THE DALI EXHIBIT 5-29-05
Since the PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM OF ART decided to extend the closing of their Salvador Dali exhibit from May 16th to May 30th I had to go. I'd never been to this museum, and had been wanting to go for a while, so now I really had no excuse .
I decided I'd wait till the absolute last minute to see the show though. I knew it would be more chaotic on the final weekend, with all the last-minute patrons swarming the museum. To add to the chaos, Sundays are "PAY WHAT YOU WISH," and this would be the last "PAY WHAT YOU WISH" Sunday for Dali, thus adding to the throngs the extra slew of cheapskates, students, and poor-but-curious who planned the day to skirt the normally pricey twenty dollar cover charge.
The chaos I imagined would only help to provide a more surreal environment. Experiencing surrealism in a surreal atmosphere would surely make it more interesting, and more enjoyable.
I checked the website to get the last minute details and directions. The site was black with red type and a few black and white photos of Dali, one early on, and the second later in his career with the big signature handlebar moustache. I've been spending a lot of time in Philly the past few months, and the photo you see at the beginning of this post is everywhere: It's on the city's buses, it's in the subways, on the banners hanging from streetlights. Any available space on any wall or billboard around Philly has been plastered with this Dali photo in poster form.
99 percent of the people seeing this poster with Dali's face have no fucking clue who Dali was, or what his work looks like, they just know that headshot. THE MOUSTACHE is selling the show. Just the damn photo of an odd looking man with a giant oddly pointing moustache. "Why, that is one big moustache, this man surely is worth the price of admission, what is he, a photographer?" If all it takes is a big moustache to sell out the largest museum in the third largest city in America, how quickly do you think THIS DUDE 's art show would sell out? He'd be THE FUCKEN MAN!
It's kinda sad when (like Hollywood) the art world realizes that it's Name and Face that people remember, more than the actual art itself, and they embrace it. From all the ad campaigns out there for this Dali show, good luck if you can find one that shows one tiny smidge of his work. You can't. It's all that fucken photo of his black and white mustached face.
When I used to design movie posters for Miramax, I remember how solid they were on the fact that the poster had to revolve around the giant head of the leading actor or actress, above the title, with possibly a little shot of some of the movie's action in the middle bottom, or the lower left or right. It's pretty much Hollywood standard right now, and it stops you in your tracks. Face recognition of the leading actor is what sells a movie, and face recognition with an artist who is famous enough sells art shows as well. Celebrity is the same in both worlds.
I read further on their website (like I like to do when deciding if something is worth my time) and it neglected to mention "PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY (1931)" which Joe Blow American remembers as Melting Clocks. That piece is "THE PIECE" that kind of is synonymous with Surrealism, and without it in a retrospective about Dali, would be like a Warhol retrospective without soup cans. It would be like going to see McCartney live and him not playing any Beatles tunes. Would the advertising have been different if the melting clocks would have been in the show? The world will never now, but since they weren't, we got the stache. (Is this an established saying, or did I just coin it? "Getting the stache." )
TRACY and I parked a few blocks from the Museum in the parking lot of RAN-D 's old apartment complex, when he lived in Philly and went to the Art Institute. Ran-D is a big Dali fan, and had already seen the Philly show, having been to Dali's museum in Florida earlier this year, he said the Philly show was weak in comparison and was unimpressed, but, like hearing negative film reviews, I was still determined to go.
We crossed the Benjamin Franklin Expressway on foot and approached the beginning of the giant steps. These are the steps you've seen Stallone run up in Rocky. For the show they had taken the aforementioned photo of Dali, moustache and all, and scaled it up to about 100 feet. Chopped it into equal step shaped strips, and laid it out on the steps so from a distance and below the photo looked seamless, when upon nearing it was clear that it was the cut up photo, temporarily glued / stickered to the stairs.
Somebody had ripped a big portion of the sticker where his right eye was supposed to be so from far away it looked like the photo of Dali with a giant concrete gash, or large caliber bullet hole. I would have brought my camera, thinking that the museum (like the big NY museums) wouldn't allow cameras I left it in her car (later realizing that this was unnecessary, every tourist and their mother had cameras in that bitch).
When we got up the second to last set of stairs by a fountain there sat a fixed sandwich board sign that read "Dali tickets sold out."
"What the fuck does that mean?" I said
It was still morning and the museum would be open till five something, what did they mean "SOLD OUT"?
When we got in the door we stood on line to "Pay What We Wished." When I got to the counter, I asked about the Dali show. The woman said that the tickets were sold out, and that people were waiting in line for the show with tickets for over an hour to see it. I looked to our right and there was a line winding around both sides of the lobby. People were packed ass to bunt, and it wasn't moving.
"I don't mind waiting on line, I just want to see the show, I mean, I could come to the museum anytime." The ad campaign said the Dali show extended till the 30th, I checked the website before I came, it didn't say anything about the show being sold out so this was stupid.
"I'm sorry." she said. "This show is the only one like it in the country, so you can imagine that it would be very popular. The reason it's sold out is because we can only fit so many people into the space to view it at one time legally, so, maybe you could come back tomorrow and if there are some cancellations. . ."
"Cancellations? Christ, just give us two tickets for the museum general admission." And I dropped a quarter on the table.
"We would have paid more if we could see Dali." Tracy said.
Nothing pisses me off more than false advertising. If the website would have warned me not to bother, I wouldn't have bothered. I felt like the time I got the bait-and-switch at the D12 CONCERT.
We decided to spend the day in the Museum regardless. It was a fun time, walking around, looking at all the art. Tracy is fonder of the realistic European paintings, and was excited to see the Renoir's.
It's true that most Modern Art, and American Art sucks, and I'll admit that. A giant canvas with a strip, or a dot, or a circle, or a color palate. Give me a fucken break, but whatever, I'm part of this world, and there are people who collect and appreciate white dots painted on white canvas', and there are people who collect and appreciate my work, so it's a good thing that art is a matter of opinion, or we wouldn't have white dot on white canvas in a museum to make fun of, or be frustrated by.
I was glad I got to tour this museum though, even though a bulk of the museum was gutted and filled with Dali, off limits to dumbasses such as myself who took their advertising seriously and didn't have a ticket to ride, got to see such famous pieces as Duchamp's R. MUTT URINAL, and NUDE DESCENDING A STAIRCASE, also saw one of Picasso's SELF PORTRAIT'S, and a bunch of other great pieces I've been dying to see in person.
As the day of art viewing and critique wound down we left and hit the road. I killed the last film in my roll on the Philly skyline.
P.S.
While writing this post, around 7:PM I went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art's website only to find that their homepage had changed, and THIS was in it's place. Too little too late.
Just another day in the life of an Art Juggernaut.
-Cojo