Saturday night with Dali (10.27)
I remember when I was 12 years old and had a picture of The Persistence of Memory hanging in my room. So when I found out the Dali exhibit opened up at LACMA about 2 weeks ago, I really wanted to go see it. A friend and I went to check it out and we really enjoyed the many types of work shown from Dali including paintings, film, photography and texts. What was amazing and unknown to me though was how Dali had such a deep connection with some famous movie greats such as Alfred Hitchcock and Walt Disney and the cinematic influences and elements that are present in many of the things he did.
There is so much symbolism in Dali’s work, that you almost have to study every little piece of the art just to try and make sense of what it could mean. In his words, “I am painting pictures which make me die for joy, I am creating with an absolute naturalness, without the slightest aesthetic concern, I am making things that inspire me with a profound emotion and I am trying to paint them honestly.”
From symbols of death and sexual desire to hope and love, you see all the intensity that he put into his art for whatever he was feeling at that time. I highly recommend going to see this. I think I may even go again.
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Sunday with Getty (10.28)
My weekend of visiting museums continued with a trip to the Getty Villa in Malibu. There was no particular reason to go except that it was a great day to be by the beach and I’d never been before. There was an exhibit on glass which was kinda interesting, and many collections of art that Getty himself acquired over the years. The grounds of the museum were just really amazingly beautiful. The museum sits high up on a hill and so we walked outdoors a lot, into the gardens and overlooked the trees to the beach and ocean.
At the top of the picnic area were glass blowers giving demonstrations on how to make various glass pieces, including their markings and interesting shapes from different periods of time. The Getty Villa may look small but there was so much to see and do. It would be a great place to just have lunch one afternoon being that it’s so close. Next stop on my museum list is the big Getty museum and hopefully it won’t take me 3 years to go like it took me this weekend!
