Admittedly, I am terrible with names, and dates, especially as they relate to periods on historical timelines. It is next to impossible for me to arbitrarily remember, without concerted effort, who did what to whom, and when and how and why they did it, unless I can somehow illustrate the connections between events in ways that are meaningful to me. It is the connective tissue in the histories of the who’s and what’s that interest me, and allows active (interested) memory to take the place of forced memorization. The Dali exhibit at the Tate Modern gave me the connective tissue I needed, not only to remember his timeline (where he fits in the history of art, film, and society), but it also provided a new way of interpreting and understanding his work.

Overall, what was most compelling, what was most educational, was the opportunity to see a large collection of Dali’s work in one collective space, as a cohesive unit. When considering an artist’s work, sometimes it is easy to get lost in an “anti-gestalt” frame of mind. It is easy to forget that the whole is sometimes more than the sum of the parts. After walking through the various rooms in the exhibit, it is apparent that Dali’s works cannot be taken independently of each other. Each piece builds on the last, or extrapolates from something that came prior. Everything is necessarily connected. (This is even true at the individual level. In “Invisible Man”, he manages to pull the ultimate visual/psychological trick by incorporating smaller objects into a larger vision in a double-image piece. The individual objects comprise the grander image.) Even between mediums, from film to drawing to painting and back, the connections never falter. If anything, the crisscrossing of inspirational tools seemed to strengthen Dali’s creative flow. His use of symbolism (ants, dead/decaying animals, disembodied hands/heads/bodies, etc) translates from one plane to another seamlessly. Freud would have been proud.

Part of the benefit of seeing Dali’s work as a collection, rather than individual pieces, is the new frame of reference it provides. In the past, I had always made the “mistake” of trying to interpret his art as somehow real. I wanted the images to translate to real settings, to real things, to real places and times. In retrospect, it is painfully obvious that reality as I see it is irrelevant. What is especially important in that revelation is seeing Dali (and his work), in/on/as/ film. Dali’s work, very literally, IS everything film. For me, this is especially true of the animated Disney collaboration, Destino. Seeing his images presented in this way made him make sense. Despite the fact that the film never reached its final production stage, as it is viewed now, during Dali’s lifetime, his intentions are abundantly clear (thanks to John Hench, fellow Disney animator, who worked with Dali on the project originally).

In watching Destino, I found myself referencing modern day animation… some of the following popped up: Aeon Flux, the old cartoon (most definitely NOT the recent movie), Sleeping Beauty (representative of old Disney animation in general), Hercules (new Disney… especially the Megara character)





I love the spontaneous mental links you can’t help but make all day, every day...

-Laurel Butcher