About an hour and a half north of Barcelona lies the town of Figueras, the birthplace of Dali.
I guess you could say I’m a fan. Or at least, enough of an admirer to have a snippet of one of his works prominently tattooed on my person.
The museum in Figueras not only houses an impressive collection of his works, but the structure itself is interesting. There’s a large atrium in the center, and the halls wind around in a circular fashion, making in an excellent place to get lost in a hearty wander.
Dali wasn’t just a painter. He made sculptural installations, jewelry, performance art, and even furniture.
Dali’s portrait of Picasso. Sardonic, yes. Dali apparently meant this to be complimentary, but you’d have to be completely dense not to sense the conflict in this work.
“I believe that the magic in Picasso’s work is romantic, in other words, the root of its upheaval, while mine can only be done by building on tradition. I am totally different from Picasso, since he was not interested in beauty , but in ugliness, and I, more and more, in beauty; but ugly like Picasso and me, can be of an angelic type.”
-Dali
Dali had… certain sympathies for the Franco regime, which is a bit beyond peculiar for one coming from Catalonia. Picasso, (an Andalusian) of course, was vehemently opposed to it. Dali seemed to posses an odd sort of feeling towards Andalusians in general, as evidenced by his short film “La chien Andalou”, (“The Andalusian Dog”) but going into that here would be a bit intense. If you’re interested, there’s a good movie called “Little Ashes” in which Dali features as a central character.
Despite his reputation for surrealism, Dali had a perfect grasp of classical artistic techniques, as evidenced by his fantastic sketches and works done in other styles. Well, the above sketch is pretty much textbook surrealism, but I couldn’t get a good shot of the one with the chipmunks.
God, the chipmunks were cool.
I was impressed by the scope of some of the works. I had never imagined the actual scale of this work, but his “Soft Self Portrait” and the portrait of Picasso were smaller than I had previously thought.
One of his installations, “Mae West Lips” which you view through a large looking-glass atop a staircase.
I enjoyed the museum thoroughly. It gave me a renewed sense of the artist, even though many of his more famous works are housed in other collections. That only means… I have to search them out.
Hopping (well, actually, limping) through galleries always gets the philosophical juices flowing. On my way to the parking garage, I encountered this, on a wall leading to a dumpy little back alley full of scruffy looking hooligans.
Where do the greats come from, and how many fantastic artists do we overlook every day? How many masterpieces have we destroyed throughout time, in the name of censorship, “decency”, fervor, or to return a city wall to its previously blank state?
We’ll never know.
Adeu!
athenathickstun 