Contextualising Salvador Dalí

I was apprehensive about going to Inside Dalí, Spark Arena’s newest digital exhibition centred around the enigmatic surrealist Salvador Dalí (1904-1989). I was apprehensive about visiting this show for the same reasons I never visited Van Gogh Alive and Michelangelo: A Different View, digital exhibitions that previously found favour with Auckland audiences. The apparent commerciality of these shows felt at odds with the cultural significance of their subjects. As someone accustomed to the traditional gallery or museum format, exhibiting art in the same places I’ve watched musicals and basketball games seemed incongruous. Plus no actual works by Dalí, Van Gogh, or Michelangelo were to be shown. These circumstances have been enough to deter me from visiting in the past, however, what I found in Inside Dalí was that the entertainment and educational value of such shows should not be so readily dismissed.

The provocation to inspire and inform is apparent from the outset of Inside Dalí. The very first space you enter is filled with sprawling wall texts that take you through a timeline of Dalí’s life and achievements. Select works are dotted alongside these panels of text to signpost dates and represent key moments. Another room is dedicated to documentary clips of Dalí, his homes and his projects, streamed on small screens. What we come to learn is that Dalí was proficient in many mediums, including painting and drawing, but also music, ballet, film, illustration, and architecture. Dalí succeeded in mastering and subverting every medium he touched, cementing his status as a formidable artist-cum-genius. While Inside Dalí shies away from the more unsavoury and unpopular aspects of Dalí, like his glorification of fascism and insurmountable greed, it does not disguise his narcissism as anything other than that; trumped only by his love for his wife, muse, and manager, Gala.

Inside Dalí does well to keep the scale of these first spaces modest and rather intimate, fostering a closeness to Dalí as a person before bringing you to the magnificence and magnitude of his work as shown on the vast screens than hang from the arena’s ceiling. You cannot help but gawk at the true enormity of Dalí’s vision, enhanced by the scale these screens allow. Having had the privilege to see some of Dalí’s original works up close at MoMA, I was rather surprised by their small scale; The Persistence of Memory is barely bigger than the gift shop postcard of it. Inside Dalí’s immense screens allow you to see his works in so much more detail, granting viewers a closer look at the incredible intricacy of his world.

The highlight of the show is undeniably the large central room where one is invited to enjoy a sensory spectacle of remarkable proportions. All four walls screen a forty-minute film of Dalí’s work collaged in an extraordinary fashion. Dalí’s dreamscapes are brought to life, his vision spilling out of the frame with spectacular movement and dimension. Stripped back Thom Yorke-esque electronica resounds through the space. An AI render of Dalí appears to tell us more. And, most significantly, littered among Dalí’s own work are reference points like Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas (1656) and Piero della Francesca’s Brera Madonna (1472–1474) that bolster the historical weight of Dalí’s work. Seeing what influenced Dalí, I thought of who Dalí may have inspired from Artfull. I thought of Chloe June Summerhayes’ referential Rubenesque compositions and melting forms. Giles Smith’s barren dreamscapes. Paul Darragh’s visual puzzles. Karen Rubado’s ability to make the everyday strange. Toby Raine’s abstracted muses, and Maree Horner's impossible scenarios that question 'proper' placement.

Inside Dalí promises to bring you into the mind of one of the most iconic artists of the twentieth century. Those acquainted with the surrealist movement might expect Freudian rhetoric to abound, yet what we are presented with instead are Dalí’s influences, an art history lesson by stealth. Inside Dalí presents an artist who was a product of his own unique talent, but also his training, his contemporaries, and, above all, his Gala. Dalí’s genius was nurtured, not biotic. The show contextualises Salvador Dalí the man and demonstrates that any artist, however revolutionary, is influenced by factors outside of their own creative tact.

There is an irrefutable appeal to attending Inside Dalí, for those familiar with his work or not. This exhibit demonstrates that there is much more to Dalí than melting clocks and a fantastic moustache. Go for the promise of a good day out but stay for the fascinating facts, and perhaps leave with an interest in finding out more.

Inside Dali closes at Spark Arena on 3rd July. It then heads to Christchurch's Air Force Museum, with new dates to be announced soon.