There were so many things in Prague that I had no time to mention, when I made my first post about this wonderful city in eastern Europe. One thing that crossed my mind this morning as I finally had time to sit down and do a post before class was my visit to the Salvador Dali exhibition. I guess you could say this was my first Dali "experience" because I had just recently been introduced to him in my art history class. Known as one of the original surrealism artists (and a madman, according to my teacher) I knew that I had to explore the Dali world (crazy genius is quite intriguing to me). The exhibition was a mixture of photos taken by Vaclav Chocola along with paintings and sculptures created by Dali himself.
(Dali with model Amanda Lear)
Although I wasn't allowed to take photos, I was able to snag the first photograph of this post which was a series of "Dali at work" photographs. In addition to photographs of Dali at work or Dali at home, there were also a multitude of photographs of Dali and Amanda Lear (seen above) a very popular, transgender model of the 60's.
After moving through the first room full of photos, I made my way into the exhibit where Dali paintings and sculptures were on display. Known for his slightly bizarre paintings like "Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bumble bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening" (seen below), I allowed my mind to wander into the thoughts of Dali.
The interrprutation of this painting is quite intricate and full of Freudian influence, as Sigmund Freud and Salvador Dali were friends. Dali said this painting was created "to express for the first time in images Freud's discovery of the typical dream with a lengthy narrative, the consequence of the instantaneousness of a chance event which causes the sleeper to wake up. Thus, as a bar might fall on the neck of a sleeping person, causing them to wake up and for a long dream to end with the guillotine blade falling on them, the noise of the bee here provokes the sensation of the sting which will awaken Gala [his wife]." [
source]
Even though I find the Dali style and Dali the man to be slightly strange , I acknowledge his immense creativity and I feel somewhat like how he felt in his manifesto entitled "declaration of the independence of the imagination and the rights of man to his own madness", to each it's own.
What do you think? Too much?
bisous,
Jennifer Pauline
My original plan was to head over to Jeu de Paume and hopefully find some remnants of the Richard Avedon exhibit that I missed back in September, but when I arrived, their doors were closed and in true parisian spirit, I walked through the Tuilerie gardens to the other museum I've been waiting to see, L'Orangerie. This, I must add is why I love Paris, you can wake up one day and go say hello to Demarchelier, Monet or Avedon and you can even head over to the Picasso mueseum to see many of his works and if you're really feeling artsy you can take the 1 metro to the Louvre and see the famous Mona Lisa painting.
The water lillies are actually a series of about 250 oil paintings by Claude Monet, which depicted the garden from his house in Giverny. The Orangerie houses 8 of these amazing paintings, while the rest are scattered all around the world.
When I attended fashion week back in October, one of the presenting designers Akris, was inspired by the water lillies for some of the pieces in his collection. See the video below, I love it, and Chanel Iman working her dress :)
