Valley of Dali

I've just been told that the fish I keep finding are all dolphins. I can't quite believe that they are all dolphins, but okay... This fountain was close to the Figueres train station.

June 16: On our one full day in Girona, Cindy and I had reserved tickets to visit the Dali Theatre-Museum in Figueres, a city a half-hour train ride away (yes, one of those local trains like the one we rode from Barcelona to Girona the night before). I'm sure many of you have been there; if you have not, add it to your next European adventures. You may never be the same again. I'll let the photos speak for themselves.

Dali seems like a combination of crazy genius and showman who takes his nightmares way too seriously. I appreciated his drawings and more realistic paintings, but much of what he created was so far beyond the pale that I could only marvel and move on to the next over-the-top installation. Some things were brilliant and others just seemed intended to shock viewers. I found myself overwhelmed, ultimately.

Dalí had a number of obsessions, including Hitler and Franco (his fascination with Hitler got him thrown out of the Surrealist group of artists); sex, which frightened him all his life, and which shaped his open marriage with his wife Gala; and money, which he went to great lengths to acquire and keep; etc. Here's a brief article about Dalí for your edification: https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/21-facts-about-salvador-dali. And this: https://arthive.com/publications/299~Dali_symbols_What_is_behind_them.

Dali's museum, which he designed and built from the remains of the former Municipal Theatre of Figueres, is a wild demonstration of his obsessions and fixations. It is indeed a glimpse into a creative mind that has a lot of things going on. As I said above, I'll let some of my photos give you a picture, which is undoubtedly biased and way incomplete.

We found this in a plaza on the way to the museum.

This 1,000-year-old church is right next to the museum. What the day-to-day relationship might be between the two institutions I can only imagine.

And this entry installation faces directly toward the church, not toward the street. Hmmmm...but it turns out that was the church where he was baptized.

Cindy is ready to enter Dali's temple.

Kate ponders the meaning...

Violins often show up in Dali's work--and by the way, Dalí is not the only artist to work with Greek and Roman statues; Rodin did some of that too, as have many other artists. I found this piece quite appealing.

We discovered that Dalí used a red thread in much of his work, but my light delve into his symbolism didn't bring this up. I imagine there is some examination of this somewhere.

In this courtyard we encountered a plethora of symbols and objects. Through the huge window behind this "auto-eroticism" (my pun, but perhaps his too?) figure ("Car Naval. Rainy taxi"), you can see probably the largest painting in the collection.

But in the courtyard are so many things to see:

Dalí himself

Drawers are some of his most familiar symbols

And finally, because you're probably bored with these not-great photos, here is perhaps the piece de resistance:

Mae West--or at least the lips sofa was purportedly fashioned after her lips. When you first go into the room, on the floor level, this is what you see:

Then, you line up with everyone else to climb stairs to a viewing platform where the hair creates a frame for the whole picture, as seen in the previous picture.

In the end, I ended up with photos of pieces that demonstrated Dali's most "out there" work. The most interesting pieces, I think, were those in a special exhibition of his drawings. They showed his obsession with sex, but they were also just beautiful black and white drawings. Not sure why I didn't photograph some of those, but it might have been because the museum was packed with school groups that were pretty distracting.

After we left the Dalí Thestre-Museum, we headed back to Girona, where we had tickets to visit the Museu del Cinema, a fascinating deep dive into the beginning of movies, from the earliest kinds of moving picture mechanisms to current history.

And thus endeth our sojourn in Girona and Figueres. The next day we headed for Les Baux de Provence, which good friends had persuaded us was a MUST. We'll see how that turned out.