Burning giraffe...

‘God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style. He just goes on trying other things.’

Pablo Picasso

Well he should know, after all he experimented all his life, trying lots of things - symbolism, expressionism, cubism, surrealism; more ism’s than you can shake a floopy, melting, surrealist stick at.

When I was at college I was criticised by my year tutor for having no definite illustrative style, no two drawings were drawn in the same style. One time I would draw in a realistic style, the next time something else, the next still something else. I was made to feel that making things in a different way each time was wrong and that I should develop a recognisable style. I was told that I wouldn’t get far without one and that I should focus on making my work instantly recognisable. I didn’t though.

These days I doodle - and this day I doodled a burning giraffe, a Dali giraffe.

Dali’s Burning Giraffe painted in 1937 is a puzzling picture. The main figures are two strange, segmented, female forms and in the distance is a giraffe with its back on fire. He first used the burning giraffe image in his 1930 film L'Âge d'Or (The Golden Age) and it appeared again in 1937 in the painting The Invention of Monsters. He described the image as “the masculine cosmic apocalyptic monster”, believing it to be a premonition of war. But then he was Dali and as he always said: "I am Dalí, and only that" - so what else would you expect?

Dali’s ‘Burning Giraffe’ is for some reason indelibly etched into my consciousness; so much so, that I often find myself doodling it without even knowing I have a pen in my hand – and those flames are catching, they pop up (or rather burst) into lots of my doodles.

So, I am AKH and only that and this is my Burning Giraffe. I’m not sure if it is a ‘masculine cosmic apocalyptic monster’ but it could be – here’s a rhyme about it.

Dali’s giraffe
I doodled a giraffe,
On Dali’s behalf.
I was only hoping to make him laugh.
But my carafe,
Always empty by half,
Caused me to make an awful gaffe.
He thought it was naff,
More calf than giraffe,
Dismissed it with a sneering ‘pfaff’!
Now I’m not on his staff,
My creation rechauffe,
Perhaps I should have doodled a graph.

Well there you go then. I hope it made you smile and at least I didn’t call it a masculine cosmic apocalyptic monster - only because I couldn’t get it to rhyme though.