The exhibition was crowded when we went, as it apparently has been for the whole time that it's been running, meaning that circumstances weren't conducive to having any kind of real experience of the art - but I didn't mind that too much, as, while I like him well enough, I'm not a huge fan of Dali in the first place, and so was approaching the show principally as an opportunity to get more of a sense for his work and to see how it was all put together. (I wanted to go in any event because, like him or not, he's certainly Important, and especially in the 20th century art scene, which is pretty much my thing.)
Anyway, so I enjoyed the exhibition, crowd notwithstanding. Sympathetically curated, it didn't focus too much on the 'personality' aspect of Dali that can be so off-putting (and distracting) and thereby brought into greater prominence the quality of the work itself, which is (for mine) undeniably high. (Also, unlike the one from a few years ago, which was exhibited somewhere in Southbank, if I remember correctly, it concentrates principally on his drawings and paintings, with some of his cinematic work and a small annex containing jewellery, rather than on his sculptural and more 'design'-oriented work.)
It's arranged more or less chronologically, and I must say that some of his earlier stuff, showing strong cubist influences, was amongst the most appealing to me; indeed, it's possible to see strong elements of many of the key streams of 20th C art in his work over time - apart from his early dalliances with cubism, there's surrealism, of course, the movement with which he was most obviously affiliated for much of his career, and also a strong dose of pop art (indeed, it's arguably in a particular form of pop surrealism, often dabbling strongly in kitsch, that Dali's own influence is most apparent in contemporary art)...something else that is how good a painter he is technically, particularly in his 'mature' and post-atomic, and increasingly apocalyptic, work. At his best, his work is deeply mysterious, potently symbolic and strongly suggestive of the unconscious terrain - this exhibition was well worthwhile.
(w/ Yee Fui, trang and M)
