|
|
Nieuw Amsterdam
Date: 1974
Material Used: Painted bronze, metal
Size: 20 2/3 x 18 2/3 x 9 5/8 inches
With Nieuw Amsterdam, Dali participates in a tradition going back to the anti-art movement Dada at the beginning of the twentieth century, which continues through the 1990s with Postmodernism - the appropriation of another artist's work to create a new work. Marcel Duchamp drew a goatee on the Mona Lisa, and Robert Rauschenberg erased a Willem De Kooning drawing. Here Dali paints an image on the 1899 bust of White Eagle, a sculpture by American artist Charles Schreyvogel. This deliberate action invites the viewer to decide - legitimate re-creation or scandalous transformation?
Recalling Dali's 1940 double image painting Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire, Dali transforms White Eagle's face into an interior setting where two Dutch gentlemen toast each other. The title, Nieuw Amsterdam, refers to the 17th-century Dutch colonial settlement that became New York City. The sculpture is of an American Indian, and there is a Coke bottle on the Indian's nose. These details suggest an intermingling of past and present in the American cultural landscape.
|
|
 |
|
|
|
