Salvador Dali's
Dream of Venus, one of the
earliest full-scale art installation pieces, raised some eyebrows at the 1939 World's Fair. Visitors entered beneath the spread legs of a woman in high heels to find a grotto featuing Venus,
a topless sleeping actress on a red satin bed surrounded by lobsters and champagne bottles. Her dream, visible through the nearby window, included
cavorting (again topless) mermaids flapping their rubber fins and playing a woman-shaped piano. Murry Korman
took many iconic photos of the spectacle. What few knew was that Dali was engaged in
a battle of creative crontol with his sponsor, a rubber tycoon and creator of rubber mermaid tails among other things. Dali would appear on site while the exhibition was being created and
snip the tails off of the mermaids (pdf). While he was not around for the opening of his creation, he purportedly hired a plane to drop printed leaflets over New York: "
The Declaration of the Independence of the Imagination and the Rights of Man to his Own Madness," a protest against efforts to interfere with his vision.
[some links NSFW, via]
posted by jessamyn
on Nov 5, 2011 -
27 comments
in 1976, surrealist icon Salvador Dali starred and directed in the fake documentary/travelogue Impressions de la haute Mongolie - Impressions of Upper Mongolia - about his quest to find a rare hallucinogenic mushroom. It was intended as a tribute to the late
Raymond Roussel. It is available on Youtube in 5 parts.
1 -
2 -
3 -
4 -
5 (70 min)
posted by The Whelk
on Sep 3, 2011 -
25 comments
Biome Terrain Mod is a modification for Minecraft that allows tweaking the world generation parameters for the regions in the game. The Minecraft Forums are running
a contest to find cool generation settings. Some of the results are quite striking....
[more inside]
posted by JHarris
on Dec 17, 2010 -
94 comments
At the 1938 Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme in Paris.
each of fifteen artists were given a dressmaker's mannequin as their canvas and encouraged to transform the figure in any way they desired.
The artists included (in order of appearance in this video) Salvador Dalí, Óscar Dominguez, Marcel Duchamp, Léo Malet, André Masson, Joan Miró, Wolfgang Paalen, Kurt Seligmann, Yves Tanguy, Marcel Jean, Max Ernst, Espinoza, Maurice Henry, Sonia Mossé, and Man Ray. Here are
some stills.
posted by adamvasco
on Aug 12, 2010 -
3 comments
Minotaure published only 12 issues between 1933 and 1939.
The covers were by some of the leading artists of the
day century. (
via)
posted by adamvasco
on Aug 9, 2010 -
14 comments
Salvador Dali and
Walt Disney collaborated in 1946 on the short animation Destino. Disney had concerns about some of the graphics and it was never released. Lost for 56 years, it was restored in 2003 and has not yet been released for wholesale distribution. Tommorrow is your last chance to see
it at the
Dali and Film exhibit at the Tate Gallery.
Previously.
posted by Xurando
on Sep 8, 2007 -
26 comments
Way Lay is the homepage of cartoonist Carol Lay, creator of the strip Story Minute. In addition to being one of the few places one can
view the strip without going through Salon's obnoxious free pass system. The site has the best
autobiography I've seen for an artist site and images of earlier
bizarre parodies of Salvador Dali and the Shroud of Turin.
posted by KirkJobSluder
on Apr 24, 2003 -
7 comments
Torture by Art. 'Bauhaus artists such as Kandinsky, Klee and Itten, as well as the surrealist film-maker Luis Bunuel and his friend Salvador Dali, were said to be the inspiration behind a series of secret cells and torture centres built in Barcelona and elsewhere '.
Maybe there is a future for those Turner Prize winners after all.
posted by rolo
on Jan 28, 2003 -
26 comments
