Trying to understand Dalí
I have to be up-front here and admit straight out that I don't much care for the Surrealist work of Salvador Dalí. But, for reasons I never understood, he was my mother's favourite artist (or so she said: I wonder if she was pulling my leg?), so whilst in northern Catalonia it seemed an obvious thing to do to visit at least one of the three Salvador Dalí museums and try to understand what it was she liked about this bizarre man's work.
Most visitors (1,207,149 in 2017 to be precise) go to Figures to see the Theatre-Museum, a strange red building with giant eggs and Oscar-like statues in various poses on the roof. Just 40kms south of this rather ugly city is the lovely, tiny village of Púbol where Dalí bought a ruined castle and restored it for his wife Gala. And then 62kms north-east of Púbol is the hamlet of Port Lligat (part of Cadaqués) which is where Dalí's was born and lived most of his life. Together these three museums constitute what is known as the Dalian Triangle.
One has to be organised to visit all three, notably because as the house at Port Lligat can only hold eight people at a time you must reserve beforehand but when I tried the only available slots were two days after I wanted to go so I had to give it a miss.
But it's perfectly feasible to visit the other two in a day (as long as you have a car).
I didn't much care for the Theatre-Museum, touted as the biggest Surrealist object in the world, but I loved Púbol, the least visited (88,341 visitors in 2017) of the three Dalí museums. The Gala Dalí Castle, as it's known (even though it's really just a large house) was an 11th century ruin when Dalí bought it. The couple restored it but it was Gala's home and her husband could only come and visit if she'd sent him a written invitation! She was 10 years older than he was and when she died at the age of 88, Salvador moved into the castle because she was interred in the building and he didn't want to leave her alone.
Although there are a few semi-Surrealist items in it, I found I could easily imagine living there. It's easily visitable in an hour and I then spent some time wandering around the tiny stone village which appeared to be totally empty at midday except for a small B&B where coffee and industrial cakes were served by the owner through the window!
The Theatre-Museum, however, was heaving with people and this is not the high season so I hate to imagine what it must be like in the summer.
The old municipal theatre of Figueres was burned during the Spanish Civil War and in the 1960s was still a ruin. Together with the city mayor, Dali decided to rebuild it as a museum for his work. Construction began in 1969 and the museum opened in September 1974. It contains the largest collection of works by the artist and is also where he is buried.
I found it extremely hard to imagine how this building could have been a theatre when I was in it and it was only when I read up about it afterwards that I understood that the open space where a strange vehicle now sits, used to be the auditorium and the glassed-in space up some stairs off this open space is where the stage used to be. It took me no more than 75 minutes to visit the whole thing but then, as I said before, I'm no great Dalí fan. In fact the works I liked the best were by an artist I'd never heard about before called Antoni Pitxot!
And I still don't understand why my mother was so fond of Dalí...
