Surreal Slideshow With Salvador; Dali: The Atherly Collection
DALI: The Atherly Collection ($4.99) by Blue Lotus contains a selection of famous surrealist Salvador Dali’s paintings, including many of the most famous ones.
This collection from Blue Lotus has works from all the periods in this groundbreaking artist’s life, and they are displayed beautifully in this app.
This app is basically a nice slideshow. You have an assortment of options to find a slideshow that best suits you. My personal favorite is a museum-like presentation of framed works.
The app (oddly), has a collection of classic music pieces to accompany the slideshow, and a sophisticated player. Just tap the music icon on the bottom-right to access the player or mute the sound. I like the music; it’s a nice touch.
If you are a Dali fan, or want to see more of his wonderful works on your iPad, this is a nice presentation. It is also the only Dali collection currently available for iPad.
But, Dali: The Atherly Collection, is missing a lot of features I expect from a good art app.
There is an option to save photos to the iPad photo album, but that is the only sharing feature, and it’s hard to find.
You need to tap to bring up a menu, scroll to the icon with the forward and back arrows, tap to bring up another tool bar with a camera icon, tap again to snap.
The app contains no information on Dali or the paintings. None. Not even titles.
In gallery mode when the art looks like it has a placard underneath, there is no actual text. I don’t get that.
There is no search function, so even if you know what you are looking for, you have to wait for it to show up at random.
There is no zoom feature; while the paintings all look fine on the iPad screen, you can’t zoom or tell if the images are really HD. That’s a shame since the details in Dali’s work are very zoom-worthy.
Blue Lotus describes the collection as having “tons” of works. I don’t know exactly how many that means. But, the collection seems at least as extensive as other apps focusing on a single artist. There is no way to count, or see thumbnails.
If you know the app’s limitations before you spend the relatively steep price of $4.99 you will be satisfied, if not blown away. But, if you are looking for any information at all, you are going to be disappointed. Dali: The Atherly Collection is too focussed on style over substance.
