Dali Museum

Having spent a week of strenous training and feeling as fit as the proverbail fiddle now. (Such a strange image- why not as fit as the fiddler?), I made my way down to Figueras to visit the Salvador Gala Dali museum.

I love Dali for his sense of fun and the overiding theme that everything is mere illusion and nothing is real. San dunes are faces, rocks are bodies. Househild objects are noses, lips are sofas. There is such a tremendous sense of fun in all this. Dali emerges as a self publicist and kind of early cross betweeen Branson and Hockney.

Deeper messages based upon themes in Freudian psychology are evident and compelling. The enduring fondness of his long term affection for, and relationship with Gala is endearing to me.

Yet Dali displays mastery of techniques in the creation of art and his media involves painting, sculpture, the skills of the jeweller, the animator and the illusionist. There are elemnst of performance art in many of his works. This drawing of Tuna Fishing is not perhaps typical Dali but shows his sheer mastery of drawing.


The museum is well worth a visit. Dali can also be explored on the internet. There is also a good Dali museum in Florida.

The day was welcome nourishment contrasting starkly with the heaving muscle wrenching excercise regime of the past few days. Set me up for a leovely dinner of wild boar, potato and red cabbage cooked by Chris Garrick and Julia. Listening to Chris playing a CD version of a range of peices but especially "Dimming of the Day" was a great end to a day of art.