Dali - do's and don'ts

Make several visits to the Dali exhibition in Melbourne. At least two - there is simply not enough time to absorb it all otherwise. When I first tried on Sunday, the line for tickets wound round in several loops so I just had a look at the 'Kiddies Dali' set up in the main entrance. There was a clock with reverse numbers on the wall and a bust of a woman with a poached egg on her head. Plastic lobsters and telephones lay around and the children were having a wild time.
I could have made do with that.

On the way in the man sitting at the entrance made a point of looking up and down the visitors and announcing loudly whether he thought they would enjoy the exhibition or not. He said nothing to me. So, as an obvious Dali ignoramus I wanted to read a lot of the information on the boards set near the paintings. Some of it is in the painful loony elaborations that experts in art can descend to but it does help to know a bit more about his life. I never imagined Dali had a normal childhood with a father etc. but here they both are and the exhibition progresses through to his wonderful electric colours and obsession with the wild landscape he grew up in. Several large panels near the entrance introduce you to this strange part of the north western Spanish coastline and it appears again and again in the work.

I loved a film of an exhibition he did in America in the thirties. It seems very primitive, full of strangely dressed manequins and models swimming in pools of swirling water. Even stranger to know that an exhibition of Whistler's Mother had been the other hit of that time.

His mastery of the techniques of the old masters and absorption of the new made him able to do almost anything. I particularly loved his portraits of his wife Gala - the famous one in colour of her face emerging from circular shapes and a much later pencil drawing focusing on her penetrating eyes.

Near the exit there are tiny lighted boxes of his jewellery with photographs of him at work on them on the opposite wall. I noticed he advised young artists to master the technique of the greats...and after that they will let you do anything. How right he was but sometimes, just sometimes I wished he would cheer up a bit.

To see a trailer of the Dali Exhibition, click here: