craker and her did an exhibition that was called dot-net-dot-my. They both shared an interest in Malaysia’s culture and both drawing on different elements for the exhibition-10 large scaled endanger specimen and tradition embroidery and lace silk prints. Related to the cross culture- Starflower where the Islamic star is used for the endanger flower.

 

I liked seeing the different ideas and where they came from and how different styles worked together in an idea. 

Matt Gardiner

Matt Gardiner has taken Origami to a place where Origami has never been before. 

Oribotics embraces folding and technology all in one. It shows technology being pushed to a completely different level with a creative idea.

 

Matt finished his Bachelor of Fine Art in Photography in 1997, he managed to get a job at Drome Pty Ltd where Peter Hennessey and Patricia Piccinini taught him. Which supported his art practise; it was where he saw projects come together and getting into animation. Where he worked with Flash and came up with his idea of interactive origami.

 

 Airstrip is a company that is designed on the principle of the code to design and pushing the boundaries of new media. It’s the constant evolving and developing innovative way to teach and inspire young up coming artists. My Trinh Ha and the Gardiner’s are behind this company and the ideas which they push the boundaries in new media arts.

 

His earlier works where around paper folding and making paper move. Increasing Origami was to promote origami to people and promoting the artform into a newer market. Which was showed in the Next Wave festival 2002,it was a large scale triceratops skeleton which was designed using Origami to make.

 

Best key I found that Matt was always thinking, that he was up for trying new ways and new things which I found interesting to see where this took his idea. 

He bought a robot lego kit that gave him the idea to make a robot that looks like origami but is interactive as well.  Where he came up with a design of Orbotics, you touch a button and that flower would move and do something. It would change colour on the mood of the flower blossom that was made out of paper. Which was interactive to the people around.  I found this fascinating because I never seen anything like it before in my life. Actual paper moving around which changing colour by lights and moving in and out like a flower does.

 

Matt spent three months in Tokyo thinking about his idea and improving it. He had ideas such as life and forms like god beings and how the lights and blossom could be more interactive. So he developed Oribotics more and so that when you send an sms a text to a certain blossom it will change and interact with the lights. The blossoms would open with bright lights and when closing go darker like they where breaking in the air. The blossoms were all being animated by information that related to weather information from cities. The projection of the sms instructions would be on a screen and there was an audio which would tell people what to do. Shows people how to speak to the Oribot. There was a performance of drums and live music to go with what was happening with the bots. The changes that were made when it was warm the blossom would move slowly, and when it was cold it would move more quickly and the lights would change with the texts that were being sent to each blossom.

ABC did a story on his Oribots interviewing the young artist in 2005 about his creation.

 

Matt Gardiner has proven by linking industry and design that ideas can come alive and be taken further then anyone could taken a concept to the next level. With hope and belief behind the project makes it so much easy to work and try new ideas. And it just shows where keeping an open mind will take you.