NEW YORK.- Salvador Dalí first arrived in New York in 1934 and immediately became a flamboyant part of the city's life and art scene. Engaging with the artists and celebrities who helped create the spirit of the city at the time, Dalí pursued his interests in art and commerce, the urban streets, and friendships with members of polite society and those in the rebellious underground. This program brings together scholars and filmmakers who address the impact of Dalí's diverse activities on his work and on the New York artistic community. Participants include Callie Angell, Adjunct Curator, The Andy Warhol Film Project, The Whitney Museum of American Art, who discusses the relationship between Dalí and Andy Warhol; filmmaker Jack Bond, who presents clips of his own film, Dalí in New York, and reflections on his friendship with the artist; Jonas Mekas, filmmaker and Director, Anthology Film Archives, who shares the films he made of Dalí; and Ingrid Schaffner, Senior Curator, Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania, who explores Dalí and the 1939 World's Fair. Anne Morra, Assistant Curator, Department of Film, and co-organizer of the exhibition Dalí: Painting and Film, moderates a discussion.
The encore presentation of the iconic avant-garde films Un Chien andalou (1929) and L'Age d'or (1930) gives theatergoers a second chance to appreciate Salvador Dalí's filmmaking partnership with Luis Buñuel. The pair first met in 1922 as students at the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid, where they shared an innovative visual language of experimentation, rebellion, and critical discourse on bourgeois society. In January of 1929, Buñuel wrote to his former classmate José "Pepín" Bello de Larrasa that while visiting Dalí in Cadaqués, the pair completed the screenplay for Un Chien andalou in six days. "We had to look for the plot line. Dalí said to me, ‘I dreamed last night of ants swarming around in my hands', and I said, ‘Good Lord, and I dreamed that I had sliced somebody or other's eye. There's the film, let's go and make it.'"
