Posts Tagged ‘Dali’
“The only difference between me and a madman is I’m not mad”*…
Dali sketching Harpo as he plays a harp with barbed wire for strings and spoons, knives, and forks glued to its frame– a gift from Dali.
Salvador Dali loved the Marx Brothers. He loved their madcap, anarchic comedy. In particular Dali loved Harpo Marx—the blonde corkscrew-haired comic mime whose visual comedy—unlike the quick witty repartee of his brother Groucho—was universal and needed no translation. Dali described Harpo as one of America’s three great Surrealists—the other two being Walt Disney and Cecil B. DeMille.
The pair first met at a party in Paris in 1936. Harpo told Dali how much he liked his paintings. Dali told Harpo how much he loved his films—in particular Animal Crackers, which he described as “the summit of the evolution of comic cinema.” Dali gushed over Harpo’s performance where he pulled fish and cutlery from his pocket and shot the hats of beautiful women—this was true Surrealism!
Understandably, the two men became friends…
Dali brought Harpo a gift—a movie script he wanted the Marx Brothers to make. The script was called Giraffes on Horseback Salads or The Surrealist Woman. It was a series of unconnected scenes typed in blue ribbon over twenty-two pages with various notes written in ink. Dali had already made two infamous films with his friend the director Luis Buñuel—Un Chien Andalou (1929) and L’Age d’Or. Now he wanted to cast Harpo and cinema’s “greatest Surrealist act,” the Marx Brothers, in a film that just might revolutionize Hollywood—or maybe not…
More on this extraordinary friendship– and a taste of Dali’s treatment for Giraffes on Horseback Salads— at “When Dali Met Harpo.”
[TotH to friend P.R.]
* Salvador Dali
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As we recall that the Marx Brothers had a remarkable range of friends, we might send classy birthday greetings to one of them, Lou Gehrig; he was born Heinrich Ludwig Gehrig on this date in 1903. A first baseman for the New Your Yankees for 16 years, he was know (for his stamina) as “The Iron Horse.” A member of six World Series champion teams, he was an All-Star seven consecutive times, a Triple Crown winner once, an American League (AL) Most Valuable Player twice. He had a career .340 batting average, .632 slugging average, and a .447 on base average; he hit 493 home runs and had 1,995 runs batted in (RBI). Elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1939– the year of his retirement– he was the first Major League player to have his uniform number (4) retired by a team.
He is pictured here with friends:
“What would I put in a museum? Probably a museum!”*…
From our friends at Coudal Partners (c.f. here, here, and here), The Museum of Online Museums…
Here, you will find links from our archives to online collections and exhibits covering a vast array of interests and obsessions: Start with a review of classic art and architecture, and graduate to the study of mundane (and sometimes bizarre) objects elevated to art by their numbers, juxtaposition, or passion of the collector. The MoOM is organized into three sections.
The Museum Campus contains links to brick-and-mortar museums with an interesting online presence. Most of these sites will have multiple exhibits from their collections (or, in the case of the Smithsonian, displays of items not on display in the Washington museum itself).
Aside from the quarterly list of links, we pull out five collections of particular interest and highlight them. New to the MoOM this fall will be the The Benefactors’ Gallery, in which our Board of Directors will post links to their own and other notable collections.
One thing you won’t find at MoOM are collections of posters or maps. As particular interests of ours, posters and maps have their own departments in the coudal.com archives. Find them and be lost for hours. [Your correspondent was…]
*John Hodgman
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As we rethink the idea of “walls,” we might spare a fevered dream or two for Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, 1st Marqués de Dalí de Pubol; he died on this date in 1989. Best known by the name with which he signed his artwork, Salvador Dali, he was a prominent Surrealist, whose work was distinguished by his fine draughtsmanship and his obsession with symbolism. Cited as an artistic influence by the likes of Damien Hirst, Noel Fielding, and Jeff Koons, it seems likely that Dali’s gifted self-promotion was similarly an inspiration to Warhol.
The only difference between myself and a madman is that I am not mad.
– Salvador Dali
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