Exhibition presents Duchamp, Dalí artworks in London
An art exhibition titled ‘Dalí/ducham’, featuring the artworks by two of the twentieth century’s most famous artists Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) and Salvador Dalí (1904-1989), is underway at the Royal Academy of Arts in London through January 3, 2018.
‘Dalí/duchamp’ is the ¿rst exhibition to present the art of two artists in exclusive dialogue. They are usually seen as opposites in almost every respect, yet they shared attitudes to art and life that are manifested in their respective oeuvres on many levels, artdaily.com reported.
Taking their friendship as its starting point, the exhibition demonstrates the aesthetic, philosophical and personal links between them. Over 80 paintings, sculptures, ‘readymades’, photographs, drawings, ¿lms and archival material bring to life the myriad of connections between the works of these two very different creative and intelligent minds.
‘Dalí/duchamp’ is located in Galleries 1, 2 and the Weston Rooms in Burlington House and includes loans from public institutions and private collections across Europe and the US.
Duchamp and Dalí met in the early 1930s through mutual contacts in the Surrealist group. Their friendship was consolidated in 1933 when Duchamp made his ¿rst visit to the ¿shing village of Cadaqués, just a short walk from Dalí’s home in Portlligat. From the late 1950s Duchamp rented a house there each summer, and the two artists remained close until Duchamp’s death in 1968.
At ¿rst glance, they seem like opposites, Dalí was the selfprofessed genius and notorious Surrealist showman whereas Duchamp was a quieter character. Despite their differences, they recognized each other as a fellow traveler, both profoundly committed to individual freedom. They shared a number of core artistic interests such as optics and language, they were pioneers in the use of found objects and admired and publically supported one another’s work. Fundamentally, the two men were united by a shared humor and skepticism which led them to challenge conventional views of art and life.
‘Dalí/duchamp’ has been organized in three main thematic sections focusing on speci¿c points of contact between the artists and capturing the energy and spirit of their friendship and artistic exchange.
Identities explores Duchamp and Dalí as personalities and artistic identities. While Duchamp was 17 years Dalí’s senior, as young artists both followed similar trajectories, initially experimenting with the artistic movements of their day: Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism and Futurism.
It was as a painter that Duchamp came to public attention, however he was to categorically reject the medium, making his last oil painting on canvas in 1918. This section shows the diversity of the canvases painted by both artists, and reveal photographs that examine a conscious play with their public personae and a shared desire to question the role of the artist.
Highlights of this section include Duchamp’s ‘The King and Queen Surrounded by Swift Nudes’, 1912 (Philadelphia Museum of Art) one of his many works that draws upon the iconography of chess, and Dalí’s ‘The First Days of Spring’, 1929 (The Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida).
The ¿nal section, Experimenting with Reality shows how Dalí and Duchamp responded to new ideas about time and space, energy, matter and gravity, quantum theory and atomic physics. Duchamp’s dislike of the purely ‘retinal’ in painting was paradoxically paired with his interest in optical effects, which equally captivated Dalí. Both artists made works that explore a shared fascination with perspective and illusion.
Highlights of this section include Dalí’s major work ‘Christ of Saint John of the Cross’, c. 1951 (Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow) and ‘Apparition of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach’, 1938 (Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut) as well as Duchamp’s ‘The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even’ (The Large Glass), 1915 (reconstruction by Richard Hamilton 1965-6/1985, Tate, London).