Salvador Dali - man of science

Last week I was fortunate to explore the artistic side of Melbourne. Every winter, the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV) would bring in a spectacular exhibition of world renowned artists called the Melbourne Winter Masterpieces. The Winter Masterpieces must have been really successful as NGV has been able to attract art fanatics and art enthusiasts to the count of 1 million visitors each time. This year featuring NGV's sixth exhibition is 200 works of Salvador Dali called Salvador Dali: Liquid Desire.

I am not an art fanatic, but I find myself interested in famous people's biographies, what drives them to create such creative work in any kind of field. Dali is a surrealist which doesnt mean anything to me before I came across Dali's work. Even after marveling at Dali's work at the NGV, I still find it hard to define surrealism. Perhaps I can only say surrealism is about surprising and shocking the people that view their work. Probably the art is a manifestation of the artist's thoughts and dreams. I know how weird my dreams can be.

I admire Dali because he was a man of many talents, he understands how to work his popularity. His art spans across many mediums - on canvas, photography, sculptures, mechanics, tv, jewellery. As he lived into his old age and being a voracious reader, he was on the forefront of new thinking and new sciences. He used what he reads in his work so his work shows influence from Freud's theories, genetics, history, geometry, mathematics, nuclear-physics, optical science and later in life, religion - boy, you will see this guy's thinking was so warped to produce such work, perhaps that's why he is such a genius. He is a marketing genius too, a master of self-promotion, way before Andy Warhol. His work became commercial when he started producing work like Air India's ashtray (elephant, swan, emerald snake ashtray), stage set for ballets, Destino with Disney Productions and appeared in Times Magazine.

Here I have attached one of his finest work in jewellery, the Royal Heart which was sculptured using gold, diamonds and rubies, believed to be inspired by Queen Elizabeth II's coronation. He placed a mechanical device to make the heart beat. Unfortunately they didnt bring in the real thing at the exhibition, I managed to view the video but his other jewellery pieces were exquisite, all encased in a red velvet room in NGV. If you look closely at the video, the rubies seemed to take a life of its own.



There were many pieces of his work that captured me but here are a few of them that I really like.

Another piece of Dali's jewellery - The Eye & time.


He was fascinated with ants, the women's had ants running on her forehead. The first sculpture had a real fresh baguette but the dog snatched it immediately so they had to replace with a fake one.


This era was when he was interested in physics and how things are made of molecules.


His photographs were most interesting from my perspective. In this photo, he really got his assistants to throw the cats, water while he jumped up in the air. He had to take about 70 takes to get this right. Before the time of CG!!


One of his more famous work - The Persistence Memory. He was crazy about melting watches or time.


This was one of his last masterpieces, when he was into religion. The Pope had called for a ecumenical council.