Dali - ANIMAL MY SOUL

Tag Archive: Dali

MIDNIGHT IN PARIS: QUELLE MERDE!

January 9, 2012

What do you mean, you don’t want to wear my hat?

Let me start by saying that I used to be a huge fan of Woody Allen movies. In the late 1970s and 1980s, I would make a point of seeing his annual release as soon as it came out.

But I could never quite see him in the same light again after the scandal in 1992 when he left Mia Farrow for their adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn when she was 21 and he was 56. I don’t think of myself as prudish, but I lost respect for him and all those scenes in his films where an attractive young woman falls for an older guy suddenly took on a more squalid aspect. I found I couldn’t enjoy his movies the way I once did.

I was ,however, fully prepared to overcome my prejudices and join the throng who are raving about his latest movie, Midnight In Paris. This has received universal critical acclaim and is even tipped as a possible Oscar winner.

But I have to count myself in a minority here as I found the movie shallow, smug and deeply irritating. Continue reading →

Tags: Dali, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Marion Cotillard, Martin Sheen, Mia Farrow, Owen Wilson, Paris, Picasso, Soon-Yi Previn, Time travel, Woody Allen

GOYA’S CAPRICES

Filed under: Italy, Modern Art — 1 Comment

December 29, 2007

At the end of the 18th century, Francisco Goya , aged 51, shortly after serious illness had left him deaf, began work on a series of 80 etchings known as “Los Caprichos” (the caprices) that were to influence artists and writers into the 20th century, particularly the Surrealists.

All 80 of these works are celebrated at a small but perfectly formed free exhibition at Palazzo Pigorini in Parma called ‘Goya – Due Secoli di Capricci‘ . On two floors of this elegantly restored gallery you get the chance to marvel at Goya’s works which are accompanied by displays of illustrated books and a selection of works by the many artists he influenced – including George Grosz, Max Ernst, Marc Chagall and Salvador Dali with works spanning the period from 1800 to 1950.

What struck me was how contemporary the themes of these satirical prints seem. Western society may have progressed to the point that we can enjoy a more comfortable lifestyle and technologically sophisticated existence but the hypocrisies and cruelties underlying human nature which Goya and his followers expose are all too recognisable.

Goya’s works are vicious and uncompromising attacks on the Spanish aristocracy,the clergy and human vanity in general. The images of monsters, ghouls and other supernatural figures are full of horrific detail and accompanied by acerbic captions.

The message of the most famous print (The Sleep of Reason produces monsters’) certainly is all too topical in our age of heightened religious intolerance and rigid adherence to irrational dogma:
“La fantasia abandonada de la razon, produce monstruos imposibles: unida con ella, es madre de las artes y origen de sus marabillas.” (”Fantasy abandoned by reason produces impossible monsters: united with her, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of their marvels).”

Another image shows a teacher depicted as a donkey (ass) alongside the caption “When the teacher is an ass the student learns only how to bray“.

350px-c2a1lo_que_puede_un_sastre More radical still is the open distaste towards organized religion with print 52 (see left)- ‘Lo que puede un Sastre!’ with the lines “It is superstition that makes people bow and pay trembling homage towards a plank of wood dressed up as a saint” .

The exhibition offers an insight into one of the primary inspirations for Surrealist artists and a sobering reminder that blinkered attitudes towards belief have changed little over the last two centuries.