Seeing as the theme of my installation is on surrealism, I wanted to make it clear to the viewers. My intention was to show something that appears normal, but upon closer inspection, is actually quite surreal. Seeing that my goal for this project is to be sustainable – buy things that would be thrown away if no one was interested, or buying from fair-trade companies, I came across a huge martini glass vase with a curved stem on Facebook Marketplace. Instantly I had a vision. I envisioned a large olive at the bottom of the glass withe a toothpick going through it – resembling a dirty martini.
I feel like the large martini glass with the bent stem (reference to Dalí’s melting clock) was already making a connection to the world of surrealism as it is, but upon a little research I found something. It appears that a Martini was a daily occurrence in Luis Bunuel’s life. The article explained:
“The Debaser cocktail is my ode to one of the great martini lovers of all time—the surrealist Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel, who would famously stir up a daily martini to conclude a day of filming, or indeed, any day at all,” he explains. “The martini was of such importance to Buñuel that he devoted a page in his memoirs to his own recipe.”
Buñuel speaks at length about his martini preferences in his memoir, specifically the light use of vermouth.
To be frank, given the primordial role in my life played by the dry martini, I think I really ought to give it at least a page. Like all cocktails, the martini, composed essentially of gin and a few drops of Noilly Prat, seems to have been an American invention. Connoisseurs who like their martinis very dry suggest simply allowing a ray of sunlight to shine through a bottle of Noilly Prat before it hits the bottle of gin.
…Let me give you my personal recipe, the fruit of long experimentation and guaranteed to produce perfect results. The day before your guests arrive, put all the ingredients—glasses, gin, and shaker—in the refrigerator… Don’t take anything out until your friends arrive; then pour a few drops of Noilly Prat and half a demitasse spoon of Angostura bitters over the ice. Stir it, then pour it out, keeping only the ice, which retains a faint taste of both. Then pour straight gin over the ice, stir it again, and serve.
Joaquín mentions further that Buñuel’s collaboration with Salvador Dalí on the iconic short film Un Chien Andalou inspired the title track—”Debaser”—from The Pixie’s 1989 album Doolittle. And his Debaser cocktail takes its name from that title track.
My surreal world 