Clinton Morgan ARTWORKS
FACTUALLY INCORRECT (probably) BLOG No.1
Good Afternoon,
I’ve been doing some market research and have come to some kind of conclusion that this website might be better off with some sort of blog in order to generate interest and traffic. As a web-log (to use the full term) is a form of writing I thought I’d talk about a time when I used my local library as an adolescent to garner information about my artistic hero, Salvador Dali.
I first come across Dali in a book about surrealism in my school library. I then later would obtain an anthology of his paintings with a brief biography about the man where I learnt about a few legends, I would later come to see some of the original works in galleries such as the Tate in London and the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid.
I did visit Port Ligat but that was before I came a fan and so was unable to appreciate it at the time. Though I was mesmerised by a postcard of ‘The Metamorphosis of Narcissus’. Anyway, on to my local library and how brilliant they were to a young wet behind the ears (to use an expression by dolts who nowadays use terms like “snowflakes” when describing the younger generation) Dali fan.
I learnt that I could fill in a small form and order any book I like that wasn’t in the library. I can’t remember if I had to pay a small fee but I probably did. When you’re a teenager (well at least when I was) money is a price worth paying for something you love. On the form there were options for title and author. I just simply wrote ‘Dali’ and left it to chance. Well, dear reader, that was a ‘chance’ worth taking. I think I may have received four or five books and the ones I particularly remember well were ‘The Secret Life of Salvador Dali’ and ‘The Diary of a Genius’ by the man himself and ‘My Life With Dali’ by Amanda Lear. Decades later I would eventually obtain a copy of his only novel, ‘Hidden Faces’ and have yet to read his illustrated versions of The Bible and ‘Alice In Wonderland’. Two other books I’ve yet to read by him are ‘Fifty Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship’ and ‘Les Dîners de Gala’.
I would like to read those three books again one of these days. What I remember from them is very little. Dali remembering what it was like in the womb, the screenplay for ‘Un Chien Andalou’ which apparently was written on the back of a shoebox, a workman at Dali’s home expressing a “good gracious” style profanity when seeing Christ’s genitals exposed in a work in progress (they were later covered up and the painting became Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus)) and Dali laughing at a film prop collapsing whilst he was on the beach with Amanda Lear and Gala because (according to Amanda) he hated cinema. Though memory being prone to faults if I read those books again I may have to revise this blog so please don’t take what I say as facts.
Anyway this has been my first blog and I suppose the message to take from this is follow your curiosity. In the meantime why not take time and listen to the poet John Cooper Clarke discuss Salvador Dali on ‘Great Lives’.
Over and out!
Clinton Morgan
Wednesday 17th April 14:59 GMT