A Day at the Library

When I was young, my interest in art was almost exclusively limited to comic strips.  That's what I read, and that's what I drew.  But when I was in my early twenties,  a friend asked if I was interested in Modern Art.  I had never given it much thought for some reason, but felt open to exploring it a bit.  So one day at the library, I opened a book on artist Salvador Dali, and saw these two paintings side by side:

The paintings are (top) "Dismal Sport" and (bottom) "The First Days of Spring", by Dali.

My impression upon viewing these two paintings was that I had seen these images before, but I had been so young at the time, that I couldn't recall the actual event or circumstances.  Some time later, I was surprised to read what Dali's thoughts were, when he painted "Dismal Sport".  He was visualizing images "which I (Dali) could not localize precisely in time or space but which I knew with certainty I had seen when I was little".    (Ref.- "Dali", by Dawn Ades).  

I immediately loved these paintings when I saw them at the library that day, and my appetite for Modern Art was realized.  There was something about those clear blue skies meeting the hard artificial concrete, which brought out the dream images so easily and in full color.  Before long I would also admire Giorgio De Chirico, Rene Magritte, Henri Rousseau and Paul Klee.  Sometime after that I started appreciating horror comics art, with its blood stained indulgences in peril and alluring excitement. We'll pretend that never happened, at least for today.  Modern Art rocks!