Since I mentioned lobsters and Salvador Dalí in yesterday’s post, here’s a quick follow up about him. Fans of the artist will indeed be happy to hear there is a new exhibition currently on at Rome’s Vittoriano organised in collaboration with the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí.
Entitled “Dalí. Un artista, un genio” (Dalí. An Artist, A Genius), the event has actually got a very strong link with Italy since it looks - through paintings, sketches, drawings, photographs, films, assorted documents and objects (such as the Vespa scooter teh artist used in 1962 and that he called Dulcinea, as a tribute to Cervantes) - at the Italian connections in Dali’s work.
There are entire sections of the exhibition that look at the influence of Italian art on Dalí (tackling in particular his obsession with Raphael, Michelangelo and de Chirico, but also the inspirations taken from Dante) and at the relation between the artist and Italy through his trips to Rome, Venice and Bomarzo, where he visited the local Park of the Monsters, with its rocks that looks as surreal as his paintings.
While interior design fans will be happy to rediscover objects designed for brands such as Alessi and lightly fortified wine producer Rosso Antico, fashion aficionados will be able to rediscover Dalí’s work as set designer of ballets at Venice’s La Fenice and his costumes for theatre performances such as As You Like It by William Shakespeare, staged by the Compagnia Italiana di Prosa, directed by Luchino Visconti (Teatro Eliseo, 26th November 1948) and starring Vittorio Gassman, Rina Morelli, Paolo Stoppa and Marcello Mastroianni.
The costumes for this performance were designed by Dalí (Rosalind and Celia's are extremely surreal: in the sketches the two characters hold in their hands a skirt lifting device resembling the crutch that accessorised Dalí's "Costume for the Year 2045") and made by the Mangili Palmer fashion house by costume designer Eva Mangili (both Marta Pamer and Eva Mangili actually deserve a post on their own).
There is also another fashion-related connection with this production of Shakespeare’s play: Italian journalist Irene Brin (this site, as my readers know, is a pun on her name), who also translated into Italian the autobiography The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, organised at The Obelisk, the art gallery she owned with her husband Gaspero del Corso, an exhibition dedicated to Dalí featuring the sketches for the As You Like It costumes, that Brin hilariously but aptly described as a mix of Borromini and Vogue, Bernini and Harper’s Bazaar.
Dalí defined his costumes instead as "morphological and prophetic", adding "they are not simply 18th century clothes, but clothes that were on the point of being realised, of taking on substance. Clothes that threatened to become just that, clothes that, in ten years, pretty much all of us will be wearing."
The exhibition at Brin's gallery also became the background for a fashion photo shoot by Pasquale De Antonis that Brin did for Italian magazine Bellezza (January 1949).
The latter, entitled “Salvador Dalí in sartoria” (Salvador Dalí at the dressmaker), featured dresses by famous Italian designers of those times, such as the Fontana Sisters.
A final suggestion to the fashion design students/fashion designers who will be visiting the Dalí event in Rome: don't forget to bring a notebook to do your own sketches of the costume sketches and illustrations.
“Dalí. Un artista, un genio” is at Rome’s Vittoriano until 30th June 2012.
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