Hello Dali
Salvadore Dali Exhibit Opens in Coral Gables

By Melanie Klesse

“You don't need to be crazy in the art world. But it helps.”

So claims Jean Bernard of Art + Gallery, curator of one of the most exciting exhibitions to grace the very humid air of South Florida. Fifteen of Salvador Dali's sculptures and “objects” are now on exhibit in Coral Gables.

	Soft Clock, glass: One of the surrealist master's famous melting clocks

An exhibition the gallery claims would normally be “staged on the Champs-Elysee [in Paris], in New York, on Park Avenue,” is now in Coral Gables, on the promenade in the Village of Merrick Park. And no one is more surprised than Jean Bernard to find himself opening a “one of a kind” exhibition in—beautiful as it is—what is, after all, a shopping mall. But in a city of cars, it is difficult to come by a place as perfectly suited as the Village of Merrick Park. According to Bernard, Merrick Park is Miami's version of the Av Montaigne in Paris, high recognition from a Parisian man.

“There, there is Dior, Chanel, Gaultier, beneath me is Gucci,” says Bernard, gesturing at the center's couture shops. “Fine arts should be here. A serious gallery can prove itself.”

And perhaps the choice of Dali best proves Bernard's point in addressing most young artists' fears that they may be mentally disturbed. After all, who was crazier than Dali? Well fine, van Gogh was institutionalized and cut his own ear off, and then sent it to an ex-girlfriend, but still. Certainly, Dali is one of the most well-known painters in modern art, well known not only for his paint, but also for his eccentricity. Dali once said, “There is a difference between me and a madman. I know that I am crazy.”

Dali's realization that greatness laid in his ability to “control his delirium and use it for his own interests” was his path to greatness, as Bernard says. Dali's deviation from societal norms certainly was the precursor to his defiance of convention in art, in sculpture. In describing the attraction to surrealist art, in particular Dali's art, Bernard says, “Rules are irrelevant. Forget about gravity. What is more appealing than to forget about time, rules of nature, physics, gravity. Melt the clocks. Put the man in the sky.”

Salvadore Dali

While most well known for his surrealist painterly masterpieces (especially those containing melting clocks and the like), Dali also proved himself prolific in the realm of sculpture, many of which tended to be three dimensional renderings of his two-dimensional primary art, others created as a starting point. One of these is shown, entitled Soft Clock , an embodiment once again of the melting clock motif.

The exhibit, put on by the Art + Gallery, is an exhibit put together by Jean Bernard. This is to say that, as of right now, it is not a touring exhibition that Bernard managed to ascertain, but that he put it together himself. Bernard gathered these 15 bronzes, a $12 million value, mostly from people's private collections, using his and the gallery's own personal resources to finance the showing. The October 4 opening featured a ribbon-cutting ceremony by Coral Gables Mayor Don Slesnick. The exhibit will be run for six months. Also in attendance were dignitaries from the official Dali Foundation in Spain, and travelers from Chicago, Switzerland, France, and Japan interested in Dali's work. Dali is being shown with Braque, protégé of Picasso. The Braque exhibit will be on display at the end of November.

Bernard's ambition is that this exhibition will help Miami's art scene be taken more seriously. His primary hope is that bringing works of great art will inspire the young artists of Miami to create their own.

	Nu montant l'escalier (Nude ascending a staircase), 1973, bronze, one of the Dali sculptures on display at Merrick Park in Coral Gables

Bernard credits his parents for bringing both him and his sister to their current obsession with art. At a young age, both he and his sister were taken to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for an art class, in which they were exposed to a great work of art, then given the supplies to put to paint or to papier-mâché or to clay what inspired them. Though he studied to be a doctor and his sister studied business, both he and his sister were drawn back into the embrace of the art scene.

“It was being exposed at that age,” Bernard says “Being touched.”

To Bernard, this is his mission-to bring art to the kids, to inspire them to create a new generation of artists, to be the next wave of art.