. . DALI - BUNUEL - LORCA . Image 1 Retrato de Luis Buñuel (Portrait of Luis Buñuel) by Salvador Dalí (1924) Oil on canvas, 70 x 60 cm Salvador Dalí met Luis Buñuel at the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid, and formed an intellectual group with Federico García Lorca and Pepín Bello, among others. One result of the relationship between the filmmaker and the painter was this oil portrait Dalí did in 1924 of his friend Buñuel. In the painting, currently in the Museo Reina Sofía collection, Dalí abandons the Cubist proposals of the years immediately before in order to pursue the aesthetics of the return to Classicism prevalent in continental Europe in the mid-1920s. However, the stark structure of the volumes is reminiscent of a typically Cubist way of working, helping to bring out Buñuel’s forceful personality, his head and shoulders powerfully set against the tiny buildings of the landscape behind him. . . Scattergood-Moore webpage on Luis Bunuel pantherpro-webdesign/cinema/cinema/bunuel.html . Image 2 Photograph (left to right) Jose Bello, Federico Garcia Lorca and Salvador Dali. At Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid,1923. Federico Garcia Lorca was killed in 1936 by Spanish nationalists during the Spanish civil war. He was a poet and a great lover of humanity. He spoke out about the freedom a man inherently dreams for, and was abducted and inevitably killed for it. He inspired artists like Salvador Dali, and Luis Bunuel, and lived in a constant state of passion before his ideals became his guillotine. . . Frederico Garcia Lorca, where has your voice gone to? . . THE BIZARR and PROFOUND . Salvador Dalí is seen as the embodiment of the movement but it doesnt make him a great artist. Buñuels films are truly radical – now thats surrealism!! In Salvador Dalís portrait of Luis Buñuel, the film-maker has a powerful, pugnacious face. He is clearly an authoritative character, someone to be reckoned with. Today, it is interesting to ask which of them was the true artist. Perhaps Dalís admiring portrait is a clue. These friends who met as students made two hilarious, outrageous avant-garde films together, Un Chien Andalou and LAge dOr. They were part of the surrealist movement led by André Breton in Paris between the world wars, and the sequence in Un Chien Andalou when a cloud crossing the moon is intercut with a razor slicing through an eyeball has become perhaps the most infamous of all surrealist dream images. In the 1930s, these brilliant collaborators grew apart. In his memoir My Last Sigh, Buñuel expresses contempt for Dalís financial greed and dalliance with the political right. While Dalí painted portraits of the rich and eventually returned to Francos Spain to create a megalomaniac museum to himself. He pained portraits of his wife, Gala (Elena Ivanovna Diakonova), and kitsch religious art . . . Bunuel, based in Mexico, made in his later years a string of radical, disturbing and intelligent films. . . the Mexican film The Exterminating Angel, (1962) is one of the most disconcertingly profound films ever made. A posh dinner party in a grandiose mansion goes horribly wrong when the guests find they cannot leave. They have not been walled in; they are not being held hostage. Life outside the house goes on as usual. The party of eminent and wealthy people in evening dress simply do not believe they can exit the room. . . The guests are in the grip of a collective delusion that is never explained. They act accordingly. . . no film has ever dramatised with such insight a group of people confronting their own mortality. . . the film is devastating, like the greatest art is devastating. It is one of a sequence of equally great films that Buñuel made in the 1960s. Can any of Dalís late paintings be called great? Can any of his early ones. . .? We live in an age of multimedia art and yet, when it comes to the history of modernism, the same museums that show the grooviest contemporary works are remarkably staid. The finesse of Dalís paintings still keeps him at the forefront of official art history. Tate Modern had a show about Dalí and film. Instead it should have an exhibition about Buñuel and art: for Buñuels films endure as great art in a way that Dalís paintings do not.: by Jonathan Jones for The Guardian, March 2012 theguardian/film/jonathanjonesblog/2012/mar/27/luis-bunuel-now-thats-surrealism . I have shut my windows. I do not want to hear the weeping. But from behind the grey walls. Nothing is heard but the weeping. There are few angels that sing. There are few dogs that bark. A thousand violins fit in the palm of the hand. But the weeping is an immense angel. The weeping is an immense dog. The weeping is an immense violin. Tears strangle the wind. Nothing is heard but the weeping. . . . . Federico Garcia Lorca
Posted on: Mon, 19 Jan 2015 08:41:52 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015