my day at the art museum

this weekend my parents decided to come down and spend some time with their last and final spawn. as part of the festivities we decided to go check out the art exhibit at the university of utah. the exhibit titled "from monet to picasso" has been generating a pretty big buzz. from what i have heard, the exhibit has basically been sold out everyday. honestly, i wasn't super excited about the exhibit. i was excited to spend time with my parents, and i really enjoy art, but i really don't find myself too interested in picasso, monet, and gauguin. the one thing that excited me was the fact that the exhibit did include some of picasso's pieces from his cubist era, and it also included two paintings by salvador dali. i really don't find myself too interested in dali's paintings, but at the same time i was excited to see one in real life. i have seen countless paintings by picasso and monet so dali offered a breath of fresh air. 

two pieces of inspiration and insight

1. i have never really understood dali and his surrealist approach, but one bit of information i learned at the museum did amaze me. it is said that in order to portray his surrealist, dreamy paintings dali would sit in a chair and hold a key in his hand. to him a key symbolized access to an alternative reality represented by dreams.  holding this key, he would try to slowly fall asleep. as he fell asleep his body would relax and then he would start to dream. once his body had relaxed enough his hand would loosen up and he would drop the key on the floor, causing him to wake up. he would then go to the canvas and try to reproduce the surreal nature of his dreams. in the mind of dali, he was painting something just as real and as beautiful as a mountain landscape. 

2. i don't exactly care for picasso, except for his cubist paintings. i find cubism extremely interesting and innovating. most artists attempt to portray the three-dimensional nature of objects by using different shades of light. when light is used properly, the objects come alive on the canvas. picasso and other cubists discovered another way to portray objects in a three-dimensional manner; cubism. to me cubism makes perfect sense. the object is simply portrayed in a three-dimensional form by incorporating many different angles to form one complete object. at first it looks like the object is being torn and skewed in all directions, but the object is actually being seen in a three-dimensional form. the viewer might see a face portrayed from both a side and front profile persepective. cubism = brilliance