Wednesday, 17 December 2008

Dali Museum

Salvador Dali is one of my favourite artists, so I was pleased to take a day trip to his home town in Figueres, and visit the famous Dali museum.


Ah, who could forget the old big egg on the roof decor!

The dome above the main hall and courtyard.
I had heard that Dali is buried below this car.
A peek inside the car.
Dali's tomb somewhere under the car.

errr, what can one say about such a thing!

This painting of Dali's eponymous wife, Gala, was very impressive, due to its massive size!

An example of Dali's jewellery. I didn't know he did that! Of couse, his wife Gala has to be a part of it in the small photo up top.
Please have a look at this video:
It is the most amazing heart jewellery, with a realistic ruby heart that actually beats like a proper heart. Pretty freaky really!! There was also a nice angel with slowly flapping wings.

My feeble attempt at abstract art, entitled "Self-portrait with the ghost of Monroe's liptick"

This is not much to look at in a photo, but is an example of Dali's stereoscopic works, or 3D paintings. It consists of 2 almost identical, but slightly different paintings, which would be positioned on either side of this photo, coming out at 45 degrees. Then there are 2 45 degree mirrors, meeting at the line you see in the centre of the photo. Putting your nose up to the mirror joint and squinting just right allows you to see the painting as one 3d image. What a genius that man was!

Nose and ear swap

The famous Mae West room. For the best view, one walks up a staircase and looks through a convex glass sphere to get the hair to fit nicely. A lot of fun!

The great man himself!

There was also some art by a few other artists. I really enjoyed this fellows work, which consists pretty much of either rocks looking like people, or people made of rocks, depending on your view of the world. He reminded me a fair bit of Beverly Doolittle, another of my favourite artists.

Dali's equivalent of the sistine chapel. Pretty impressive too!

Not sure what this is doing here, but I liked it.

This is highly interesting. I didn't think much of this painting of Gala looking over the meditteranean at first.
However, a few hours later, after having gone through the museum, I ended up on the other side of the room, and looking through a reverse telescope, the painting suddenly became Abraham Lincoln. One can't quite get the full effect in a photo as through the telescope, but you can get a rough idea below

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great shots from the Museum and with your descriptions, you make people feel like visiting this place. To have the whole impression people should listen the music coming out from Dali's car and go around this house, which is a real "goldmine". And you introduced it a very "stylish" way. Your Mae West shot is excellent, and now, I challenged myself with the Abraham Lincoln portrait, and it works without having a look at the bottom picture, you just need to wink your eyes and focus:-).
Keep up with this travel blog, it's great!

Unknown said...

This is great stuff, Rust! Worthy of a mention somewhere. Makes me wish i had not missed the Dali museum when I was so close by.

Graeme said...

well done Rusty - great post. i didn't realise how prolific Salvadore was. By the way, what does eponymous mean?

discombob said...

I could be wrong, but as far as I recall eponymous means to be everywhere - kind of like coke really