Hello, Dali!

Yet once again, I had the privilege of reviewing an art show for Playboy.  This time I was able to spend my work day at the Museum of Modern Art. How lucky am I?  Two hours with the great Spanish artist Salvador Dali, and here’s what I got. 

The 1920s ushered in a new art phenomena, a movement that incorporated textual and visual elements in an effort to recreate the unconscious dream. Surrealism sought to transcend beyond deliberate thought and incite a desire so fervent it almost became frenetic. Spanish artist Salvador Dalí was the master at representing the Surrealist movement on canvas, paper, and film.  

New York’s Museum of Modern Art is hosting an exclusive Salvador event entitled, Dalí: Painting And Film explores The Central Role Of Cinema In The Work Of The Surrealist Master. Organized by Tate Modern and The Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation, the show focuses on the relationship between the paintings and films of Dalí and how the cinema was both an inspiration and a vehicle of experimentation for the artist. 

MOMA Curators Jodi Hauptman and Anne Morra have done an excellent job in pairing Dalí’s cinematic works with his paintings. The exhibition makes a strong point to emphasize Dalí’s love of theater by depicting the young artist frequenting the local nickelodeon in his hometown of Figueres, Spain. Motion pictures created a world of possibility for Dalí, and he used this world to transform the moving image into a drug-like state on canvas. For Dalí, cinema wasn’t just entertainment; it was art.

“The best cinema,” Dalí once said, “is the kind that can be perceived with your eyes closed.”

The first two galleries feature Dalí’s first attempt in film, a 1929 collaboration with Luis Buñuel, who had made his name in avant-garde and radical cinema. Their first screenplay, Un Chien Andalou, was an exploitation of a film’s ability to manipulate the sensation of dreaming. Dalí used the same imagery as seen in his work: a disembodied hand, infestation of ants, putrefying donkeys, and other strange transformations. These same figures can be found in Apparatus and Hand and The Accommodations of Desire. Also in these galleries is Dalí and Buñuel’s second collaboration, L’Âge d’or, a thorny storyline of two lovers’ quest reunite in spite of sequential turmoil.       

The third gallery is a showcase of Dalí’s collaboration with the Marx brothers. Dalí once said he saw his practice as a Surrealist in the Marx brothers’ chaotic combination of humor and pandemonium. While their film project Giraffes on Horseback Salad never reached production, Dalí’s manuscript recounting the production’s process (displayed in the gallery) keep the imagery alive. The Marx brother’s comedy is illustrated with Dalí’s true-to-form themes. According to the MOMA catalog, this collaboration sought to “undo the order of bourgeois society.”

Perhaps Dalí’s best-known cinematic venture was his partnership with Alfred Hitchcock in the film Spellbound. Dalí’s famous dream sequence was a recreation of his works. However, only three scenes made the final cut in the finished film. Featured in the next gallery is Dalí’s work with Walt Disney in the short film Destino, a story of two lovers, Chronos (the god of time) and a mortal girl, depicted by combination of animated drawings and real images. While only 15 to 18 seconds were completed before the project was abandoned, a team of Disney animators completed the film in 2003.

Although other Surrealists used film’s darkened theater and dream-like representations as an outlet for expression, Dalí viewed the cinema in a different light. According to Hauptman, Dalí believed this was only one aspect of potential.

“In his practice, film served many purposes: Its modernity was a weapon in his struggle against tradition; its position in mass culture gave him access to new audiences; its combination of the real and imaginary demonstrated that the marvelous could be rooted in the banal; and its camera-eye offered new modes of seeing,” Hauptman says.  

Dalí offered more than just a shock factor. He delved deep into a different world and helped make Surrealism fit into the mainstream art world. During an era of Pop art obsession, his works established a platform for philosophical discussion and psychological dissection.

Dalí once said, “Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.” Dalí’s mutation of everyday props and attention to minute detail was his way of creating a world beyond shades of melancholy grays and Prussian blues. He tapped into a different level of the human psyche and shaped it into melted forms for the art world to analyze for years to come.    

In Dalí’s opinion, “The one thing the world will never have enough of is the outrageous.”

America’s Yankees

New York City is the epitome of the American dream. A melting pot of cultures and history, you can’t help but love every inch of the city and what is has to offer. But beyond the tourist hotspots of Times Square and Park Avenue, New York’s heart rests in the small streets decorated with sidewalk chalk outside of mom-and-pop shops. There’s something and somewhere for everyone here. And I finally found mine.

I celebrated my Fourth of July holiday in true American form. Sitting in my Tier seats at Yankee stadium, I devoured two hot dogs while watching the Red Sox defeat the Yankees. Perhaps it was the lush green field set in the rough, vibrant Bronx setting or maybe it was getting the perfect view of Alex Rodriguez’s backside, but ever since that game I’ve become enthralled with the Yankees. Never in my life have I felt such a strong connection with baseball and our American culture.

While living abroad in both Spain and Argentina, one question I was always asked (besides the usual about Bush and Iraq) was if I’d ever had a hot dog at Yankee stadium. For all of my foreign friends who hadn’t yet visited the United States, that was the first thing they wanted to experience. And there I was, living their dream. It may sound so simple, but it’s truly unique and special to our heritage. As Americans, we are always referred to as “Yankees” abroad. Being from the South, I use to take offense to this. But standing there with my hot dog and Coke, I laughed and thought to myself, I love being a Yankee.

I hate sounding hackneyed or trite, but I was truly proud to be an American for the first time in years.  In the seventh inning stretch, my eyes filled with tears as “God Bless America” played amidst a huge waving flag. With my hand over my heart, I listened to the silence that permeated the stadium. Beneath the shadow of a looming recession and an endless war, we all stood as different races, religions, sexual orientations, and political parties to forget about our differences and enjoy a Friday afternoon in Yankee stadium. Respect. Adversity. Resilience. That’s America. 

Spending Time With Lichtenstein

I spent my Wednesday two weeks ago browsing through the Gagosian Gallery on Madison Avenue, reviewing a Roy Lichtenstein exhibit for Playboy.  I’ll have to admit that while I am a Pop Art fan, I didn’t truly understand its intricacy and complexity until I spent time with Roy’s bright colors pressed against stark white walls.  Judging by his images, perhaps this shy and often reserved painter really did understand the heart and mind of a woman. 

Roy Lichtenstein once referred to the women he painted as idyllic beings conceptually made up of black lines and red dots.  “I see it that abstractly, that it’s very hard to fall for one of these creatures, to me, because they’re not really reality to me,” the master painter said.  “However, that doesn’t mean that I don’t have a clichéd ideal, a fantasy ideal, of a woman that I would be interested in.  But I think I have in mind what they should look like for other people.” 

The Gagosian Gallery of New York just wrapped its showcase of Lichtenstein’s creations of these ideal women in the exhibit “Roy Lichtenstein: Girls.”  In depicting the ideal woman, Lichtenstein may have had the same thought process as Playboy. As his widow Dorothy said in the exhibit catalog, Lichtenstein often expressed his own feelings through the non-threatening cartoons he illustrated, while still having compassion for the female psyche.   

“He did have a lot of empathy, because he had many friends who were troubled, and it was easy for him to understand their feelings,” Dorothy said.  “He may even have picked these women because he was so reserved in his own being that this was a way of latching on to the emotional highs and lows of life.”

She also said Lichtenstein viewed comic books as soap operas depicted in a humorous style.  Lichtenstein believed when an image was removed from the story frame, it took on a new meaning.  It became a malleable context in which he could interpret and manipulate.  

Using mostly primary colors and accents of thick black strokes, Lichtenstein’s “Girls” showed a range of various beautiful women in conditions of distress, sexual battles, personal catastrophes and melodramatic love scenes. Lichtenstein created his animated subjects with thousands of intricate, often asymmetrical, benday dots to construct Caucasian skin tones or mysterious blue eyes. 

Lichtenstein believed these dots created mechanical half-tones that better represented certain shades that were harder to create.  The artist used the same technique with bow-tie shapes to fashion the apricot-colored lips in “Ohh…Alright…” He also mixed semitransparent blue and red benday dots to create the brassy brunette pictured in “Seductive Girl.”   

Starting with the frustrated blonde anxiously looking at the clock on her nightstand in “Blonde Waiting” to the sorrowful farewell lip lock of “Kiss V,” these paintings portray the stereotypical hormonal female, filled with passion, anxiety, and most importantly, sexual desire. Each one of Lichtenstein’s creations mirrors a pivotal moment or the climax of the story he tells with his carefully selected characters.  

It’s unlikely that Lichtenstein ever painted women he knew personally. These paintings are not portraits but rather interpretations. He transformed his subjects to make them his own. 

“Lichtenstein painted in that very pop quality that when he chose an image, he then changed it by extending the scale and turning it around,” Stefan Ratibor, Gagosian’s London-based director, said. “Once this happened, the painting was then an abstract painting.  It was then non-representational, only about colors and forms.”

Weekend in the Hamptons

I managed to escaped the city for what I believed to be a well-deserved mini-vacation to Bridgehampton.  The three hour train ride via the Long Island Railroad car filled with screaming babies and strange smells was worth it when I finally arrived at the pleasant station quaintly decorated with pink and orange flowers.  I stepped off of the train and into the warm sunshine to see Alex smiling widely at me.  It had been almost six months since we had last seen each other.  

As an intern for Plum, the Hampton news station, Alex has the best summer set-up.  Set on a quiet road, she lives in a two-story home surrounded by the greenest grass and the tallest trees that breathe a gentle breeze.  After noshing on sandwiches, I got ready to go to Luna Farm for my first Bridgehampton hoopla. 

Dressed to the nines in a sequin dress and heels, Alex and I were able to catch a ride with her roommate Ashley.  We walked into the party under huge white tents to be greeted by an array of delectable cuisines and elaborate decorations.  I was in Hampton Heaven.  This is when Alex leans over and says, “I think we’re at the wrong party.”  After roaming around, sure enough, we were in fact at the wrong party.  Without a car. 

Promising Ashley cash, she finally showed up 20 minutes later.  We drove in the dark, searching for Luna Farm.  When we finally arrived, the party was ending.  Everyone was leaving.  The night was looking like a bust.  Never to be a bad hostess, Alex was determined to find another party.  So, we made our way to a vineyard down the road.

We could hear the live band playing 70s music as we walked up to a tent that was beaming with a rainbow of colored lights.  We walked in and were immediately greeted by an open bar and truffles with whipped cream.  Okay this was more like it.  After meeting some locals in suit jackets and shorts, we kicked our heels off and danced like we were on an episode of “Saved by the Bell” for the remainder of the evening.  

Looking around, I couldn’t believe that this was how I was spending my summer.  My best friend by my side, dancing to Diana Ross barefoot in the Hamptons.  

A Sweet Indulgence

This weekend was more than relaxing.  It was downright boring.  While I did catch-up on Barbara Walters and her love affairs in her new biography, Audition, I didn’t get much else accomplished.  I managed to force myself out of the house on Sunday and venture one block down to reunite with my love of all loves.  It’s perhaps the most satisfying relationship I’ve ever had and is making a good run at keeping me here in New York.  It’s called Pinkberry.  It’s frozen yogurt.  

But it’s not like TCBY and other softy creations filled with sugar.  No, Pinkberry is true, original, unflavored yogurt chilled to support an upright swirl of perfection that can easily be decorated with toppings ranging from kiwi to fruity pebbles.  

Yes I’m devoting a whole blog to this because I can’t believe something this good exists.  I have already graduated from a small to a medium because a couple of ounces wasn’t cutting it.  

By the end of my Playboy venture, I will definitely be in a large.  But that’s okay because I am rationalizing that it’s good for me because it’s pure yogurt (don’t ruin it for me).  So hopefully I won’t be graduating to a large pant size to accompany my Pinkberry.  Yes it puts a six-dollar-dent in my purse, but I think it’s worth it for unconditional happiness.   

And I’m ending this by linking to my newest article on Playboy about Chris Burden’s new artwork in Rockefeller Center. 

You’re Not From Around Here

I arrived in NYC on June 1 and started my internship at Playboy the following morning.  Believe it or not, I actually have responsibility as a little intern.  It’s not getting coffee or running around for other people.  I get to actually write.  My greatest love in life.  I had the idea that this job was going to be full of pretentious people who walk right over the new girl, but it’s completely opposite of that.  I can’t explain how divinely talented these editors are, and I still can’t believe I’m getting paid to work with them.

So far I’ve already had a couple of articles posted on Playboy.com.  I spend most of my day looking for new story ideas and/or writing a review about a museum, product, exhibit etc.  My boss Rocky is the true definition of a guy’s guy.  While he’s only inches taller than me, his personality makes him seem eight feet tall.  Sporting a shaven head and a scruffy beard, Rocky is brash but brilliant.  It’s amazing what he’s done so far at the age of 26.  But most importantly, he makes me feel welcome and disguises a learning experience as a great time. 

Lindsay is the only other intern and is a student at Syracuse.  I was so happy to walk in my first day and see someone else in my shoes.  It’s great to have her because we can actually talk about things that are still only suitable for college students.  Although there’s really nothing you can’t talk about at work.  It’s Playboy. 

Living in the city is an immense change from my life in Knoxville.  For one thing, I walk everywhere, which I love.  I learned when living in Spain and Argentina that you learn so much more about the culture and environment that you’re living in when you pass by it on foot everyday.  You see the same faces, look more closely at the architecture and learn to appreciate the life around you.  Living on the Upper West Side is quiet but alive.  While it is a 30 minute subway ride from work, it’s nestled in between Morningside Park and Columbia University.  So that means there are trees and patches of grass.  I can get my nature fix for the day. 

While my apartment is only a studio (which I share with a roommate), it’s a lot bigger than I expected, except for the fact that I literally can’t bend over in the shower.  I have to post my leg up on the wall outside the shower just to shave my legs.  Classic New York.  

Nicole is my roommate and hails from Miami.  She’s a journalism major as well interning at Cosmo.  She’s tiny, loud and blunt.  I love it.  We’re exactly alike. 

This is my second weekend here, and I am promising myself that it will be better than last.  I am determined to actually get out of apartment and enjoy this experience.  As I only have $47 to my name, I’m gonna have to stretch it out a little (or resort to the Visa, ouch).  But although the bank account is dwindling, the humidity is almost unbearable and the doorman doesn’t understand a word I’m saying, I couldn’t be happier.