Booklist
"If you compare me with any classical painter whatsoever, then I'm an absolute nonentity," confessed Salvador Daliin his late years. The statement is particularly ironic given Dali's status as one of the most original twentieth-century artists and the twentieth-century artists' general disregard for the masters. But Dali, of course, was never one to run with the crowd. In fact, Dalibuilt his extraordinary technical repertoire by studying the ancient masters of perspective and applying what he had learned to create canvases of his own mad visions. As the writers explain in this collection, Dali's experiments with perspectives were all-encompassing. The catalog examines his study of conventional forms of perspective in Dutch and Italian art, as well as his play with anamorphosisthe perspectival distortion that produces on the canvas elongated forms demanding an oblique viewpoint--such as in The Enigma of William Tell. It also examines Dali's own invention of the "paranoiac-critical method," which produced the famous double image that can be "read" in multiple ways, such as in Apparition of the Face. The exhibition catalog contains 109 color and 61 black-and-white illustrations of Dali's fantastic optical illusions. Veronica Scrol
Book Description
Fascinated with optical effects and visual perception, Salvador Dali created paintings of gripping intensity and astonishing variety. This book focuses on Dali`s use of such pictorial techniques as distorted perspective, double images, and three-dimensional illusions, as well as photographs and holograms, to explore perception, perspective, and the ways that optical illusion affects our sense of reality.
