Dali spotting in Singapore
“Like elements winking into life in a dreamscape”, as Clara Chow of the Straits Times put it, 10 monumental sculptures by Salvador Dali have been appearing on Singapore’s streets in batches this past week. Thailand has a coup; Singapore imports Dali.
But, curiously, the cautious city-state erected the statuary at midnight to cut back on the number of gawkers.
They’re part of a “Dali In Singapore” exhibition coninuing until October 14, and they’re all for sale. The biggest piece, “Space Elephant”, photo above from AFP, will set you back US$1.7 million and not so much be a conversation piece in you garden as alert NASA to your lunacy.
Opera Gallery is the place to call if you want to buy, wonder aloud or complain. The Straits Times says it cooked up a deal with art dealer Beniamino Levi’s Stratton Foundation. Dali’s old buddy runs this outfit and it runs the Dali Espace Montmartre in Paris and Dali Universe in London.
They negotiated for 15 months, it says here, and Opera finally agreed to buy a bunch of the pieces as well as insuring the show. Things were ready to roll months ago, then stormy seas – something to do with El Nino, it says here – and repair work needed on the elephant’s butt, it says here, delayed the plot.
Sal would’ve loved this.
I did not know that Singapore already has a great big chunk of Dali, permanently. The bronze sculpture “Homage To Newton” – a heart suspended in an open torso – sits outside United Overseas Bank headquarters.
Besides the 10 new huge sculptures dotted around the city, there are 30 smaller bronzes, drawings and paintings at the gallery, the the table-sized “Dance of Time II” a steal at $24,000. For reasons that can only be pecuniary, the exhibition also includes works by Picasso, Chagall and Fernando Botero.
Singapore being Singapore, the Straits Times goggles for a while at the costs involved, and finally asks Opera owner Gilles Dyan, “What the???”
The name “Dali”, Dyan replies, speaks for itself.
