Dalí: Painting & Film
Last evening, I visited the Dalí: Painting & Film exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Overall, it was a fantastic exhibition and I learned quite a great deal about Salvador Dalí's interest in film that went far beyond his collaborations with Buñuel, like the famed "Un Chien Andalou." Dalí created wonderful storyboards and set designs for quite a few unrealized films, including a collaboration with the Marx Brothers! Here's a quote from a 1937 letter Dalí wrote to surrealist André Breton: "I’m in Hollywood, where I’ve made contact with the three American Surrealists, Harpo Marx, Disney and Cecil B. DeMille." I also hadn't realized that Dalí created the dream sequence for Alfred Hitchock's Spellbound (1945). Apparently, a phantasmagoric ballroom scene was shot for this sequence but ended up on the cutting room floor. Dalí's artwork and notes for this part of the dream are quite remarkable. It's sad that the footage was lost. Link to Spellbound clip, Link to Dalí: Painting & Film at the LACMA
Previously on BB:
• Salvador Dalí on "What's My Line?" Link
• Salvador Dalí TV commercials Link
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the spellbound clip link isn't working.
It's on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amFTRybk0fI
My favorite Dali work for film was the backgrounds he did for Warner Brother's cartoon when Porky Pig goes looking for a dodo bird in africa.
According to the between-scenes commentary in Disney's Fantasia 2000, Dali worked on a sequence for a follow-up to Fantasia that never made it past the concept-and-drawings stage. Now how cool would that have been? (Although it's hard to imagine the music that would have accompanied something like that.)
@Boingboingboy: I don't think I've ever seen that cartoon (at least it doesn't ring a bell). Can you put a name to it?
This is one of the better art displays ever done at LACMA. And it managed to avoid becoming the overwhelming "rock concert" style event that other exhibits became (insane ticket prices, long lines,loud visitors) - a fitting tribute to a true master of several artistic disciplines.
OH, AND DON'T FORGET SALVADOR DALI'S VISIT TO THE GAME SHOW "WHAT'S MY LINE?" IN THE 1950s!!! -
DALI - WHAT'S MY LINE - YouTube
whoops...here's the correct URL - -
DALI on WHAT'S MY LINE?
A friend saw a piece of the Spellbound eyeball backdrop for sale in a gallery in LA about 20 years ago and felt sick he couldn't buy it. Probably the most interesting type of Daliana there could possibly be -
@Omir:
I think the cartoon is called Porky In Wackyland, and I never knew Dali did the backgrounds, though it certainly makes sense.
Which reminds me, the prices for the Looney Tunes Golden Collection DVDs are coming down! Yay! All of the old cartoons that used to play on TNT and Cartoon Network are locked away on Boomerang, which I don't have.
Has anyone here ever seen the video where Dali is painting on glass with the camera behind it?
It's an amazing painting which starts as a bird and the more paint he lays morphs into a bull then a bird an so on.
I would love a link to the video , I've searched unsuccessfully .
@Omir (#4), The Dali/Disney collaboration was called Destino. It was finally completed after both Dali and Walt Disney had died. Here's an NPR story about it. And here's a trailer for it on YouTube.
A long time ago there was a travelling exhibit on the special effects (matte paintings, mostly) from the films of Hitchcock. They had stills from Spellbound, including that cut sequence you mentioned. Other nifty pieces were the matte paintings from "North by Northwest" and "The Birds". Not Dali, but interesting stuff!
I once had a chance to buy a sketch for a Dali painting. But I was a poor college student then, dang it!