Un Chien Andalou/Andalusia

Salvador Dali, perhaps best known for his landscape paintings featuring melting pocketwatches and other distortions, collaborated with Luis Bunuel on a short film of nightmarish proportions, "Un Chien Andalou" (1928).

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The title, which translates to "An Andalusian Dog," is meant to be as meaningless as the entirety of the film itself. Still, human nature is to find patterns and meaning even where none exists and countless analyses using Freudian, Marxist and Jungian formulas have been applied to the film.

In Debaser, Black Francis sings "I am un chien andalusia," taking poetic license with the film's original title which he thought sounded too French.

Andalusia is an autonomous and historic region of southern Spain with a population of over 7 million across 33,694 sqare miles. Andalusia's capital is Seville.

Because he supported the Fascist Franco in the 1930s and for pursuing fame and fortune in the U.S., Dali was expelled from the Surrealist movement by Andre Breton. Breton coined the anagram "Avida Dollars" -- "Greedy For Dollars" -- out of Salvador Dali's name and became a lead Debaser of Dali's art.

Luis Bunuel died of cirrhosis of the liver at age 83, in 1983.

Salvador Dali, oft recognized by his handlebar moustache, died in 1989 of heart failure at age 84.

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Girls Could Not Resist His Stare

Born in Malaga, Spain, in 1881, Pablo Picasso completed the qualifying examination for the Academy of Fine Arts in Barcelona in one day when he was 14. The examination typically takes one month.

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Throughout his artistic life, Picasso was a painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and stage designer. His father, Jose Ruiz, was also an artist and gave young Pablo his first training.

In the early 1910s, Picasso, together with his friend and fellow artist Georges Braque, furthered the Cubist movement which Paul Cezanne had begun in the prior century.

Pablo Picasso, written by Jonathan Richman, was performed by Burning Sensations for Repo Man (1984). Alex Cox’s feature-film debut, starring Emilio Estevez and Harry Dean Stanton, is the story of a Los Angeles punk with no direction and no role models who discovers a code of honor and higher purpose when he takes a job repossessing automobiles.

Pablo Picasso died on April 8, 1973, at the age of 91.

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He'll Think About Paint And He'll Think About Glue

After attending Carnegie Institute of Technology, Andy Warhol became a commercial artist in the 1950s.

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In the 1960s, Warhol began developed a silkscreening process which he would incorporate into a series of mass-media images depicting commercial products and celebrities. Best known among these are the Campbell's Soup Can and Marilyn Monroe.

The notoriety he gained from these works also earned his work the often less-than-flattering label of "Consumerism."

Warhol also made a collection of underground films known for being plotless, of inordinate length and focusing on such topics as boredom, time and repetition.

On June 3rd, 1968, Warhol was shot by Valerie Solanis, who had been featured in the Warhol film, "I, A Man." Warhol was pronounced dead at the hospital but was revived after receiving a heart massage.

Solanis, the founder and sole member of SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men) turned herself in and was placed in a mental institution.

Warhol died in New York on February 27, 1987, after a gallbladder operation.

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He Loved Color And He Let It Show

Vincent Van Gogh wrote on the 19th of November, 1883, in a letter to his brother and benefactor Theo, "And my aim in my life is to make pictures and drawings, as many and as well as I can; then, at the end of my life, I hope to pass away, looking back with love and tender regret, and thinking, 'Oh, the pictures I might have made!'"

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While it would be interesting to speculate on what else the post-impressionist Dutch painter might have produced during a prolonged life, he did leave behind some 2200 artistic creations including 870 paintings, 1,037 drawings, 150 watercolors and 133 letter sketches.

Considering that Van Gogh decided to become a painter only ten years before his death, those were ten very productive years.

Van Gogh's work is generally better known than that of any other artist and he is considered to be the second greatest of the "Masters" behind Rembrandt.

Van Gogh is also remembered for his struggles with mental illness. Due in part to poverty and ensuing malnourishment, Van Gogh endured a myriad of physical ailments. He was addicted to the narcotic beverage absinthe whose toxic element "thujone" has been reported to cause hallucinations, convulsions, and permanent damage to the nervous system. It is also speculated that he suffered from a form of epilepsy, syphilis, tinnitus, Meniere's syndrome and lead poisoning. It is quite possible that the lead poisoning came about from the lead ingredients in the paints he used.

Ironically, the lead pigments in the paint may have played a role in Van Gogh's degraded mental state as well as have been helped inspire some of his greatest works. Over-exposure to lead can to depression and paranoia. Not only did Van Gogh use gobs of paint in his compositions, he was also known to ingest the lead containing pigments. The whites and yellows of the day and of which he particularily fond contained high concentrations of lead.

Lead poisoning also causes swelling around the optic nerve. This would cause a distortion of vision such that one would see a glow or halo around lights. Interestingly, his later works feature glows around lights and stars. "Starry Night," which he painted in 1989 while at the asylum at Saint-Remy, prominently features this effect.

If you were Freud, you would probably also attribute much of Van Gogh's mental anguish to the fact one year to the day before he was born, his mother gave birth to a another son, also named Vincent, who was stillborn.

Van Gogh's most notorious display of his mental anguish came on the evening of December 23, 1888, after an altercation with his friend and fellow artist Paul Gaugin. It is said that Van Gogh, who was susceptible to wide mood swings (another side effect of lead poisoning), threatened Gauguin with a knife. He would later return to the "Yellow House" in Arles where he lived and once roomed with Gauguin and, using an open razor, would cut off the lower portion of his left ear. He then wrapped the ear in cloth and took it to his favorite brothel where he presented it as a "gift" to a prostitute.

While it may have been another bout of tinnitus, a ringing, whistling, or other imaginary noise perceived in the ears, which prompted Van Gogh to severe his ear, only sheer madness could have brought him to the conclusion that it would help him score.

Van Gogh would paint two self-portraits after the incident which featured his bandaged ear. In those self-portraits, it would appear that it is Van Gogh's right ear which is bandaged until you realize that Van Gogh must have been looking at himself in a mirror.

In the end, and most importantly, it is Van Gogh's extensive use of color and bold brush strokes that define his unique style.

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The Father Of Cubism

During most of his life, Paul Cezanne's art was misunderstood and discredited by the public.

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Though Cezanne primarily influenced the development of Cubism, he also painted in the Impressionist style in the early 1870s.

The Five Chinese Brothers consider Cezanne to be the "Father Of Cubism," but he has also been more broadly categorized as the "Father Of Modern Painting."

The Cubist style emphasizes a flat, two-dimensional surface while discarding the traditional notions of perspective and the imitation of nature while stressing the abstract. The style typically utilizes transparent geometric shapes intersecting with one another to complete the composition. It is from this technique which Cubism draws its name.

Cezanne died in 1906.

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