Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow.
It was bought in 1951 for £8,200 although Dali initially asked the Glasgow Corporation for £12,000 for the painting. Unusually, Dali also signed away the copyright of the image.
The purchase proved controversial coming as it did just seven years after the end of the Second World War, with many suggesting the funds would be better spent elsewhere.
The Spanish government is said to have recently offered £80 million for the painting, an offer allegedly turned down.
In 1961 a visitor to the museum threw a brick at the painting seriously damaging it. His reason being that he objected to the fact that the viewer is looking down on Christ.
Kelvingrove Gallery is now the most popular free visitor attraction in Scotland and the 14th most popular major gallery in the world.
Growing up in Glasgow I used to wag, sorry (been in Australia so long) skive school (a lot) and take myself off to the gallery and I could (and did) spend hours just looking at this picture.
I really am not a fan of the majority of Dali's paintings but there is something about this picture that intrigues me.
When/If I ever work out what it is - I shall let you know I promise.
* Patti Smith
It was bought in 1951 for £8,200 although Dali initially asked the Glasgow Corporation for £12,000 for the painting. Unusually, Dali also signed away the copyright of the image.
The purchase proved controversial coming as it did just seven years after the end of the Second World War, with many suggesting the funds would be better spent elsewhere.
The Spanish government is said to have recently offered £80 million for the painting, an offer allegedly turned down.
In 1961 a visitor to the museum threw a brick at the painting seriously damaging it. His reason being that he objected to the fact that the viewer is looking down on Christ.
Kelvingrove Gallery is now the most popular free visitor attraction in Scotland and the 14th most popular major gallery in the world.
Growing up in Glasgow I used to wag, sorry (been in Australia so long) skive school (a lot) and take myself off to the gallery and I could (and did) spend hours just looking at this picture.
I really am not a fan of the majority of Dali's paintings but there is something about this picture that intrigues me.
When/If I ever work out what it is - I shall let you know I promise.
* Patti Smith
hi mona.about video i just use winrar and it automatically breaks the video into parts of about 100mb each.it took me a little while to get used to using it but it works ok.hope this is what you meant!cheers
ReplyDeleteCool. I will have to look further into that. thanx tho'
ReplyDeleteRegards/
when in st petersburg last winter on business, i stopped in at the salvador dali museum. unfortunately, a few of the large scale paintings had been put in storage to make room for a "dali in film" exhibition that was running at the time. i did finally get to see the short film he made with Disney, Destino, which was rather interesting. you really need to see his works up close to get the full awe-inspiring effect. his vision was incredibly acute, and his ability to render what he imagined was without equal, imho.
ReplyDeleteI know where you are coming from, it's just that in my art, books and films etc. I need a sense of 'realism' or at least based on a world that I can recognise. But hey that is just me and technically they are superb. Have never seen Destino but have always wanted to, I really think he works perfect in the film medium.
ReplyDeleteI think there is a sense of heat that you always get from his paintings (melting clocks etc.) I was freezing my arse off in Glasgow!!!
Regards/
2trnsnd
ReplyDeleteThen that theory goes out the window when you say it was winter in St. Petersburg! Seattle wouldn't be that warm either I would imagine?
Regards/
guess i should have said st petersburg, FLORIDA! it was actually quite warm, and we had a fantastic time strolling around the beach the whole week (when i wasn't wasting away in a hotel conference room). the realism is there in much of his work, though often filtered through the surreal and grotesque. i found his delicate little paintings to be the most amazing of all. like paintings from lilliputian dutch masters, teeny tiny little figures rendered insanely detailed and warm. that warmth you sense in his work almost seems to be the pressure of some psychic decomposition of the image. i've almost most appreciated his sense of the physicality of space, and the impressionistic sense that we receive from our sight. or something like that! i feel like an idiot to even try to describe how my brain reacts to the paintings. i had a similar sense at the gerhard richter show at the chicago art museum. the paintings are imbued with some kind of light/life that seems to glow. optical illusions? or, as TG and burroughs would say, psychick information embedded and/or fixed into a tangible medium? speechless, really.
ReplyDeleteMy sister saw a big Richter retrospective in NY in the 80's I think and she was complete speechless...non art interested people never nbelieve that is a painting of a candle on Teenage Daydream/ sorry man very late here and my brain is def not working. Am glad that my heat theory is back off the ground again, something about the Spanish climate but when you read what he was like as a kid (true or not...)
ReplyDeleteregards/
dali was a complete whack job, i believe that to be absolutely true! he must have been a real handful to have been close with. i certainly try not to put such artists on a pedestal, but I'm happy to receive their subconscious wonderings through their art. babble, babble... my brain is still waking up, so i'm similarly impaired!
ReplyDeleteBugger. When living in Glasgow, I rarely went to see/absorb this painting. Now that I am thousands of miles away ~ I ache to see it.
ReplyDelete