February 10-16, 2005

art

Dalí By the Sea

port authority: Salvador Dalí's stomping grounds on the Costa Brava in Spain (below) inspired many works, such as The Madonna of Port Lligat (first version) (here) that is part of the new Salvador Dalí exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Digging deep into the mind of a surrealist on his home turf.

by Randy B. Hecht

Port Lligat is in most respects indistinguishable from the other tiny fishing villages that dot the Costa Brava of northern Catalonia. But as a narrow road winds through the foothills of the Pyrenees and makes its descent toward the town on Port Lligat Bay, two huge, white, plaster heads pop through the treetops.

Surreal? That's the general idea. Those plaster heads perch on the roof of the Salvador Dalí's House-Museum, a labyrinthine structure of interconnected fishermen's huts that were purchased and decorated between 1930 and 1970. Here, visitors can enter Dalí's studio and workshop — the closest we can come to entering the mind of the artist — and tour his house and grounds, whose eccentric decors show how he lived among the improbable visions he captured on canvas.

This house and town were his hideaway from the public spotlight and spectacle he courted so energetically in the rest of the world. The quiet and isolation of the place gave him a refuge in which to paint, and its geography and lighting had a hand in inspiring many of his masterpieces, including some that will be on display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art Feb. 16 through May 15.

It might not be the first thing you notice as you view Dalís paintings, but look again and you'll note that Port Lligat Bay and the sky above it often provide the backdrop for his subjects. The most direct reference to his home is found in the title of The Madonna of Port Lligat (first version), which is included in the show. At the exhibit, you'll also find the seascape present in such works as Premature Ossification of a Railway Station, Apparition of a Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach, Still Life — Fast Moving and Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate, One Second Before Awakening. The Port Lligat skies also leave their imprint on Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War), Dalí's 1930 omen of the Franco insurgency that would leave Spain struggling under fascist oppression for four decades.

Each room in his house has at least one window facing the sea; the view was so important to Dalí that he positioned a large mirror at just the angle necessary to allow him to watch the sun rise over the bay without leaving his bed. Visitors can't fail to notice this vista and appreciate its beauty, but gorgeous as they are, the views from those windows face competition at every turn from the odd and unexpected objects that jostle for attention in the house.

Photo By: Randy B. Hecht

There is, for starters, the polar bear — the first of many taxidermy specimens on display here — who greets us in the entryway, a lamp grasped in one paw, an umbrella stand loaded with walking sticks at his feet, and a good dozen necklaces and medallions bedecking his chest. An enormous open, bamboo-handled parasol dangles from the ceiling above a staircase on which a human skull is displayed. The Michelin Man reclines below a more conventional statue in the backyard, which is dominated by an elongated swimming pool. On the patio, one of the artist's signature lip couches — this one in hot pink — sits in front of four Pirelli Tire signs, two upside down and two right side up.

And there is Dalí himself, whose image is present everywhere, and nowhere more so than in his wife Gala's dressing room. It's virtually wallpapered with photos and magazine cover shots of her flamboyant husband, lest anyone somehow make the mistake of thinking he was camera shy.

Port Lligat is just a few minutes from Cadaqués, where Dalí spent much of his youth and first fell in love with the sight of the coast, and where today tourists will find the area's hotels, restaurants and souvenir shops. A day trip from Barcelona can include the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres and the house museum here, with time left over to see the late-afternoon light playing on the Mediterranean as seen from a beachfront cafe in Cadaqués. For those with no immediate plans to fly to Spain, there's also a virtual tour of the house available online at www.dali-estate.org/eng/lligat.htm — and, of course, closer to home, the works on exhibit at the PMA.

"Salvador Dalí," Feb. 16-May 15, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 26th St. and The Parkway, 215-763-8100.

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