Relax - All at sea over Dali

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Sigmund Freud once said: "Every drawer, chest, or box, stands for the female genital." This seemingly absurd idea became one of artist Salvador Dali's central motifs - he took the drawer as a symbol of concealed female sexuality.

Take, for instance, his bronze sculpture Woman Aflame. Here, a row of drawers runs up a lady's thigh and torso. She leans far back with hand outstretched as if to say "no", but her denial is betrayed by tongues of fire - representing desire - which lick at her languishing form.

It's as if one is coyly invited to open her "drawers", a word charged with its more obscure meaning under the masterful hand of Dali - not much of a stretch for someone who named one of his paintings The Great Masturbator.

Woman Aflame, along with three lithographs and 26 other sculptures including Alice in Wonderland and Space Venus, is now on display at Capella Singapore in Sentosa till Sunday.

The sculptures are limited-edition pieces authorised by the artist. The entire collection is valued at more than $1 million.

Sited at Capella's outdoors Bob's Bar and gift shop which overlooks the South China Sea, this pop-up exhibition held in collaboration with Opera Gallery is a departure from more formal settings.

Some may baulk at viewing the pieces in a casual environment, but the space "allows for natural light to stream in throughout the day, allowing visitors to view the art pieces in their full glory and untainted by artificial lighting", explains general manager of Capella Singapore, Robert Lagerwey. Having a cocktail in one's hand while traversing Dali's twisted thoughts can't hurt either.

The surrealist master may be best known for his paintings (such as The Persistence of Memory with its iconic melting clocks), but Dali was an eclectic who also dabbled in photography and sculpturing.

As compared to the fragile paintings, the bronze pieces are "fitting for outdoor exhibitions as they are able to relate and interact with the environment in which they are placed", explains Mr Lagerwey.

In any case, many of Dali's sculptures are realised from the compositions of his own paintings.

Space Elephant, for example, is drawn from The Temptation of Saint Anthony, which was Dali's entry for a commercial competition held by a film production company in 1946.

The beast, burdened with a phallic obelisk and treading precariously across a desert on its spindly "spider legs", is in turn inspired by Gian Lorenzo Bernini's work in Rome, commissioned by Pope Alexander VII and unveiled in 1667. Unlike his elephants, the value of Dali's work is on firmer ground and skyrocketed early last year.

His painting Portrait of Paul Eluard went for a record-breaking £13.5 million at Sotheby's London in February, and an edition of bronze sculpture Horse Saddled with Time commanded £289,250 (S$567,653) at Bonhams, London, in June this year.

If you wish to own a piece of Dali, prices are available on request at Capella Singapore. Salvador Dali - The Surrealist Master runs till Sunday, August 5, from 2pm to 9pm daily, at Bob's Bar at Capella Singapore. Admission is free.

This article was first published in The Business Times.

All at sea over Dali

By Tan Teck Heng, The Business Times | Sun, Aug 5 2012

Three lithographs and 26 other sculptures are on display at Capella Singapore till today.