Float through Salvador Dalí’s art using virtual reality

Thomas McMullan Read more January 28, 2016

Between 1933 and 1935, a young Salvador Dalí worked on a surreal interpretation of Jean-François Millet’s painting, The Angelus, which had hung on the wall of Dalí’s primary school. Titled Archeological Reminiscence of Millet’s “Angelus”, Dalí’s artwork transforms the peasant couple of the original into towering stone structures.

Now, viewers are being invited to explore a virtual reality recreation of Dalí’s painting. As part of its Dreams of Dalí exhibition, The Dalí Museum has created a VR environment complete with stone towers, observing figures, and the haunting, characteristic landscape inspired by Dalí’s native Catalonia. They’ve even thrown in a herd of long-legged elephants that pop up elsewhere in the artist’s oeuvre.

While visitors to the museum can experience the VR trip with an Oculus Rift, those that can’t make it to St Petersburg in Florida can still float through the recreation with Google Cardboard or on desktop using Chrome. Below is the 360-degree video, and you’ll find more details about the exhibition itself on the museum’s website.

It may not be the most challenging artistic response, but translating paintings into virtual environments seems like a nice way to drive engagement in the museum-gallery sector.

What other paintings are ripe for a VR version? Diego Velázquez’s Las Meninas? Giorgio de Chirico’s The Red Tower? How about Mark Rothko’s Seagram Murals?