So this is one of the most brilliant uses of customized Second Life pose animations I've ever seen -- a recreation of Salvador Dali's notorious photo, “In Voluptas Mors”. It was created by SLer Serendipity Dyrssen, whose avatar is also one of the models. "I put the poses in balls and I edited them with the models sitting on them, to create the skull," she tells me. In a nice coincidence, Serendipity happens to be a Spaniard in real life, like Dali. (Serendipitous, you might say.)
To compare and contrast, here's the original Dali image and some history about it below, though it's possibly not worksafe reading (unless you, say, work at a surrealist art gallery):
In 1951, Salvador Dali, everyone’s favorite mustachioed surrealist, teamed up with Magnum photographer Philippe Halsman to create one of the most enchanting, morbid and bizarre photographs of all time. Entitled “In Voluptas Mors,” or Voluptuous Death, the black-and-white photo stars a melange of nude women, expertly arranged to resemble a macabre skull. Dali stands next to the literal human skull, quizzically eyeing the viewer like some sort of dubious ringmaster. Halsman and Dali originally met in 1941, and embarked on a series of collaborations over the next 30 years, including a compendium of Dali’s famed mustaches. (We’re glad to know Halsman had the same appreciation for them that we do.) Yet no work has the legacy of “Voluptuous Death,” which combines Halsman’s knack for stunning psychological portraiture with a little Dali-esque weirdness.
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