At seven he wanted to be Napoleon. At 10, he had labeled himself an impressionist artist. And by 25 he was already a master artist with ground-breaking styles and impeccable technique. He is Salvador Dali (1904-1989), one of the 20th century's most recognized artists, and he is currently the featured artist at the National Palace Museum.
Dali is often grouped with Joan Miro and Pablo Picasso as among the best three Spanish artists of the last century and the Palace Museum is privileged to have 38 oil paintings, 47 watercolor and drawings on loan from the Dali Theater Museum of Figueres, courtesy of the Gala Salvador Dali Foundation.
PHOTO: CHEN CHENG-CHANG, TAIPEI TIMES
While the palace museum is traditionally a venue to display classic Chinese and Asian art, museum director Du Cheng-sheng (
PHOTO: CHEN CHENG-CHANG, TAIPEI TIMES
Dali displays more provincialism in his works than his peers such as Picasso. He wrote art criticism in Catalan, the local language of his hometown Figueres, where he lived his whole life except for eight years spent in the US between 1940-1948. Despite the regional elements of his work, Dali came to be known internationally as a major artist.
The museum director said Dali's uniqueness lies in his exceptionally innovative ability to challenge custom and subverting traditional aesthetics and social values.
PHOTO: CHEN CHENG-CHANG, TAIPEI TIMES
Dali was, for a period, a leading member of the surrealist movement, which began in France in 1920 and was championed by the writer Andre Breton and the painter Rene Magritte. The style was characterized by its subversive investigations into the relationship between dreams and reality, inspired in large part by Freudian psychoanalysis. Dali became known for filling his canvasses with nightmarish, irrational dreamscapes that hint at the subconscious, and broach such taboo topics as sex and death.
PHOTO: CHEN CHENG-CHANG, TAIPEI TIMES
Mostly known as a painter and sculptor, Dali also worked in experimental film and theater and even designed windows for department stores and jewelry. He is also one of the rare artists to make a fortune while alive, thanks mainly to his tireless self-promotion.
The Palace Museum exhibition includes a reproduction of one of Dali's classic installations -- a red, lush sofa in the shape of a woman's lips. The Dali Theater Museum of Figueres director Monsterat Agues, was actually so impressed by the Taiwan-made reproduction's semblance to the original that he asked to bring it back to Spain to replace the worn-out original.
Crowds are most likely to swarm to Dali's oil paintings, among them Singularidades (1935), one of the highlight pieces of the show. This piece -- which appears for the first time outside Spain -- contains Dali's signature melting clocks that have come to almost define the surrealist style.
In this painting, the melting clock -- inspired originally by melting Camembert cheese -- is placed to the right of a ghostly-looking woman on a red sofa. The image of the melting clock evokes the concept of a distortion of time, a concept which is typically viewed as rigid and linear. The woman, who lacks facial features, but has straw-like hair, appears to be singing. The image is horrifying, not unlike Dali's other depictions of women, who often have drawers extending from their bodies. The drawers are another form of Dali's exploration of psychology.
Willington Lee (
A series of seminars has been arranged to accompany the Dali show before it moves on to Shanghai in May. The first discussions is on Feb. 16 with psychiatrist Wang Hao-wei (
For more information on the seminars, call 273-6000 ext 1301 or 1302.
April 28 to May 4 During the Japanese colonial era, a city’s “first” high school typically served Japanese students, while Taiwanese attended the “second” high school. Only in Taichung was this reversed. That’s because when Taichung First High School opened its doors on May 1, 1915 to serve Taiwanese students who were previously barred from secondary education, it was the only high school in town. Former principal Hideo Azukisawa threatened to quit when the government in 1922 attempted to transfer the “first” designation to a new local high school for Japanese students, leading to this unusual situation. Prior to the Taichung First
The Ministry of Education last month proposed a nationwide ban on mobile devices in schools, aiming to curb concerns over student phone addiction. Under the revised regulation, which will take effect in August, teachers and schools will be required to collect mobile devices — including phones, laptops and wearables devices — for safekeeping during school hours, unless they are being used for educational purposes. For Chang Fong-ching (張鳳琴), the ban will have a positive impact. “It’s a good move,” says the professor in the department of
On April 17, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) launched a bold campaign to revive and revitalize the KMT base by calling for an impromptu rally at the Taipei prosecutor’s offices to protest recent arrests of KMT recall campaigners over allegations of forgery and fraud involving signatures of dead voters. The protest had no time to apply for permits and was illegal, but that played into the sense of opposition grievance at alleged weaponization of the judiciary by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to “annihilate” the opposition parties. Blamed for faltering recall campaigns and faced with a KMT chair
Article 2 of the Additional Articles of the Constitution of the Republic of China (中華民國憲法增修條文) stipulates that upon a vote of no confidence in the premier, the president can dissolve the legislature within 10 days. If the legislature is dissolved, a new legislative election must be held within 60 days, and the legislators’ terms will then be reckoned from that election. Two weeks ago Taipei Mayor Chiang Wan-an (蔣萬安) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) proposed that the legislature hold a vote of no confidence in the premier and dare the president to dissolve the legislature. The legislature is currently controlled