Dali museum - Figueres (Spain)

One of the pleasures of independent travel is that sometimes you chance on something wonderful and unexpected. I’d been exploring the southern Pyrenees on the Spanish side, and decided to re-enter France near Portbou, but first I thought I’d have a look at a couple of towns I didn’t know. I was wandering around Figueres looking for somewhere to eat when suddenly I came across it. The Dalí Museum.

I recognised it from photographs, but ...
...architecture is a bit prisonlike, but no prison ever had varnished loaves stuck all over it. I believe they are real bread. Along the edge of the roof at the front are giant eggs, and statues which look rather like the Oscar. I had a quick coffee and sandwich at a nearby restaurant, and then went in. This was in the autumn, and there were quite a few people, but not enough to make it uncomfortable. I was told that in summer you have to queue, and ... more

One of the pleasures of independent travel is that sometimes you chance on something wonderful and unexpected. I’d been exploring the southern Pyrenees on the Spanish side, and decided to re-enter France near Portbou, but first I thought I’d have a look at a couple of towns I didn’t know. I was wandering around Figueres looking for somewhere to eat when suddenly I came across it. The Dalí Museum.

I recognised it from photographs, but nothing prepares you for the reality. From the outside the architecture is a bit prisonlike, but no prison ever had varnished loaves stuck all over it. I believe they are real bread. Along the edge of the roof at the front are giant eggs, and statues which look rather like the Oscar. I had a quick coffee and sandwich at a nearby restaurant, and then went in. This was in the autumn, and there were quite a few people, but not enough to make it uncomfortable. I was told that in summer you have to queue, and are then hustled round, which I’m sure would spoil the visit. You need time in any museum. I love painting, and I knew quite a lot about Dalí. I suppose I regarded him as a painter who was certainly original, a great egoist, and more than a bit cracked, fascinating but not to be taken all that seriously : melting watches, elephantine creatures on spindly legs, ants crawling all over the place, tintacks, crutches propping up all kinds of things. I was soon radically to revise these opinions.

The interior is startling, magnificent, and I’d have to be a painter to describe it even half adequately, so later I’ll give you some websites, and if you like you can take a virtual tour. The space is imaginatively used, so that one minute you are walking along a narrow corridor looking at his early sketches, very conventional, superbly drawn; then you’re in a great, spacious, high-roofed area and there’s the famous taxi. It’s quite wonderful. The taxi was a real one, and inside are people : nightmare, gaping creatures, cobwebby, sinister, disinterred corpses, snails crawling all over them. On the bonnet a huge mermaidlike figure, reminiscent of an early Cretan goddess, towers heavenwards, while at the back is a high pile of what seems to be car tyres, with a real Catalan fishing boat perched on top of it. I have no idea what was the link between these disparate elements, and I don’t know if he had, but as with everything he did incongruous things seem to go together easily. It’s so well done that you stare in awe and, as with any great work of art, you think, "But how did he get the idea in the first place? And what does it all mean ?" Who knows ? Who cares? It’s enough that it’s there.

The paintings are everywhere, and you’ll recognise many of them, but the originals are bigger, more colourful, much more impressive than you imagined. Some things just make you gasp. I turned a corner and found a complete, life-size orchestra, every figure and instrument fashioned by this sublime craftsman. I think they are made of papier maché, but can’t be sure. How long did it take him to make all these figures? His sheer energy and output were prodigious. Near them is a huge painting which must be twenty feet high and thirty wide. Everywhere you see something unexpected, and you should get visual overkill, but you don’t.

Dalí was a joker. You only have to look at the moustache to know that. There are all the famous paintings which are two paintings in one : the bullfighter in his ‘suit of lights’, who magically becomes something else when you adjust your vision, the chest of drawers which turns into a Roman goddess, the lobster telephone. Here in the museum is his best joke of all. I approached it from the side, as you have to because of the layout of the place, and was puzzled to see what looked like a nearly empty room, with a strange fireplace, a couple of nondescript pictures above it, and a most peculiar fat, red, plastic settee. I walked round to the front, and peered through heavy yellow drapes to see what on earth this weird room was about. Suddenly, just as its creator intended, the penny dropped. The drapes were blond hair, the fireplace a nose, the pictures eyes, the settee a full, red mouth, and the whole… the giant face of Mae West. I think in a way Dalí did himself a disservice. He loved publicity, and he certainly got it, but only for being outrageous in his life and his work, looking bizarre to say the least, wearing totally embarrassing headgear, saying things to provoke and shock. His sheer genius is not appreciated by most people, and I was certainly one of them before I saw what else he had done.

The whole place is a cornucopia of visual goodies. When you think about how much of his work is now in galleries all over the world you wonder where he found the time and physical stamina. He designed the place not just to display his work but as a mausoleum. I didn’t try to locate his tomb which is somewhere in there. His last years were miserable, as he became very frail and people tried to exploit him, and I wanted to go away with the impression of vigour that the museum gives, not feeling sad. I think what I liked most were his paintings of his beloved Gala, Gala as a classical nymph, as a chunky Catalan peasant, as madonna, Gala chopped up into her component parts surrealist style; Gala as, quite simply, the woman he loved. He told some outrageous tales about his sexual pranks; there’s a very painful one involving a hedgehog. I can’t believe any of it having seen his paintings of Gala. In fact, (and the old chap would not have liked this at all) the impression I have of him now is of an essentially lonely, somewhat insecure man, who knew very well how gifted he was, but needed everyone else to realise it, too.

As you leave the museum, there’s a little shop where you can buy postcards, prints, bits and pieces. They are slightly on the dear side, but very good quality. I bought some cards and left, both dazed by the impact of the place yet on a great high. It was only later, when I thought over all I’d seen, that I realised how my opinion of Dalí had changed. I am now convinced that he is the greatest painter the world has ever known.

Websites :
www.salvador-dali.org/eng/fmuseus
www.freewaresite.com/screensavers/dali (this screensaver is your own moving picture gallery, and really worth a try).

 

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