Envy Man Magazine Online

by: darrencooper 

Unbelievable! I usually expect museums to be a bit boring and I usually buzz right through them partially due to undiagnosed A.D.D. Not the case with the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres, Spain, about an hour’s drive north of Barcelona.

I must admit that I did not know much about Salvador Dalí I did have a preconceived notion that he was a bit odd, although I really had nothing to back up this assumption besides his melting clocks or his elephants on stilts that I was familiar with. After visiting the museum (and over one million people visit this museum each year) I walked away wondering if he was a genius or just plain crazy. Dalí must have known what others thought of him because he was known to have once said that “the difference between me and a crazy man is that I am not crazy.” And I now believe that he was not.

One of the many intriguing facts that separates this museum from all others is that it was designed and created by the artist himself. In the early 1960’s Salvador Dalí was captivated by the ghostly enchantment of the old Municipal Theatre of Figueres, which was originally constructed in 1849, and chose this site as the future Dalí Theatre- Museum. This would be the home of the world’s largest surrealistic object in the world.

“Where, if not in my own town, should the most extravagant and solid of my work endure, where if not here? The Municipal Theatre, or what remained of it, struck me as very appropriate, and for three reasons: first, because I am an eminently theatrical painter; second, because the theatre stands right opposite the church where I was christened, and third, because it was precisely in the hall of the vestibule of the theatre where I gave my first exhibition of painting.”

Every detail of the museum was attended to by Dalí himself for more than a decade until the inauguration of the Dalí Theatre-Museum in September of 1974. The first thing that caught my eye as I arrived at the museum was what appeared to be giant eggs on the roof and varnished breads all over the outside walls of the building. Also atop the museum were numerous art deco mannequins. I found the building a little bizarre but nothing could have prepared me for what was to be found inside the impressive central courtyard of the museum.

 Upon entering the courtyard I really had no idea where to look or what I was even looking at. The first thing I guess I noticed was a Cadillac called Rainy Taxi. The sheer size of it was overwhelming. Inside of the taxi were snail-covered corpse-like people. It even rains inside if you drop a Euro into the slot. Above the hood of the car is an enormous statue of Queen Esther. Above all is a boat that seems to stand three stories above the Cadillac. Dalí has precisely placed simulated drops of water hanging from the keel of the boat. I felt as though I had entered a fun house. Around the courtyard are more of the art deco mannequins and four flowerboxes in the shapes of the letter G. G stands for Gala, Dalí’s muse and later his wife.

Yes, Salvador Dalí was married. Many have speculated and argued whether Dalí might have, in fact, been a homosexual and that he allowed Gala to see other men. Does it really matter?

Up the ramps from the courtyard is a truly incredible space: it is the stage of the old Municipal Theatre crowned by a transparent cupola. At night the cupola is reflected on the enormous glass wall that separates the courtyard-garden from the stage creating an illusion of multiple cupolas. The museum is only open at night during the summer months. Standing near the edge of the stage I marveled at the size of the massive backdrop overlooking the stage. The backdrop, an oil painting of a bare bust with a partially missing torso, was designed by Dalí for the ballet Labyrinth which premiered in the Metropolitan Opera House in New York in 1941.

As I walked toward the backdrop I practically walked onto the crypt of the artist. It is not marked as being the crypt of Dalí, and I am sure that many visitors actually trek right over it. Once I realized what was at my feet, I stopped and wondered to myself how proud Dalí must have been of his creation before he passed away. It is said that he had long wanted to be buried alongside Gala in Púbol, but museum officials insist that in his last weeks Dalí asked to be buried within the museum.

The next room I entered was upholstered in red velvet and named by Dalí himself as the Treasure Room. The room contains many of the most important pieces of his work held within the museum. In this room is The Basket of Bread that he painted in 1945 and was a gift to Gala. Also included in this room is a small oil painting entitled The Spectre of Sex-Appeal. In this work Dalí himself appears as a child dressed as a sailor looking at a monster symbolizing sexuality. You can’t help but notice his love for Gala in the room as she appears in several paintings including Galarina in which he shows her exposed left breast.

I strolled out of this room, across the stage and up some stairs beneath the cupola to the first floor into the Mae West Room. Dalí must have had fun creating this room. Upon entering, I felt as though I were in a living room. There were two framed landscapes hanging on the wall above a double fireplace that resembled a nose. In front of the fireplace was a settee that looked like ruby-red lips. Oh, and there were drapes of blond hair. I walked up a set of steps behind the drapes and peered through a reducing lens that hung from a statue of a camel. There it was, the face of Mae West. As if this were not enough, Dalí had placed an upside down bath on the ceiling of the room as well.

After winding around hallways filled with numerous paintings and drawings I found myself in the Palace of the Wind. The painting on the ceiling triumphs over this room that Dalí had a particular fondness for. In 1919, at the age of fourteen, Salvador Dalí had his first exhibition in this very room with two other artists from Figueres. He features himself alongside Gala in this work based on the poem by Joan Maragall, ‘El Palau del Vent’ (The Palace of the Wind) representing different passages of his life.

The room that I did not spend much time in that I now regret passing through so quickly was the Dalí Joies. This room contains the 37 original jewels (and two that were made later), and the drawings and paintings made for each one produced by Dalí between 1932 and 1970. This collection was acquired from American Owen Cheatham’s collection and includes The Royal Heart. This brooch is made of gold, diamonds, pearls, rubies, and emeralds. The extraordinary feature about this piece is that it holds a mechanism that makes the brooch’s heart beat.

Through a curtained door below ground I walked into a small room, barely lit, containing the tombstone of Salvador Dalí. The tombstone made of Figueres stone has the inscription “Salvador Dalí y Doménech. Marquis of Dalí of Púbol. 1904-1989”. I found myself alone in this room staring at the stone, feeling very peaceful and undistracted from the mayhem that filled the other 22 rooms of the museum. I now felt that this was not only a museum, but also a mausoleum.

The mere fact that Salvador Dalí not only produced the 4,000 pieces of art obtained by this museum in his hometown of Figueres (only 1,500 are on display) and the countless others housed in other museums around the world, but also the fact that Salvador Dalí himself spent a decade of his life designing the Dalí Theatre-Museum is unparalleled. The man was not crazy, he was a genius.