Pollock To Pop: America's Brush With Dalí

Pollock To Pop: America's Brush With Dalí
December 9, 2005 - April 23, 2006

The Salvador Dalí Museum To Explore Relationship Between American Artists and Salvador Dalí in Pollock To Pop: America's Brush With Dalí

Pollock To Pop: America's Brush With Dalí, which will provide insight to the relationship between post-WWII American Art and Dalí's work from that era. The exhibition will present a moment in the history of art of great change, positioning major works of American post war art, especially those in the manner of Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art in dialog with one another and with the painting of Salvador Dalí.

Featuring some of the most significant works of modern art, Pollock To Pop: America's Brush With Dalí will run from December 9, 2005 until April 23, 2006.

"It is the aim of this exhibition to explore artistic dialogue in a sophisticated and multi-dimensional sense," said William Jeffett, Curator of Special Exhibitions. "The exhibition explores the panorama of options available to Dalí in the post-war years, highlighting those especially he saw on his habitual visits to New York each winter in the decades after the war," he added.

Pollock To Pop: America's Brush With Dalí will include art borrowed from major American museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., private collections and foundations. Holding the largest collection of Salvador Dalí works outside the artist's native Spain, the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg will also display selections from its permanent collection to complement the exhibition.

Paintings in the exhibition will include Number 7, 1952 by Jackson Pollock and works by Roy Lichtenstein, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, James Rosenquist, and Chuck Close. These works will be presented to elucidate Dalí's ongoing exploration of both painterly and image-based means of representation.

"We are very pleased to bring such stellar examples of the American artists who changed the course of art, just as Dalí and the Surrealists changed its course before," said Hank Hine, Executive Director. "This exhibition, made possible by the generous loans of fellow museums and the sponsorship of Progress Energy, is significant as it is the first to look particularly at the vast influence American artists and Salvador Dalí had on each other," he added.

Among Salvador Dalí's art included in Pollock To Pop: America's Brush With Dalí are Madonna (1958) (Metropolitan Museum of Art), Velázquez Painting the Infanta Marguerita with the Lights and Shadows of his Own Glory (1958) and Portrait of My Dead Brother (1963) (both Salvador Dalí Museum). Also included is the museum's most recent acquisition, Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea Which at Twenty Meters Becomes a Portrait of Abraham Lincoln (Homage to Rothko), (Second Version) 1976).

After World War II, the center of energy in the art world shifted to America. Europe had led the western world in generating new approaches to art, both technical and stylistic, since the time of Giotto; Venice, Rome, Amsterdam, Madrid, Berlin and Paris had variously commanded the leading role, until suddenly, all eyes were upon New York. The artists, who caused this excitement, Pollock, de Kooning, and Rothko, among others, had been steeped in Surrealism, in its procedures of spontaneity and its lacerating forms. Now these artists began to externalize the psychic energy of their painting, pouring their vigor, confidence, and even fear into the physical act of painting. Dalí paid close attention to these painters and their new art, identifying with their challenge to the status quo. They in turn were challenged by a new generation of painters concerned more with images derived from popular, mass culture and less with the texture of paint. Dalí again looked at this development as a springboard to new pictorial innovation.

Pollock To Pop: America's Brush With Dalí is made possible by Progress Energy, whose interest in providing for this community the highest quality of cultural and educational experiences provides a benchmark for corporate engagement. In return for their continued support, Progress Energy will provide free admission to Pinellas County residents on September 17, 2005.

Over the past several years the mutually beneficial growing partnership between the Salvador Dalí Museum and Progress Energy has produced significant benefits for both the museum and for our local community. With help by Progress Energy, the museum organized a groundbreaking exhibition of Cubist sculptures Forms of Cubism: Sculpture and the Avant-garde, 1909-1919 in 2002, supported an education grant to provide 10,000 Pinellas County school children free admission to the museum, and sponsored the 2004 celebration of Dalí's centennial year with the two exhibitions An American Collection and Dalí and Mass Culture.

"Progress Energy is a proud supporter of the Salvador Dalí Museum, as it continues to enhance the cultural and economic strength of the region," said Bill Habermeyer, president & CEO of Progress Energy Florida. "Bringing important and groundbreaking exhibits like Pollock To Pop: America's Brush With Dalí continues to enrich our community and provides an educational component to advance our understanding of these unique art works."

The Salvador Dalí Museum, which holds the pre-eminent American collection of this artist's work, is located at 1000 Third Street South, St. Petersburg Florida, and is open daily from 9:30 to 5:30, Thursdays from 9:30 to 8:00, and Sundays from 12:00 to 5:30.

The Salvador Dalí Museum is sponsored in part by the Pinellas County Arts Council, the City of St. Petersburg, the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs, and the Florida Arts Council.

For more information about the Salvador Dalí Museum please visit the museum web site at http://salvadordalimuseum.org/

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