SmartShanghai | The Persistence of Dali

The Persistence of Dali

By Sarah Hammer, Aug 3rd, 2009 | In Art

Powerless to the lure of high profile and vital cultural events, we filed in with the crowds at the Shanghai Art Museum this afternoon to see the big time Salvadore Dali circus, deftly entitled "Salvadore Dali in Shanghai". It was free! (I think it's free on Mondays and something like 30rmb for the rest of the week.)

A Stratton Foundation / Dali Universe / Uwantart Gallery joint, "Salvadore Dali in Shanghai" features the largest collection of Dali monumental and museum sculptures in the world, Dali-inspired furniture (the famous Mae West Lips couch), an original oil painting "Spellbound", and a massive collection of Dali illustrations and watercolors. One of its main selling points of the exhibition is its sheer size -- all the promotional material states an excess of 350 pieces -- but the primary works on show are Dali's sculptures and illustrations (later period stuff).

The exhibition begins outside the museum space with your photo ops with the monumental structures, "The Persistence of Memory", "Triumphant Elephant", and "Surrealist Piano". Inside the Shanghai Art Museum you are greeted with a giant representation of the Spanish Master doing what he did best: looking crazy. There's a few blow-up shots of Dali dressed insanely and doing that wide-eyed, bizarre genius expression, and after a few moments spent in reverence to a heightened degree of charlatanism that didn't end with the life of the artist, you're on to the exhibition itself.

It's two grand halls with the Master's sculptures taking up the floor space and an abundance of his illustrative works and studies lining the walls. Represented amply is the Dali iconography from which the subject material of college dorm posters flows freely: space elephants, melting clocks, cabinet anthropomophiques, and so on. Despite the sheer pervasiveness and present-day commonness of the imagery itself, to see the museum sculptures in the flesh is still quite a potent experience. Swirling smooth lines, intricate details, shimmering absurdity.

The watercolors and illustrations, however, were the highpoint of the exhibition for me. Lining the walls are Dali's illustrations of famous literary works of smut including Masoch's Venus in Furs, Boccaccio's The Decameron, and, of course, the smuttiest book of all, the Old Testament. Ovid is represented as well, as is Freud, Cervantes, and Shakespeare. More interesting than the rock star / anarchic genius Dali himself (in my humble opinion, of course) is him reading the exalted works of the western canon and filtering them through his trademarked and copywrited dementia.

The exhibition is a huge deal and when we went it was packed. We had to crane our necks around other patrons to get a look at the accompanying documentation, and filing through the illustrations was a bit like shopping for DVDs in a cramped DVD store on Sunday night. If you'd like to spend some time with the man and the myth, it's probably best to wait a week or two, or go during an off-peak hour.

Here's a great link to Dali's sculpture online, if you'd like to play along at home.