Dali Universe

Peter and I went to the Dali Universe museum in London last weekend. Some of the stuff was quite familiar as we'd seen similar pieces years ago at a Dali museum in Paris. I'd also seen a great surrealism exhibiton at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra.

I just love Dali's work. It's so awesomely weird yet somehow all seems to fit together in a bizarre and unexpected way.

Dali's art is not all totally weird though. Some of it is only a bit weird. This includes one of my favourites - Alice in Wonderland. Alice in Wonderland is a 4ft tall bronze sculture of a woman with a long flowy dress. Her hands and hair are blooms of roses and her face is covered with leaves.

My first thought when I saw this sculpture was how pretty the roses were and how elegant the lines of the flowy dress was. When I stood back for a moment and looked at the sculpture as a whole, my next thought was that the line of her centre of gravity appeared to be just outside the base of her gown. For some reason, this seemed to be more incongruous to me than the fact that her hair and hands were made of roses.

When looking at surrealist art, or any art for that matter, I can suspend disbelief for just about everything - except gravity. Woman with flowers for hands. Fine. Guy with drawers coming out of his stomach. Sure. Venus with the neck of a giraffe. Whatever. As long as they appear to be complying with the laws of gravity then they can be as weird as they like!