Sept. 28, 2022 | Matt Conway mconway@thereminder.com

SPRINGFIELD – The everyday aesthetics of playing cards receives a subversive twist at the Salvador Dalí and the Art of Playing Cards exhibit at the D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts. The exhibit takes place at the Starr Gallery and will be available for public viewing until Nov. 20.

Curator of Art at the Springfield Museums Maggie North shared that the eight Dalí playing card creations owned by the museums have not been on display since 2004. North said the museum utilizes its extensive catalog of artworks by cycling exhibits across their schedule alongside the traveling exhibits they host.

“We have a pretty large works on paper collection, but we can’t display all the works on paper all the time because they are light sensitive … it’s great to be able to rotate through the work that we have,” said North in an interview with Reminder Publishing.

North described Dalí as a surrealist painter who molded dreamy imagery from his analysis of the subconscious. While Dalí worked throughout the 1900s as a marquee voice in various avant garde art movements, it wasn’t until later in his career that he began expanding toward print work. The playing cards are a representation of Dalí’s penchant for blending real imagery through a surrealist spectrum, according to North.

“Within his painting and his prior works of art, he loved this idea that art could reflect, but not quite mirror, reality,” said North.

Like with his other works through various mediums, Dalí’s Art of Playing Cards conjures a vivid blend of stylistic flourishes. North explained that his artworks resemble “scavenger hunts” due to the quirky details packed in the artworks’ transformation of conventional imagery. Some of the unique features include flipped symmetry, like boats parading the bottom of a card that are reflected by a wavy sea at the card’s head.

“These are incredibly fun to look at because at once we understand them and they seem unfamiliar to us, so they become these really interesting scavenger hunts,” said North.

The Dalí works also offer a reinvention of a societal staple. North described the centuries of history behind playing cards, which were first present in 10th century China. She shared that the Dalí works serve as a tool to showcase the ample history behind playing cards’ evolution.

“These works of art give us an opportunity to explore the very surface of the long history of playing cards … [the artworks] and many other seemingly standard things that we see in our life are actually designed by people and continue to be designed by people that will innovate and recreate that formula we know,” said North. The exhibit also features contemporary twists on playing cards, like a deck that highlights black icons.

Similar to other Dalí works, the creations reflect deeper societal ideas. North described how Dalí’s depiction of the ace card, which features a melting clock molded through curvy imagery, showcases a timeless depiction of time’s malleability.

“Sometimes a minute goes by in what feels like a second, and sometimes it really drags on,” said North in her description of Dalí’s ace piece.

The old artworks’ messages have additionally evolved into our modern worldview. North said she enjoys seeing how the art is re-contextualized by its audience, including her view of how the ace card showcases the obtuse movement of time throughout the coronavirus pandemic.

“For me, the malleability of time and the way time can feel less concrete has been driven home by living through the [coronavirus] pandemic for me … I like that the symbols we see can take on new meanings for us as individuals and we can also understand them as part of Dalí’s body of work and part of the symbolism he was looking to,” said North.

North aspires for visitors to see both the fun and meaning that derives from Dalí’s artworks.

“I hope this will be fun for kids and families to look at … There’s so much rich visual imagery to be enjoyed,” said North.

Readers can learn more about the D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts at https://springfieldmuseums.org/about/museum-of-fine-arts/.