Salvador Dalí’s paintings, which count among the best-known and well-loved artworks of the 20th century surrealist movement, are now available for the first time digitally through a partnership between Samsung and the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation. The digital artworks are available on the subscription-based Samsung Art Store and can be displayed on Samsung The Frame TVs.
Many of the best 4K TVs from brands like Samsung and LG provide a 'gallery' mode for displaying photos and artwork. Samsung The Frame TVs, however, are optimized for art display. They deliver a range of color, are framed in a stunning wood-finish bezel and include digital matte options, along with an anti-glare coating that eliminates screen reflections.
The Samsung Art Store lets owners of the The Frame TVs display licensed digital images from a 2,000-plus selection library, including artworks from the Louvre, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Prado, and the Berlin State Museums. Samsung’s new partnership with the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí adds 12 of the mustachioed artist’s paintings, including what is perhaps his signature work, The Persistence of Memory.
According to Samsung, Dalí is the most searched for artist by The Frame TV owners, so the partnership is a direct response to public demand.
Opinion: Art on TV can be as good, if not better, than the real thing
On a recent trip to New York City I visited the Museum of Modern Art, where I had a chance to see The Persistence of Memory in real life. But given the crowded state of the museum, which is one of the city’s top attractions, I was only able to spend a few moments looking at the painting, which is famous for its melting clocks set against a serene landscape.
Nonetheless, I felt fortunate to have had any alone time with the Dalí painting at all. Elsewhere in the museum, Vincent Van Gogh’s The Starry Night, maybe one of the most famous paintings of all time, was on display, and the crowd around it was so thick that there was no way to get up close for a careful look.
The experience would have been very different if I were at home and owned The Frame TV. With a Samsung Art Store subscription ($5.99 per month), I could view a wide range of artworks, Van Gogh’s The Starry Night included, at my leisure in crisp 4K resolution. The Frame TVs are sold in screen sizes ranging from 32-inches to 85-inches, and they use a QLED display panel that delivers bright images with well-saturated color.
Another advantage to The Frame TVs is that they’re not just a medium to display art and photos, but fully-functioning smart TVs, with high dynamic range support and a built-in Samsung Gaming Hub for cloud-based gaming from services like Xbox, Nvidia GeForce Now, Utomik and others. They are essentially two-in-one devices with an ability to switch seamlessly between digital picture frame and TV modes, and can even be set to automatically turn on when you enter the room and then turn off when you leave.
Is the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí a sell-out for licensing the artist’s paintings to Samsung? I don’t think so. Like Andy Warhol, Dalí had a fondness for mass media. Although, his commercial bent was also the reason he was expelled from the surrealist movement – the group's leader, poet André Breton, dubbed Dalí Avida Dollars at the time, which is an anagram for the artist’s name. Still, I'd be happy to have his works hanging in my living room, displayed electronically on a The Frame TV where I could actually get a chance to fully appreciate them.
