Artlog

Salvador Dal√ɬ≠’s 1927 essay “Film-arte, film-antiart√ɬ≠stico” illustrates the artist’s developing critical philosophy of the cinema. According to Dal√ɬ≠, the “artistic” film embodies only the imagination of the creator and is therefore grandiose; the “anti-artistic” film reveals the immediacy of action and demands an emotional response while embracing the limitless technical properties of the camera. Dal√ɬ≠ wrote, “When monotony is reached, and when it is repeated, when you know what is going to happen, then you begin to feel the joy of unforeseen technical and expressive diversity.”

Dal√ɬ≠ declared the works of Buster Keaton to be prime examples of “anti-artistic” filmmaking, calling them “pure poetry”; his admiration was such that he produced a collage titled The Marriage of Buster Keaton (1925), featuring an image of the comedian in a seated pose, staring straight ahead with his trademark boater hat resting in his lap. At the Cineclub Espa√ɬ±ol in Madrid, Dal√ɬ≠ saw Keaton’s films along with those of Charles Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and Harry Langdon, and was captivated by their inventive and disruptive responses to ordinary situations. This exhibition presents a concise selection of silent comedies that inspired Dal√ɬ≠’s Surrealist aesthetic and informed his developing commitment to the cinema as a means of radical aesthetic representation.

All films are silent with piano or organ accompaniment by Ben Model, except where noted.