Introducing Rakewell, Apollo’s wandering eye on the art world. Look out for regular posts taking a rakish perspective on art and museum stories
‘[I] believe in my death becoming very – almost impossible,’ Salvador Dalí once proclaimed – and it’s increasingly hard to disagree. Some 18 months after the great self-promoter’s remains were exhumed for a bizarre and ultimately unsuccessful paternity test, it seems he has returned from the grave once again.
To coincide with the 115th anniversary of the artist’s birth, on 11 May the Dalí Museum in St Petersburg, Florida, launched a visitor experience with a twist: an AI-generated version of the wackily mustachioed painter himself. ‘I am Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech,’ he announces. ‘And I am back.’ As visitors walk through the museum, ‘Dalí’ talks visitors through his work, comments on the weather, and will even take a selfie with his fans. Spooky.
Cutting-edge this may be, but it seems a positively traditional way of commemorating Dalí compared to the latest stunt by Adrián Pino Olivera, a ‘performance artist’ notorious for disrobing in the presence of great paintings. To mark the Dalí anniversary, he travelled to Dalí’s grave in Figueres, jumping on to the stone slabd it in his own birthday suit before cracking an egg over it.
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sobre la tumba de Dalí en el día de su aniversario (Teatre-Museu Dalí de Figueres, 11/05/19)
In a word: surreal.
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