Trust in Art

Abstract

Trust in Art Yahia Lababidi (bio) Painting was called “silent poetry.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson Eager to emerge from isolation and encounter art and (safely) others, a writer in Florida takes in Van Gogh Alive at the Dalí Museum and finds a “strange beast” aspiring to be “a form of edutainment, geared for an impatient, digital age, accustomed to overstimulation.” Living in Florida for over a decade, I’ve been meaning to visit the Dalí Museum for a while. When I learned they were also featuring a van Gogh exhibit, fusing art and technology, that was all the incentive I needed to make the four-hour trek to St. Petersburg. The Dalí boasts that it is the first venue in North America, where most of the shows are held, to host Van Gogh Alive. Yet, beginning in 2021 and through 2022, spaces throughout Europe, Asia, and the Middle East are taking turns receiving this wildly successful, hard-to-classify art experience—a total of some seventy cities worldwide, with a few like New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Charlotte, and Toronto even offering yoga classes within the exhibit! The only tickets I could find available for the Dalí–van Gogh doubleheader were for 8:30pm. Considering the museum closes at 10:00pm, that meant I had to do something I dislike: rush. So as not to give myself indigestion, I decided ahead of time to split my precious hour and a half evenly between the two greats. In honor of the incorrigible surrealist, the building housing his permanent collection was, suitably, visually arresting and fantastical. Click for larger view View full resolution VAN GOGH ALIVE AT THE DALÍ MUSEUM (ST. PETERSBURG, FL). ©2021 – SALVADOR DALÍ MUSEUM, INC., ST. PETERSBURG, FL. © 2020 GRANDE EXPERIENCES Designed by architect Yann Weymouth, from the parking lot you are greeted by the otherworldly structure: a rectangle [End Page 57] with eighteen-inch-thick hurricane-proof walls, from which emerges a giant free-form geodesic glass bubble known as “The Enigma.” Once inside, I savored the deservedly celebrated classics by Dalí that I’d only seen in reproduction, showcasing his playful, dynamic virtuosity: from the hallucinatory The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory to the technical brilliance of Living Still Life. I was captivated by my encounter, face-to-canvas, with the late works of Dalí—following his break with the surrealists—who had come to judge the art of his contemporaries as spiritually barren. In 1950 the ever-evolving, ever-curious artist coined the term “Nuclear Mysticism” to describe this phase, preoccupied with the mysteries of science and religion. The monumental canvases on display at the museum from this period are awe-inspiring, in scope and scale. Also rewarding, on another level, were the unexpected pieces from his early years, when the young artist was still discovering his voice and imitating his teachers. The permanent collection is a real eye-opener and a mind-bending audience with a master—made all the more memorable for having been my first museum outing since our global pandemic began! After being cooped up for so long, I admit I was starved for culture and (safe) human contact. Masked up and social-distancing, I was not prepared, however, for the van Gogh “exhibition.” The forty-five-minute experience (ideal timing) is also dreamlike, only more in the sense of a group psychedelic trip, where we the attendees “turn on, tune in, drop out,” letting the sound and light show wash over us. Unlike the Dalí experience, there are no gracefully mounted canvases for the museumgoers to slide up to, tilting their heads to sip and drink in the brushstrokes, all polite smiles and hushed appreciation. For those looking to be fine-tuned by the civilizing influence of Beauty—standing still and reflecting in the refracted light of another’s encounter with the Sublime—the van Gogh presented here is something of a shock to the fragile system. Alone together, huddled in the dark, we are ravished by hundreds of beloved images by the postimpressionist Dutch painter—ecstatic sunflowers, swirly starry nights, moody self-portraits—cast on walls, ceilings, floors by high-definition projectors and accompanied by a musical score...