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Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: Salvador Dali, Retrospective Bust of a Woman

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retrospective bust of a woman by gail worley
All Photos By Gail

The idea for this work began when Salvador Dalí discovered an inkwell illustrated with the praying couple (from Jean-Francois Millet’s painting The Angelus, 1857–59). He embedded the inkwell in a loaf of bread and placed them both on the portrait bust of a woman.

retrospective bust of a woman detail by gail worley

In 1931, Dalí described Surrealist sculpture as “created wholly for the purpose of materializing in a fetishistic way, with maximum tangible reality, ideas and fantasies of a delirious character.” Retrospective Bust of a Woman (1933) not only presents a woman as an object, but explicitly as one to be consumed. A baguette crowns her head, cobs of corn dangle around her neck, and ants swarm along her forehead as if gathering crumbs. Ants, of course, are a common reoccurring motif in Dali’s work.

retrospective bust of a woman side view photo by gail worley

Photographed in the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.

retrospective bust of a woman detail photo by gail
Detail

Design and Innovation

The Ant Palace

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Ant Palace
Photo By Gail

“This invention relates to educational devices, and has particular reference to an apparatus for facilitating the observation, study and photography of subterranean life, especially the life and habits of insects and smaller animals who live underground.” So began Frank Austin ((1873 – 1964)’s application to the U.S. Patent Office, filed on June 21, 1929, for his storied Ant House (also known as the Ant Farm).

A simple design based on glass panes and soil or sand allowed a curious viewer to observe as ants or other insects furrowed their way through the ground. Word has it that Austin paid local boys $4.00 a quart for ants brought in alive, and that carpenter ants were his preference as they were the largest and most interesting. His patent application consciously stated that that “other objects of the invention reside in the simplicity of construction and mode of use of the device, the economy with which is may be produced and the general efficiency derived therefrom.”

Photographed in Chamber Boutique on 23rd Street, West of 10th Avenue.

Arts and Culture

Tom Everhart’s I Got Ants in My Pants and I Need to Dance at AFA Gallery

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Snoopy Dervish
All Photos By Gail

Charles Schulz, creator of the classic Peanuts comic strip, may be long gone, but his beloved characters live on! Just this past weekend, a new Peanuts Movie opened nationwide, while at a gallery in Soho, artist Tom Everhart, world-renowned for his Charles Schulz-inspired paintings of the Peanuts universe, launched his latest collection, entitled I Got Ants In My Pants, And I Need To Dance.

Purple Snoopy

I Got Ants in My Pants sees Charlie Brown’s imaginative pet beagle Snoopy transformed into a whirling Dervish of motion, as Everhart adds bold splatters of brightly colored paint to simple sketches of Snoopy, who is lost in his own ecstatic dance moves.

Snoopy Dancing Green

Woodstock
Woodstock

Although Snoopy is a definite focal point of Everhart’s paintings, several of the other characters make appearances as well.

5 Snoopy and 1 Linus
Five Snoopys and One Linus

Peppermint Patty
Peppermint Patty and Charlie Brown

While Schulz was still living, he and Everhart enjoyed both a personal friendship and an artistic relationship greatly valued by both. The two artists painted alongside each other, developing a mutual respect so powerful that Schulz encouraged Everhart to carry forward his comic strip creations to the fine art form – with very fun results that are faithful to the spirit of Schulz’s characters.

Yellow Snoopy

Four Snoopys

Everhart was even brought in during the very first few days of the making of the Peanuts Movie by Blue Sky Studios in New York to share his knowledge of Schulz’s art with the full creative team.

Shouting Snoopy

I Got Ants In My Pants is a Family-friendly exhibit, and the art is priced to own.

I Got Ants In My Pants, And I Need To Dance Paintings By Tom Everhart will be on Exhibit through December 1st, 2015 at AFA Gallery, Located at 54 Greene Street (Corner of Broome) in Soho, NYC.

Gallery View
Fans and Collectors at Saturday’s Opening Reception at AFA Gallery

AFA Storefront

Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: Salvador Dali, The Accommodations of Desire

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Salvador Dail The Accommodations of Desire
Photo By Gail (Click Image to Enlarge for Detail)

Painted in the summer of 1929, The Accommodations of Desire is a small gem that deals with the twenty-five-year-old Dalí’s sexual anxieties over a love affair with an older, married woman. The woman, Gala, then the wife of Surrealist poet Paul Éluard, became Dalí’s lifelong muse and mate. In this picture, which Dalí painted after taking a walk alone with Gala, he included seven enlarged pebbles on which he envisioned what lay ahead for him:
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Arts and Culture

Modern Art Monday Presents: Salvador Dali, The Persistence of Memory

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The Persistence of Memory
Photo By Gail (Click Image to Enlarge for Detail)

Arguably one of Salvador Dali’s most well-known paintings, The Persistence of Memory (1931) is perhaps most famous for its images of melted timepieces and ants — which can be seen swarming on the face of the golden-colored stop watch in the lower left-hand side of the painting. Both of these motifs show up now and again in Dali’s signature surrealist works. The painting was given as an anonymous gift to MOMA and is part of the museum’s permanent collection.