Like with most other things in my life, I may not know much academically about appreciating art, I just know what I like and what I don’t.  Dali, I do.  I have, since I saw a picture of Swans Reflecting Elephants in a book some 20 over years ago.  Surrealists appeal to me because they put so effortlessly into pictures what my overactive imagination takes weeks to painstakingly conjure up.

Elephants with giraffe’s legs or a swan as an elephant’s trunk, I don’t know what he hoped to achieve when he did them but all I know is that they intrigue me.  That’s my version of art appreciation.

They make me sit and stare at them.  Somewhat dumbfounded by the possibilities of stories that can be told.  That’s when I know it’s good art 🙂  If I look at and feel no desire to take a closer look, it’s bad art :p  All I say is, thank goodness I’m no art teacher.

Meanwhile, if you have S$30 to spare and nothing to do, go check out the Dali exhibit at the ArtScience Museum.  It isn’t for everyone coz you know surrealists, they see the world in, what some people consider, a warp way but if you’re willing to take a leap and give it a chance … it’ll just be yet another way to look at the complex world we live in.  A world were anything can happen giant snails have wings, you could be made up of little drawers to keep your deepest secrets, everywhere you go someone could be watching you.

For the same S$30, you get to check out an interesting exhibit of Van Gogh too, which made me think … why did an eccentric surrealist, Dali whose art was so out there live to a ripe old age and Van Gogh, the impressionist, who created all these beautiful and accessible paintings kill himself at 37?  The juxtaposition of the two exhibits just rings true to the fact that what you see is hardly ever what you get.  You can never know what someone is truly thinking or feeling.  You get a hint maybe, for the most of us, the inner core of our very being could even be hidden from ourselves.

This is how I knew I had a good night of art appreciation at the museum.  Long after they’ve gone, through their work, these artists ignited a curiosity in me, inspired my own desires to create and not stop thinking about the possibilities of my own imagination.