Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg presents Much Ado About Shakespeare, an exhibition on view from October 1.
The exhibition displays two suites of Shakespearean Comedies and Tragedies consisting of 31 sepia etchings in Much ado about Shakespeare and Shakespeare II. Two editions of his published illustrated books “Macbeth” and “As You Like It” will accompany the sets. The exhibit will be displayed in the Wittner Gallery
Given the literary roots of Surrealism and the presence of writers such as Frederico García Lorca, André Breton, and Paul Eluard in his life, it’s not surprising that Salvador Dalí would experiment with what the literary arts had to offer. Numerous essays and critical works including The Tragic Myth of Millet’s Angelus, a novel (Hidden Faces), several autobiographical works, and a handful of poems are good indications of Dalí’s literary interests and abilities, but nothing reveals his engagement with literature so much as his graphic work. Over the course of his career, Dalí would spend significant time and effort doing illustrations for a wide variety of classics including Dante’s Divine Comedy, Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Goethe’s Faust, and Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.
On display will be two illustrated books; the 1946 Doubleday edition of Macbeth and the London, Folio Press 1953 edition of As You Like It containing illustrations of Dali’s set and costume designs for a 1949 stage production. In a period of six years in the late sixties and early seventies Dalí also completed the aforementioned suites and ten illustrations for the Bard’s play Hamlet (1973).
The relationship between two of Western culture’s most recognizable artists remains a compelling one. William Shakespeare (1564-1616) widely regarded as the greatest playwright in the history of English literature arrived on the London scene in 1588 and quickly found success as an actor and playwright. While his work found popular success, critics generally frowned upon it as the sort of vulgar entertainment that they thought typified all English plays of the day. Since the nineteenth century, however, his works have been both popularly and critically hailed as central to the canon of Western and world literature. – thedali.org