Salvador Dali - The Persistence of Memory

Dali was probably the greatest Surrealist artist, using bizarre dream imagery to create unforgettable and unmistakable landscapes of his inner world. Hard objects become inexplicably limp in this bleak and infinite dreamscape, while metal attracts ants like rotting flesh. Mastering what he called "the usual paralyzing tricks of eye-fooling," Dali painted "to systematize confusion and thus to help discredit completely the world of reality" he said.  It is the classical Surrealist ambition, yet some literal reality is included too: the distant golden cliffs are the coast of Catalonia, Dali's home.

Pablo Picasso - "Le Repos" 
A portrait of his wife, Olga Khokhlova. The Gagosian Gallery bought the 1932 painting for $34.7 million USD, said Christie's ( www.christies.com )

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 Vincent Van Gogh - L'Arlesienne Madame Ginoux
The 1890 painting depicts Marie Ginoux, the owner of a cafe in Arles, the city in the south of France where Van Gogh set up a studio. The artist painted five portraits of Ginoux; one was destroyed and three are in museums. Ginoux fixes a penetrating gaze on a viewer. Before her are two books, French translations of Charles Dickens' Christmas stories and Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin." 

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 "The Annunciation - Leonardo da Vinci (b. 1452, Vinci, d. 1519, Cloux, near Amboise)"
"The archangel Gabriel is kneeling as a dignified profile figure and raising his right hand in greeting to Mary, indicating her divine pregnancy. The Virgin stops reading and reacts to the Annunciation with an expression of deep respect with a left hand gesture. An interesting conspicuous perspectival mistake in the original, her right arm was originally painted too long proportionally, so that, despite her seated position, it would still be able to depict the impressive position with her other hand over the prie-dieu.16""W (41cm) : Cast stone, Antique stone"