Dali paints pictures

Called Dali: Painting and Film, the exhibit is the first of its kind to explore Dali8217;s relationship with cinema. His love of film is referenced in his earliest works, which were driven by both his wild imagination and interest in Freudian theory. He also collaborated with Spanish director Luis Buntilde;uel on the 1929 Un Chien Andalou.

8220;He realised that a lot of his own phobia were a very fertile terrain for creation,8221; says Sara Cochran, co-curator of the Dali exhibit.

But just as he brought cinematography technique to his drawings and paintings, his perspective of an unstable universe would find its way onto the big screen, from his work with Buntilde;uel to Disney.

Included in the exhibition are a number of unrealised film projects, one which he planned for the Marx brothers. Dali had met Harpo Marx in Paris in 1936. A year later, while on a trip to New York, the painter flew to Los Angeles to pay his newly acquainted friend a visit. That8217;s when he began contemplating the idea of a collaboration. The premise? A Spanish businessman exiled to America falls in love with a surrealist woman, who only appears with her head covered by flowers. And she8217;s best friends with the Marx brothers.

8220;There are different images that have been fleshed out that draw on things that he thought of before such as the May West lip couch, which is done in some of the images of the surrealist woman8217;s apartment,8221; Cochran says.
-SANDRA BARRERA NYT