La fille de tiresias by Felix Labisse, 1973. Oil on canvas.
Sunday Dalí: The Gran Opera, 1957. Oil on canvas. Private collection.
The Gran Opera is part of the Seven Lively Arts series of paintings commissioned by Billy Rose, the American impresario. The first set was destroyed in a fire in Rose’s home where the paintings were being stored. Rose commissioned a second set from Dalí using the insurance money.
Daily Ritual by George Fischer. Oil on canvas, 62” x 62”.
Explaining Death to a Rabbit by Carrie Anne Baade, 2011. Oil on panel, 24” x 30”.
Sunday Dalí: The Invention of the Monsters, 1937. Oil on canvas, 51.4 x 78.1 cm. The Art Institute of Chicago.
When the art institute purchased this painting Dalí sent these words along with it:
I am pleased and honored by your acquisition. According to Nostradamus the apparition of monsters presages the outbreak of war. This canvas was painted in the Semmering mountains near Vienna a few months before the Anschluss and has a prophetic character. Horse women equal maternal river monsters. Flaming giraffe equals cosmic masculine apocalyptic monster. Cat angel equals divine heterosexual monster. The hourglass equals the metaphysical monster. Gala and Dalí equal the sentimental monster. The little blue dog is not a true monster.
Sincerely,
Salvador Dalí1You can get a much larger version to see all of Dalí’s details here.
There’s a lot to unpack in this prophetic work. Suffice to say that Dalí believed that the upcoming war in Europe was not only inevitable, but that it would change the course of European society forever.
Michael R. Taylor, Dalí, (Venice: Rizzoli, 2004), 274. ↩
Two Red Birds, a Dagger, and a Revolver by John Wilde, 1992. Oil on panel, 8” x 10”.
The fox/raccoon/dog/horse thing kinda looks like Ozil doesn’t it? No? Shut up.
More trickery here.
Sensational News by René Magritte, 1926. Oil on canvas, 62 x 81 cm.
You heard it here first.
With Hidden Noise by Marcel Duchamp,1916. Readymade sculpture of brass, string and unknown object. Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection.
Jen Graves wrote in The Stranger:
On Easter Day in 1916, the artist Marcel Duchamp—the man who invented the readymade (or is “invented” the right word?)—gave his friend Walter Arensberg a ball of nautical twine and asked Arensberg to insert an object into the center of the ball. Duchamp asked Arensberg not to tell him what was in the center of his own artwork. He sandwiched the ball between two brass plates held together by four screws, and titled the sculpture With Hidden Noise because when you shake it, the secret contents make a rattling sound.
Read the rest on The Stranger.
I am posting a Duchamp today because Scott Kindall created a a web-based program that will compete with YOU in a chess match as if you were playing against Master Duchamp himself. Kindall writes on Playing Duchamp:
Based on 72 recorded tournament games by played by Marcel Duchamp in the 1920s and 1930s alongside conversations with Jennifer Shahade, a chess and Duchamp expert, I abstracted various principles regarding his chess strategies. From this knowledge, I modified the GNU Chess code, under GPL license.
I played him and lost in 24 moves. I think I might have done better if I didn’t mix up which was my king and which was the queen. PROTIP: The queen is the one with the crown.
WHAT’S IN THE FUCKING YARN?????????
