Inside the Spanish Heartland
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SALVADOR DALI — LIQUID DESIRE THE SUNDAY AGE 2009 REAL LIVES RAYMOND GILL Archeological reminiscence of Millet’s Angelus (c. 1934) oil on wood panel 31.8 x 39.4 cm Salvador Dali The Salvador Dali Museum, St Petersburg, Fl. Worldwide rights: © Salvador Dali, Fundacio Gala- Salvador Dali, VISCOPY 2009. Inside the Spanish heartland It’s fitting that the world’s most comprehensive Masterpieces Liquid Desire exhibition. rust-coloured walls are studded with The idea for a Dali museum in plaster loaves of country bread. collection of Salvador Dali artworks is held his home town was announced by Once inside, visitors discover Dali’s where he spent most of his life. Dali himself in 1961. He had his art collection of his paintings, sculptures, collection to offer, but not the money to “puzzle pictures”, dazzlingly creepy restore his choice for its location — the jewellery designs, holograms, film, HE prosperous Catalan business, much as it did when Dali old theatre in Figueres, which had been costumes and interactive objects. There town of Figueres sits on a was born there in 1904. In the past 35 damaged in the Spanish Civil War in are also rooms devoted to a few works by verdant plain known as the years it has also prospered from having 1939. Money from a war reparations artists Dali collected, including Spanish “Emporda”, 20 kilometres the Teatre-Museu Dali (Dali Theatre- fund (significantly, not the arts ministry) Renaissance painter El Greco and south of the Pyrenees and Museum) in the centre of the town. allowed Dali to oversee the restoration French surrealist Marcel Duchamp. T the French border, and is home to Each year about 1 million visitors tour and design of the museum, which was These and Dali’s works are shown in about 43,000 people. The rugged and the former municipal theatre where, in to be theatrical and truly “Dalinian”. a maze-like complex, which also includes rocky Costa Brava, location of the Dali 1919, the 15-year-old prodigy held his “I want my museum to be like a more conventional gallery spaces showing family summer house in the village first exhibition of paintings. single block, a labyrinth, a great surrealist Dali’s works from childhood through to of Cadaques, is on the coast about 40 Few artists have entire museums object. It will be a totally theatrical his last pieces from the late 1970s. kilometres north-east, as is the tiny inlet devoted to their work. Dali’s enduring museum. The people who come to see At the centre of the museum is a of Portlligat, where the artist Salvador popularity is evident in the many it will leave with the sensation of having open courtyard dominated by a 1941 Dali kept a house from 1930 until his unofficial museums across the world had a theatrical dream,” he promised. black Cadillac known as the “Rainy death in 1989. About 40 kilometres (see story page 13), but there are two When Dali opened the museum, Taxi” because water showers down on to south of Figueres is the small town of “official” institutions devoted to his in 1974, the dream had become reality. mannequins inside the car when visitors Pubol, where Dali bought and restored work, the Dali Museum in St Petersburg, From a distance visitors see a glass dome deposit one-euro coins. a castle for his wife, Gala. Barcelona, Florida (see story page 12), and the Dali created to look like an insect’s eye. The The courtyard leads to the old the capital of Catalonia, is about 110 Theatre-Museum in Figueres. building’s pediments are topped by giant theatre’s original stage, where Dali’s kilometres south. Both are loaning about 100 white eggs, and gold statues with gilded body was interred in 1989, and on to Figueres owes much of its good works each for the National Gallery baguettes atop their heads stand guard a “puzzle picture” that reveals itself as fortune to agriculture and light of Victoria’s Melbourne Winter over the plaza below. The museum’s Continued page 10 10 SALVADOR DALI — LIQUID DESIRE THE SUNDAY AGE 2009 1 2 3 4 Left: 1. The Casa-Museu Right: Portrait of my Salvador Dali, Portrait of the sister 1925 Portlligat, seen from cellist Ricard oil on canvas the beach. Pichot 1920 92.0 x 65.0 cm 2. The Teatre-Museu oil on canvas Salvador Dali Dali, viewed from 61.5 x 50.0 cm Fundacio Gala- Placa Gala-Salvador Salvador Dali Salvador Dali, Dali, Figueres. Fundacio Gala- Figueres. 3. Torre Galatea Salvador Dali, Dali Bequest annex of the Teatre- Figueres. © Salvador Dali, Museu Dali, Figueres. © Salvador Dali, Fundacio Gala- 4. Inner courtyard of Fundacio Gala- Salvador Dali, the Castell Gala Dali, Salvador Dali, VISCOPY 2009. Pubol. VISCOPY 2009. PICTURES: JEAN- PIERRE CHABROL From page 8 Dalinian Studies and the Gala-Salvador It opened the Portlligat and Pubol Gala’s 11th-century castle, known as a portrait of Abraham Lincoln when Dali Foundation. houses to the public in the mid-1990s, the Castell Gala Dali (Gala Dali Castle) at viewed through a telescope. There is The foundation was set up in 1983 by bringing an additional 350,000 visitors a Pubol, is where she lived alone from the also the Mae West Room, where objects Dali with an ambit that could only have year to the region. Both house museums late 1970s until her death in 1982. Here, including a sofa and curtains comprise a been conceived by him. Its immodest offer intimate insights into the couple’s in ornate Dali-designed splendour, 3-D image of the actress’s face. mission statement is to “promote, foster, lives and show how they were certainly Gala entertained her husband and her Dali was so involved in the museum explain, give prestige, protect, defend extraordinary, but also very ordinary. young lovers. The castle today remains that after Gala’s death in 1982 he moved in Spain, and the rest of the world, The Portlligat house is a series much as the superstitious Gala left into an apartment within the museum. the artistic intellectual oeuvre of the of fishermen’s huts that Dali began it. There is her “throne room”, her Sometimes he’d take his daily siesta in painter ... and the universal recognition acquiring in 1930 and gradually sybaritic bedroom, and the crypt in the one of its galleries, furnished with a snail- of the genius of his contribution to the connected into one villa, which snakes cellar where she is buried, alone, next shaped bed, and had to be awakened by fine arts, culture and contemporary along and up the beachfront. The house to the empty tomb meant for Dali. He’d guards when visitors approached. thought”. was his main Spanish home when he planned to be buried there but changed The museum’s chief curator, Montse On Dali’s death in 1989 the and Gala returned from self- imposed his mind after she died and was laid to Aguer i Teixidor, who is co-curating foundation was bequeathed his and exile in the US in 1948. rest instead in the Theatre-Museum. A the NGV’s Liquid Desire exhibition, Gala’s art collection, their two homes at Once it was a magnet for Dali’s gallery has since been installed showing worked in the museum when Dali was Portlligat and Pubol, and most of their friends and hangers-on. But now only a selection of her designer gowns. still resident but ailing. “I read him personal effects. (The couple’s only small groups of visitors are admitted to The house’s utilitarian features, the newspapers. He was interested in heir was Gala’s daughter from her first the house at 10-minute intervals to make such as bathroom and kitchen, are science so I read him a A Brief History of marriage to the French painter Paul their way safely through the narrow also accessible, but perhaps nothing Time, by Stephen Hawking,” she says. Eluard, Cecile, who was estranged from white-washed warren. more reveals Gala’s Norma Desmond- As with most who knew Dali well, her mother and only wanted to keep The house has some extraordinary like final years than the Cadillac still Aguer recalls that in private the artist Gala’s library.) features, including a found object parked in the garage. Her driver would was “very polite and not demanding The foundation administers Dali’s sculpture titled Christ of the Rubbish Tip, transport her and Dali from Pubol to and not a big ego”. But when the media copyright, organises exhibitions with and the views across the bay that would Portlligat along the scenic coast that came calling, it was time, he would say, other museums, authenticates and be familiar from many of his paintings. informed so much his life’s works. But to put on his “Dali uniform”. acquires Dali works, and operates an Visitors can also see his workman-like outside the garage still stands the orange Aguer is one of the museum’s exhaustive archive. Occasionally it is studio, a cellar where his paints and Datsun 180B station wagon that served 90 staff who oversee this 4000-piece called upon to answer those who claim brushes are still stored, and a wall as their more practical daily runabout. collection of works in the complex of to be Dali’s heirs, although none so far covered with press clippings and Dali Raymond Gill is chief arts writer buildings that also houses the Centre for have proved authentic. pictured with famous identities. at The Age 12 SALVADOR DALI — LIQUID DESIRE THE SUNDAY AGE 2009 Magnificent obsession In St Petersburg, Florida, A.