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Salvador Dali's exploration of the depths of the subconscious mind in his paintings and his powerful images tapped into the fantasies, dreams, fears and hallucinations of entire generations, and he should be remembered as a consummate draughtsman, and a pioneer of Surrealism. An artist who made modern art popular and accessible.
“The Persistence of Memory” is for good reason, the most celebrated surrealist canvas ever painted. Created long before his descent into self-parody, it really is the work of a crazy genius.
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"What a brilliant series this is" - Stephen Fry on Twitter 12 December 2020
Rococo was an art period of the mid-1700s, and here we see a famous example called The Swing
by Fragonard. It is sickeningly sweet. It's over-the-top. Fluffy dress, fluffy trees,
fluffy everything. There's nothing redeeming about this painting. There isn't some
high moral message. It's just rich people having fun. There's also usually a naughty aspect to
Rococo paintings. We wouldn't consider it naughty today, but the girl is on that swing,
and she's kicking up her dress. The shoe is even flying off in the air, giving the boy on the
ground quite a view. She wasn't nude. She's wearing stockings, but back in the day, this
was considered very naughty. You'll also notice something else. There's this Cinderella-style
clothing, again, in here, in this painting called The Love Letter, also by Fragonard.
You can see that overly sweet, overly ornate fluffiness going on there. Even the dog is
fluffy with ribbons and bows in his hair. The naughty aspect to this is that boys were not
supposed to write directly to girls about their affections. The boy should talk to the father.
If the father agrees, he will pass on the information to his daughter, but here there's
direct contact, and that's a no-no in the mid-1700s. This is also the time that the French Revolution
was about to begin, as well as the American Revolution, so these are the rich people that
would later get their heads chopped off for not caring about the poor of the country.
In this painting, The Meeting by Fragonard, we see the boy climbing over a wall looking for the
girl. The girl's looking over to make sure she's not getting caught by somebody, so it's all
sickeningly sweet, a little bit naughty, and again, they don't care about the poor people. They just
want to have fun and indulge in their whims, so that's part of what we know this to be Rococo.
In this last example by Juan Pablo Salinas, we see the chess game, and here it's a bunch of
very rich people enjoying a leisurely game of chess. Oh, what fun! We don't care that people
are dying and starving in the streets. We're going to play some chess, and that's what they do, and
the rich gentleman behind the women is chuckling about how they're beating the old man at the game,
so again, this idea of overly rich, sickeningly sweet, maybe a little bit naughty, all adds up to
the Rococo style of the mid-1700s.
