ST. PETERSBURG
Until recently, I would have said the odds were zilch that I would visit a museum exhibition containing Mona Lisa and a Zorb ball. And that they would make sense together. But there I was, in the venerable Salvador Dalí Museum, getting a kick out of "Dalí and da Vinci: Minds, Machines and Masterpieces," an exhibition that examines similar creative impulses in Leonardo da Vinci and Salvador Dalí. • Setting up a comparison with Leonardo would seem to be a doomed exercise for the unfortunate person being measured against a man considered to possess one of the finest minds — if not the finest — in human history. He was a painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer — and genius at all of them. • Then again, Dalí was never one to be left standing in the doorway. His roving mind and outsized ego found an affinity with the Italian polymath as he matured as an artist. In the mid 20th century, Dalí even created a chart ranking great artists in which he put himself slightly below Leonardo but well above Pablo Picasso.
We see that and many more examples of Dalí's fascination and identification with Leonardo in the show. Peter Tush, director of education at the museum, organized the exhibition, and he makes clear that "it's an education show," not one based on original art, as is usual there. Fewer than a dozen paintings and sculptures from the museum's collection are part of it; everything else is a facsimile or reproduction, including the aforementioned Mona Lisa, which is a print of the original painting in the Louvre. The exhibition is a delightful experience that lets us look at the 20th century Spanish artist in new ways and gives us a great overview of Leonardo.
You might have noticed that in second references to Leonardo da Vinci, I use "Leonardo," not "da Vinci." Leonardo is what he has been called for centuries. His full name is Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci, translated as "the son of Messer Piero of Vinci," the village where he was born. He had no proper last name because he was the illegitimate son of a wealthy man and a peasant. We can thank Dan Brown and his Da Vinci Code for today's confusion. The museum, in its exhibition title, knowingly used the incorrect appellation because it's alliterative and because it's familiar to contemporary audiences. I know I'm in the minority here; this is just an FYI.
Little wonder that Dalí (1904-89) was inspired by Leonardo (1452-1519). Both loved to use their creativity in multiple ways. Five galleries explore specific topics: science, masterworks, psychology, mathematics and invention. So the fresco that Leonardo painted of The Last Supper in 1490 is juxtaposed with Dalí's version from 1955. Dalí's work is a clear homage in which he used the golden rectangle, based on the golden ratio, a formula for geometric proportions, which Leonardo admired. It's an intellectual concept that translates into compositions that are pleasing to the eye (and brain, by extension). Dalí went playful in his homage to Mona Lisa. In a photograph by longtime collaborator Philippe Halsman, Dalí's face replaces the woman's, complete with moustache, and her hands are full of cash which, according to Dalí, accounted for her (his) smile.
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Explore all your optionsOne of the biggest stretches Dalí made in connecting himself to Leonardo involved Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis. His Interpretation of Dreams was an inspiration, validating the importance of the subconscious, which was a central part of the surrealist movement in which Dalí was so active for a time. Dalí felt even greater affinity with Leonardo when he discovered another book by Freud, Leonardo da Vinci: A Memory of His Childhood. In it, Freud psychoanalyzes the Renaissance artist. One observation is based on a memory Leonardo recalled of a bird flying into his crib when he was an infant and brushing his face with its tail feathers. Freud claims a hidden image of a bird in the folds of Mary's skirt in Leonardo's painting The Virgin and Child With St. Anne. Dalí picks up on that by putting a hidden bird silhouette in his Portrait of My Dead Brother.
Leonardo was famous for the prescient inventions he drew in his journals (but only after his death, since he never published them himself). Some approximated technology that was developed centuries later, others remain fanciful. Panels of enlarged pages from those journals are included, along with two constructions that have been made according to Leonardo's diagrams, such as an idea for air travel with his "air screw."
Dalí's inventiveness is more whimsical. In the "invention" gallery, which Tush refers to as "crazy land," it's playtime. That Zorb ball is suspended from the ceiling, a reference to photographs of Dalí's Ovocipede from 1960, a large plastic orb that was a human version of the hamster ball. Leonardo's aquatic diving bell drawing is matched with photographs of Dalí in which he wore a diving suit for a lecture in London in 1936 and almost suffocated when the air tube malfunctioned.
Like Leonardo's, Dalí's inventions were rarely realized, so Tush commissioned artist Kevin Brady to bring them to life, including a transparent mannequin that was to be filled with water and fish; here the fish are artificial. The mannequin was named Sangra Clara (clear blood), and she has her own Facebook page and is on the dating site Tinder so you can have a surreal hookup. In general, you'll have a delightfully informative time.
Contact Lennie Bennett at lbennett@tampabay.com or (727) 893-8293.