Disney and Dalí: Architects of the Imagination
$24. Through June 12. 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m., Fri.-Wed.; 10 a.m.-8 p.m., Thurs. The Dalí, One Dalí Blvd., St. Pete. 727-823-3767. theDalí.org.
If you look at the two men long enough, you have a hard time discerning Salvador Dalí from Walter Elias Disney. Oh, not their mustaches, of course — Dalí had a pre-hipster thin handlebar and Disney kept a tidy business ‘stache. No, you see the similarities in their eyes. Both men had a curious gleam in their eyes; look into either’s eyes long enough, then drop your focus to the face and you can’t tell which face it is.
Nowhere does this present more than in the image used to advertise Disney and Dalí: Architects of the Imagination. The photograph of Dalí, retouched to have a definite Disney vibe, causes pause, which is odd, because one man drew a mouse and the other painted melting clocks. Right?
Not so fast.
Let’s start where the exhibit does. Architects of the Imagination offers an historical art timeline of both men’s lives, but it doesn’t begin at the inception of each man’s artistic career; instead, it starts with their largest structures: The far wall shares images of EPCOT’s geodesic dome (which houses Spaceship Earth) and The Dalí Theatre and Museum, and the adjacent walls display Disney’s Sleeping Beauty’s Castle and Dalí’s Dream of Venus. Oversized blueprints for Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, installed at the entrance of Disneyland in Anaheim (Florida’s Walt Disney World Resort houses Cinderella’s Castle), oppose the image of Dream of Venus, designed for the 1939 World’s Fair. A princess castle as architecture may seem postmodern, but placed in the midst of an orange grove it becomes surreal. As for Dream of Venus, an interpretive castle in its own right? It is a grotesque yet amusing spectacle. You walk between the legs of Venus to enter a gallery reminiscent of the inside of the Fair’s pavilion — only instead of water tanks filled with “real” sirens, these are painted backdrops.
When viewed together, these two icons make you ponder: Are these two different men, or two alternate realities that share the same jumping off point? Throughout the exhibit, different art drives home differences. While Disney penned straightforward editorial cartoons for his high school paper, Dalí spent his teen years exhibiting surrealist work. Disney’s earliest animation delights in its simple movements and joyous bright colors; Dalí’s films made copious use of the dissolve to create live-action surrealism. In one corner, Disney’s cheerful Skeleton Dance loops on one wall as Catholic hierarchy morphs to skeletons wearing big hats as Dalí’s live-action L’Age D’Or plays continuously.
This pattern of diverged similarities continues throughout the exhibit and, as it does, you start to notice the commonalities, most evident in Disney’s work. Dalí considered Disney one of three American surrealists (he named Harpo Marx and Cecil B. DeMille as the other two). Fantasia, which always seemed a bit trippy, takes on new artistic import when framed by Dalí’s melting clocks and geometric backgrounds. As for seeing hints of Disney’s less surreal elements in Dalí’s work? Not so much. Both men had definite styles; Disney, a more commercialized artist, softened much of his more intense surreal elements and blended them with straightforward anthropomorphised animals (inasmuch as a pantsless duck in a bow tie can be straightforward) while Dalí honed his unmistakable surrealistic skills to become a fine artist, becoming the poster child for the movement. Disney bent reality with his animations; Dalí twisted it in his paintings.
The two men worked together on Destino, the main attraction of the exhibit. Disney approached Dalí about creating the film, but World War II and financial troubles at Disney’s film studio prevented its completion. The animated film (finished by a team of Disney animators well after both men died) navigates flawlessly between the two men’s styles, merging them seamlessly. The story comes from Dalí, but so much of Disney resonates with the story it’s hard to separate the two.
Nowhere is this union more apparent than in Dahlia’s transformation. Dahlia begins this short film as a shapely woman, undressed but never shown naked (this is Disney, after all). She dances, captivating Chronos, and as she dances she comes across a shadow resembling a ball gown. She dives into the image and emerges not as a shapely woman but a doe-eyed Disney princess.
She continues to dance and as she turns and twirls, we see first a glimpse of Disney, then Dalí, then Dalí, then Disney, until it’s impossible to tell the difference.
This article appears in May 5-11, 2016.