Who wouldn’t want to go inside a Salvador Dali painting? I thought as I heard about a new virtual reality exhibit feature at the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. I have always wanted to check out this museum showcasing one of recent history’s most intriguing artists, which, oddly I thought (and so apropos) happened to be located not so far from me in St. Pete, of all places. How a Salvador Dali museum happened to be in St. Pete is a whole story there, but a bit later on that.
Salvador Dali is generally known as a Surrealist with his most famous painting of wilted clocks in The Persistence of Memory. However, the museum shows a far richer and more complete body of work that extends beyond the Surrealist movement of the 1930s. Dali the man, with his preferences, insecurities, vulnerabilities, eccentricities, and motivations is revealed throughout this extensive collection. The museum does a great job of showing Dali’s artistic progression starting when he was a teenager in Catalonia, working in impressionism and cubism, through his rise as a Surrealist in the 1920s and ‘30s, his exile to America from 1940-1948, his fascination with scientific discoveries in nuclear physics and his application of that to a form of art that he dubbed “Nuclear Mysticism” and then his experimentation with other art forms such as film leading to a collaboration with Walt Disney and other filmmakers.
This brings us to a special exhibit now showing at the museum through June titled “Dare to Dream: Disney & Dali: Architects of the Imagination.” Walt Disney and Dali were contemporaries, each rising in stature and recognition at about the same time in the 1930s. When Dali came to America in 1940 to avoid the expanding war in Europe, he went to California and met Disney in person—and it is this fascinating dynamic of two highly creative minds that the special exhibit explores.
Dali wanted to further delve into film as a medium for his art. In France he had collaborated with Luis Buñuel on two surrealist films, Un Chien Andalou in 1929 and L’Age D’Or in 1930 with mixed success. Walt Disney, however, had become known as being on the cutting edge of filmmaking with innovations and developing his own technologies that enhanced the viewer’s experience. For example, just synchronizing sound with cartoons in Steamboat Willie was an early innovation. Using movable cameras through a 3-D drawn set to show depth was another innovation. It was this culture of innovation that drew Dali to Disney. Disney likewise was naturally interested in an artist like Dali with his dream-like visuals and creative spirit that he could bring to the Disney team of artists. This shows up in a movie like Fantasia which broke new ground for Disney as a master work of art even though it was less than successful commercially.
How Dali would be amazed and appreciative of the technologies available today that enhance the experience through multiple mediums. This brings us to one of the highlights of the current exhibit at the museum: taking one of Dali’s paintings, Archeological Reminiscence of Millet’s “Angelus” (1935) and providing a multi-sensory virtual reality experience. The painting itself is classic Dali in his Surrealist period: haunting and enigmatic. Simply looking at the painting, at a distance, one feels out of place, yet, go inside through the immersive virtual reality tour and you are suddenly on another planet, probably located in Dali’s mind, exploring some depths that keep you feeling uneasy and off-balance, yet knowing it’s still a fascinating place and you want to stay a while longer because you’ve never been there before. You are used to the sunny blue skies and verdant foliage of Florida, not the chalk-grey barren landscape with imposing towers ruling as oppressive masters. The experience lasted three minutes, and since we were one of the first in the museum at the opening and no one else was in line at that time, we got to go again – what a score! The only thing that would have been even better was to somehow link up with my wife, who was right next to me in her own VR world, and explore together. But perhaps that would take away from the chilling aloneness that is meant to be felt.
Here is a taste:
Dali would have loved how we can now take one of his paintings drawn on canvas, a medium readily available to him at the time, and expand its boundaries to be experienced through a new immersive medium. Dali said that a true artist is not one who is inspired, but one who inspires others. I think new forms of medium such as VR will allow artists new ways to be inspired.
There is much more in the museum and in the Dali & Disney exhibit, but that is for you to explore and discover.
I was interested in how this museum came to be in St. Pete. That story goes back to 1942 when shortly before getting married, A. Reynolds Morse and Eleanor Morse attended a Dalí exhibit at the Cleveland Museum of Art. That’s when they were drawn to Dali’s works and later purchased what would be the first of hundreds of paintings, Daddy Longlegs of the Evening – Hope! (see below) In fact, they ended up becoming a major patron of Dali. Reynolds Morse was a businessman who made his fortune in injection molding supply in Cleveland. I was wondering if Morse had any connection to the Charles Hosmer Morse Museum of American Art in Winter Park, FL. After doing some research, it doesn’t seem so. There is one interesting coincidental Winter Park connection, however. Eleanor Morse (nee Reese) went to Rollins College and studied music.
The Tampa Bay Tribune describes how the vast collection held by the Morse couple came to be located in St. Pete:
To avoid the collection’s dispersal for tax reasons when they died, the Morses decided to give it to a museum with the promise that it would be kept intact. Every major institution they approached wanted the right to sell some of it.
The Wall Street Journal wrote a story in January 1980 about their dilemma that caught the eye of Jim Martin, a St. Petersburg lawyer. He and a city official called on them in Cleveland to pitch the idea of a Dali Museum in St. Petersburg.
The first site was in a renovated warehouse, however, the present beautifully designed building, was completed in 2008 and sits right on the waterfront. Reynolds Morse died in 2000 at the age of 85 and Eleanor lived until age 97, passing away in 2010. What a significant and generous gift they made.
The museum is open daily 10am to 5:30pm except Thursday when it stays open until 8:00pm. The Dali and Disney exhibit runs through June 12. If you have kids, check out the programs they have specifically for children. We tagged along for a little bit on the back end of a school tour and the guide was fantastic engaging with the students.
The first Dali painting purchased by Reynolds and Eleanor Morse and now displayed at the Salvador Dali museum in St. Petersburg, FL:
Daddy Longlegs of the Evening – Hope!
