By Louis Charbonneau
2 hours, 32 minutes ago
Bunuel
The sequence opens the 16-minute film "Un chien andalou"
(An Andalusian Dog), which is one several of films running in
an infinite loop at a new exhibition called "Dali: Painting and
Film" at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMa) in New York City.
Based on the reactions of a crowd of viewers on Sunday, the
scene has not lost its ability to make audiences shudder.
The exhibit, which can be see at MoMa through September 15,
is a fascinating collection that brings together some of Dali's
best-known works, usually scattered across museums and private
collections around the world, under a single roof.
What is unique about the exhibition is its emphasis on the
central role that the new medium of the motion picture played
in the aesthetic vision of a young Dali, born in 1904.
"Dali homed in on cinema's seemingly contradictory ability
to combine the real and the surreal, the actual and the
imaginary, the objective and the imaginative, the prosaic and
the poetic," said MoMa drawings curator Jodi Hauptman.
"Whether still or moving, painted or shot, Dali's works are
meant to wholly intoxicate their viewers, offering an
experience provoked by an image but played out in the mind."
Despite his avant-gardism, Dali had nothing against
mainstream Hollywood. He worked with Alfred Hitchcock on a
dream sequence for the 1945 film "Spellbound" and with the Marx
Brothers.
Another film playing at MoMa is an animated short Dali
worked on in the 1940s with Walt Disney, a psychedelic poem
about Chronos, the Greek god of time, and his love for a mortal
woman. It was not finished until 2003, long after Dali died.
Dali himself was aware of the importance of film for his
unique brand of surrealism, which encouraged viewers to see
their world differently by stripping objects of their everyday
significance, distorting and juxtaposing them with others.
"I believe I've intoxicated them suitably and hope that the
possibilities for Surrealism here will become a reality."
(Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)
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