The masthead is in honour of the Salvador Dali exhibition, Liquid Desire, now showing at the NGV. Dali is my idea of someone setting out to live every day in creativity.  Many days he musn’t have succeeded, many days he perverted the aim, and many other days, the story goes, the perversion became dearer than the aim. I like him for this, for the seriousness with which he wasn’t serious.

I also like him for the titles of his works:

Hairdresser Depressed by the Persistent Good Weather

The Average Bureaucrat

Premature Ossification of a Railway Station

Geological Justice

The Pharmacist of Ampurdan in Search of Absolutely Nothing

… and hundreds more.

I wonder if it was his titling abilities that Luis Buñuel picked up from their association in making Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog) in 1929, because Buñuel went on to make two films, which — barring Nabokov’s autobiography, Speak, Memory – have the best titles of any art works:

Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie (The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie), 1972

Cet obscur objet du desir (That Obscure Object of Desire), 1977

That “That” is brilliant. 

As for the NGV’s Liquid Desire, what a poor poor example with which to represent the work of the master namer.