Tuesday, September 28, 2010

"Persistence of Memory" to Join Dali Exhibition

New Addition to “Salvador Dalí: The Late Work” from The Museum of Modern Art, New York; One of Dalí’s Most Recognizable Works  

On November 16 Salvador Dalí’s iconic Surrealist painting “The Persistence of Memory” from The Museum of Modern Art, New York, will join the highly successful exhibition “Salvador Dalí: The Late Work.” The exhibition brings together many works from Dalí’s later career as well as several works of art not seen in the United States since the 1950s. The exhibition will be on view through January 9, 2010.

“‘The Persistence of Memory’ represents Dalí in ways few paintings have for other artists,” said exhibition curator and Dalí scholar Elliott King. “It’s no exaggeration that this ‘10 x 14 inches of Dalí dynamite’ is the image that made him a celebrity, setting the stage for all the art and antics that followed.”

Painted in 1931, “The Persistence of Memory” is widely recognized as one of Salvador Dalí‘s most famous paintings. According to his autobiography “The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí,” the painting was done one evening after dinner while his wife Gala was out. Dalí was looking at a landscape that he had painted, trying to think of something memorable and fantastic to insert into the landscape. Nearby was a piece of Camembert cheese that had begun to melt. As he looked at the melting cheese, he got the idea to paint a soft clock. When Gala came home Dalí put his hands over her eyes, revealed the painting and asked what she thought. Her response was that once someone had seen it, they would never forget it, hence the title “The Persistence of Memory.”


Salvador Dalí: The Late Work

“Salvador Dalí: The Late Work” is the first exhibition to focus specifically on Dalí's art after 1940. The exhibition features 115 works, including 40 paintings and a related group of drawings, prints and other Dalí ephemera. While Dalí is best known as a leading member of the Surrealist movement of the 1930s, “Salvador Dalí: The Late Work” reassesses his career from 1940 to his death in 1989. Dalí’s late work—which makes up more than half of his total artistic output—drew inspiration simultaneously from the Old Masters and the contemporary world, resulting in works that were markedly out of step with the prevailing styles of their day, but today appear strikingly contemporary. “Salvador Dalí: The Late Work” aims to reevaluate the last half of Dalí’s career, beginning in the late 1930s with the transition from his well-known Surrealist canvases to his self-reinvention as an artist in 1941, when he embraced Catholicism and declared himself a classicist. The exhibition also explores Dalí’s relevance to contemporary art by exploring his enduring fascination with science, optical effects and illusionism, and his surprising connections to artists of the 1960s and 1970s such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Willem de Kooning. 

Exhibition Organization and Support
“Salvador Dalí: The Late Work” is organized by the High Museum of Art in collaboration with the Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida, and the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, Spain. The High will be the sole venue for the exhibition, where it will be on view from August 7, 2010, through January 9, 2011. The exhibition is curated by Dalí scholar and independent curator Elliott King; David Brenneman, Director of Collections and Exhibitions and Frances B. Bunzl Family Curator of European Art at the High, will serve as managing curator for the High. Support is provided by Official Airline Partner Delta Air Lines, Art Partners, The Fay and Barrett Howell Exhibition Fund, The Forward Arts Foundation Exhibition Endowment and indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue published by the High Museum of Art. 

High Museum of Art
The High Museum of Art, founded in 1905 as the Atlanta Art Association, is the leading art museum in the southeastern United States. With more than 12,000 works of art in its permanent collection, the High Museum of Art has an extensive anthology of 19th- and 20th-century American and decorative art; significant holdings of European paintings; a growing collection of African American art; and burgeoning collections of modern and contemporary art, photography and African art. The High is also dedicated to supporting and collecting works by Southern artists and is distinguished as the only major museum in North America to have a curatorial department specifically devoted to the field of folk and self-taught art. The High’s media arts department produces acclaimed annual film series and festivals of foreign, independent and classic cinema. In November 2005 the High opened three new buildings by architect Renzo Piano that more than doubled the Museum’s size, creating a vibrant “village for the arts” at the Woodruff Arts Center in midtown Atlanta. For more information about the High, please visit www.High.org.

The Woodruff Arts Center 

The Woodruff Arts Center is ranked among the top four arts centers in the nation. The Woodruff is unique in that it combines four visual and performing arts divisions on one campus as one not-for-profit organization. Opening in 1968, the Woodruff Arts Center is home to the Alliance Theatre, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the High Museum of Art and Young Audiences. To learn more about the Woodruff Arts Center, please visit www.woodruffcenter.org.

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