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Dalí-land
We left Barcelona ignominiously, by crawling down a hole in the ground near the Street of Discord and catching a train toward France. We detrained in Figueras, Salvador Dalí's birthplace and the home of the Gala Foundation's Teatre-Museu in his honor.
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 atrium of the Dalí Museum
For all his mastery, it's hard to ignore Dalí's gift for self-promotion, even rising from the grave. This museum was begun during his lifetime, and it was a project he enthusiastically embraced, contributing innumberable bits of kitsch and two grand frescoes along with several tasteless but audience-pleasing assemblages.
I can hear my father muttering from his resting place beneath the backyard fir tree, "And you call this ... [splutter] ... art?" |
With three hours between our arrival and the bus to Cadaqués on Spain's Costa Brava, why not visit the Dalí Museum? It being Thursday, we shared this good idea with innumerable others who thronged a building not at all meant for throngs. Ah, well, we're tall, and have gotten good at appreciating the top halves of paintings...
My own disloyal youthful affection for Dalí, developing despite my father's contempt, has returned in recent years as I've grown to appreciate the fact that unfortunately it is not enough for an artist to be good; for his work to gain notice, he (or, more rarely, she) must be notorious, too.
tapestry reminding us that Dalí did watches |
 Dalí-inspired golden bird statue
This bird, a motif that appears elsewhere in everything from altered pink plastic garden flamingos to details in the corners of paintings, is as distinctly Dalí-esque as his melting watches. The snake-dolphin-fish is another brilliant and repeated Dalí motif that resonates right back to gold work done by the Minoans when they invented lost-wax casting.
outdoor statue: TV head |
Art, you ask? Well, frankly, yes. Even though the Teatre-Museu's remarkable ...um, accretion of, well, "works" may not be done by Dalí's own hand, but are executed by artisans following his sketches, or merely cobbled together after rough and offhanded directions from the Maestro, the vision hangs together -- maybe not as well as Gaudí's, but I like some pieces intensely.
Here in the basement of the museum hidden behind curtains is something that I understand: gold work. Done by a fine atelier in France, yes, but the designs are audacious, pleasing, and entirely Dalí's. The craftsmanship isn't the remarkable bit; the idea and design are.
golden fish pin
Seeing so much Dalí in one place, the ideas that moved the man start to come clearer. Sitting outdoors drinking orange in a plaza beside the museum, the meaning of the TV head dawns: a painter and artist who watched the ascendance of TV, Dalí saw the changes taking place due to media, and hated them. See the babies peering from the empty eye-holes? They represent how critically we all see TV. Can this be healthy for our appreciation of "serious art"? And will our slavish behavior pass itself along through our eggs until all are babies?
Isn't that exactly what has happened? Dalí was prescient. |
Back to catch our bus to Cadaqués , the last bus but one, we hoped, in this part of our tour. Trains are SO much more civilized...
It was hot and late and we had experienced a group melt-down of sorts in Figueras, so the atmosphere between us was thick. Travel days are hell. We were supposedly going to the coast, which ought to be downhill from the inland town of Figueras, but predictably, our bus headed straight for the tallest mountains around, and then wound slowly upward -- European bus drivers are a cautious lot -- toward the cloud covered peak.
After much vertiginous winding, we gained the top and saw, far below, the sea with nothing taller between us and it, only a steeper downslope. As our bus snaked slowly down, on all sides we saw evidence of long-ago terracing. Imagine building those walls stone by stone, and then abandoning them!
 |  hillside evidence of abandoned agriculture |
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Seasons are fickle here. We arrived on a sunny summer day when the whitewashed houses and cobbled streets of Cadaqués are closed and forbidding. Arriving, we phoned our hotel for directions, were badly advised in badly broken English, and ended up trudging half a mile in the wrong direction to the wrong beach, then against traffic around a sunny point past the amused eyes of foreigners lounging in a shady café to find our hotel about two blocks away from the bus stop by the obvious route. We felt the full weight of the sun and that certain Mediterranean reluctance to admit strangers learnt over millennia ... Well, Caspars do it too.
Gradually, summer ended, clouds took over, and yet we felt the town warming to us; if we stayed for a few weeks or months, we felt the town would let us in. At dinner, we were fussed over in a restaurant full of folks (mostly German and French) who were grudgingly served; somehow we, as a family, good-humoredly speaking a mixture of Catalan, Spanish, and English, managed to engage the kindly attention of the waiters and especially the maitresse d', who walked out from her full restaurant when we left, leaned against Chad, then put her arm around my arm and her head on my shoulder, all the while flirting outrageously with Rochelle and Sienna most engagingly, while telling of her three months in Seattle.
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 Dalí's first shack in 1934 (model) |
We visited Dalí's House at Port Lligat the next morning. In retrospect, what a funny experience! We were completely prepared to be delighted. From the top of the ridge between Cadaqués (a sort of Costa Bravan Mendocino) and the Caspar-sized community of Port Lligat, the compound's walls, roofs, dramatic heads (one split longitudinally) and eccentric windows beckon, promising something special within. |
And it IS special: the cascade of living quarters, bedroom, upper sitting room, lower sitting room, and mirror so Dalí could see the sunrise without moving from his bed ... The sunny workroom, the sunless inner workroom ... Gala's oval sitting room with the amazing acoustics ... the olive orchard, hidden courtyard, and the swimming pool with three shrines. |
 the compound in 1956 |
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Dalí came to Port Lligat in the early 1930s when it was a crusty and fading fishing village, bought a crumbling fisherman's shack, and over the years built it into a compound worthy of one of the time's foremost artists. As Dalí's reputation and the compound grew, so did Cadaqués and Port Lligat, attracting all the noted European artists of the age, and initiating a cross-fertilization of styles and techniques that benefited them all.
Our experience was outstandingly and almost intolerably unfriendly. One makes an appointment, and must arrive half an hour before to purchase tickets. On the ticket-backs it says, in tiny print in five languages, "The staff reserves the right arbitrarily to bar any bags or other objects which in its judgment endangers the security of the museum." We didn't think they'd mean Sienna's camera bag or Rochelle's tiny purse containing all our wealth and important travel documents, but we were wrong ... and informed in a dismissive way just as we tried to enter at our appointed time. The rebuff was managed so harshly we very nearly turned our tickets in and left then and there. But we complied.
Within the entry, our first Guide babbled on at length in Catalan to the five native visitors, stopping for a moment to tell us rudely not to leave the room. As we quickly discovered, and the guide was quick to explain, "the alarms are very sensitive, so do not reach across the barriers. This is the Hall of the Bear, designed to alarm and frighten the guests" -- as if any of Dalí's guests would be alarmed by a medium-sized stuffed bear and a wide-glass-eyed stuffed owl! -- which was the sum total of her translation of the lengthy Catalan commentary. We were already badly predisposed by our experience with the entry guard, so of course we proceeded to set off every alarm we could find. "We'll just be the guests from Hell if they're going to be the hosts from Hell," I reasoned.
In the next room, after another disproportionate narration, during the English portion of which the Catalan guests talked loudly among themselves, we were hustled on to the next station -- ten minutes for each station, we were told. Video cams and alarms everywhere, and pretty soon, the Catalans were setting off alarms too. The poor security guy must have gotten a headache. After Chad shushed them during the next English explanation, the Catalan party was reasonably respectful of the always-shorter English narrations. Questions of the guides in most cases elicited monosyllabic answers if in English, and lengthy disquisitions if in Catalan. One young guide, whom Chad identified as one who hadn't gone sour on foreign tourists yet, actually answered some questions usefully and interestingly.
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 window in the sunset courtyard
First we visited Dalí's daylight studio, where he worked on paintings and assemblages that required fine work and benefited from daylight. We next visited the windowless "dark" studio, but I am unable to show it to you as there was no light and flashing was fiercely forbidden.
For all their mean-spiritedness, it's clear that the keepers of this house want to conserve this treasure for the ages. The paint tubes, the brushes, all the myriad chatchkas, are preserved "just as Dalí might have left them."
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Dalí reasoned (as I have been known to) that small, well-placed windows should be hung on walls like pictures. My reason has to do with heat-loss and -gain; undoubtedly Dalí was motivated as well by the hoardes of tourists and paparazzi that plagued him as his fame grew.
As we explored the house, it became clear that Dalí and his wife Gala were as interested in the private art of living as they were in the public arts, and this house was their shared masterpiece.
Dalí's "light" studio
Especially in his later years, Dalí was fascinated by mirrors, and made several "double" paintings, delighting in the fact that with two paintings and two mirrors he could have four paintings! six! -- he was as innovative a counter as he was a painter. Here he has painted himself taking a break from painting Gala to tickle her foot. |
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Without the sour guide/guards, aspects of the house were indeed spectacularly artful and comforting. I could easily imagine myself a guest of Dalí, arriving in the Hall of the Bear, where the predominant features are eyes -- glass eyes on the stuffed bear and owl, false eyes on a huge photo of a moth: Look! Look at all the weird and wonderful things accumulated in these rooms for my entertainment ...and, as my guest, yours! |
 "the Dalí beds" |
 shelf between bedroom and sitting room |
In everything from the two princely beds at the top of the cascade of living rooms right down to the triple mirrored image painted by Dalí of Dalí tickling the sole of Gala's foot. Each had a bathroom, baby powder in Dalí's; he had to "borrow" Gala's bathroom for a bath -- the love of these two eccentric humans was manifest. |
In Dalí's sitting room, a mirror set high on one wall was directed so that Dalí could see the rising sun from his bed -- reminiscent of Thomas Jefferson's french clock, placed in an alcove opposite his bed, so that when he could see the hands, he knew it was time to arise.
Again I thought of my father's puzzled dislike of Dalí the artist, who used his eccentricity shamelessly as a means for self-promotion. How angry it made him to see greatness in Dalí's vision:
Gala's oval sitting room
The outdoor summer dining room and patio with their small, carefully framed windows; the private outdoor space where Dalí, his wife Gala, and his guests could converse comfortably without the prying eyes of Dalí's by then thronging admirers. Gala and Dalí obviously collaborated to create a comfortable, creative place to live and love. We were delighted by the astounding variety and scope of the chatchkas, from a full-sized Michelin Man to the cricket cages hanging, doubtless housing chirping crickets, in the lower living room and the outdoor hall to the summer dining room. |  morning mirror reflecting the photographer
...the Life Magazine cover, the power of Dalí's exaggerated perspective, his novel viewpoints and choices of subject matter -- and how crassly he would crank out crap for the consumption of the people who couldn't afford his inflated greatness.
outdoor summer dining room |
 the throne at the end of the pool
Our last guide, after greeting the Catalans fulsomely and ignoring us -- no English narration at all, but at the end a rebuke in English to Sienna when she attempted to sit on the "lips" sofa which was in no way labeled unsittable -- had the unmitigated gall to further rebuke us for not saying "hello or goodbye" to her. To which Chad, bless him, loudly replied from the head of our party, "Goodbye, bitch!" |
At the nether end of the graceful pool, the beanbag thrones for Dalí and Gala, with space for their court of intimate admirers, not to mention the stuffed heads of lion, buffalo, and the unnaturally attenuated stuffed cloth snakes.
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 Dalí's version of the Lion Fountain |
It's a small testimony to the power of Dalí's art that, despite our suspicious and hostile treatment at the hands of his acolytes, the playfulness and warmth of his home shine through. It brought to mind other whacked visionaries -- Jesus, Meher Baba, Krishnamurti, Suzuki Roshi to name a few -- whose followers lose the lightness of the vision upon the master's death. When we allow our faith and our art to be interpreted and kept secure by accountants and rent-a-cops, something of immeasurable value is lost. |
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Having now seen where Dalí made his home for the last years of his happiness with Gala, I understood a bit of the life they led together, the place they chose to settle, the environment to which they attracted other artists and friends -- an environment and spirit that, incidentally, persists despite the best efforts of his heritage's despotic keepers. Despite them, now in the gentler glow of several days later, I am glad we endured the experience.
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