I don't do drugs. I am drugs…take me, I am hallucinogenic. Salvador Dali

Side of view of The Dali Theatre-Museum in Figueres, SpainWe didn’t know what to expect when we set out on our drive to Figueres, the town in Catalan, where Dali was born. “Where, if not in my own town, should the most extravagant and solid of my work endure? The Municipal Theatre, or what remained of it (from the Spanish Civil War), 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 baptized; and third, because it was precisely in the hall of the vestibule of the theatre where I gave my first exhibition of painting," says Dali about the choice of its location.

The Dalí Theatre-Museum is the largest surrealistic object in the world. Within this theater ruined by civil war, Dalí created a place to discover a provocative, mystical, and thoroughly enchanting Dali, impassioned by science---the Dali of the final period of his life. He lived in the tower of this Theatre-Museum, where he died in 1989 from heart failure and is now laid to rest in a crypt under a geodesic dome. The idea of bringing together his work in the old theatre of Figueres excited Dalí, and he dedicated himself to the task for over a decade, collaborating in it and designing the smallest details, until it became reality in September, 1974.

Salvador Dali worked hard to establish an image of an eccentric and paranoid genius. He followed the rules of marketing a product – himself and his art. And the name of his game, in his own words, "It is not important what you do as long as you are in the headlines."   “I want my museum to be like a single block, a labyrinth, a surrealist object. It will be totally theatrical…the people who come to see it will leave with the sensation of having had a theatrical dream.” It was Dali’s wish that his pilgrims begin their journey from a queue around his spiritual center, into a contemplative place, where each person could glimpse new vision, concepts, and thought. And we allowed Dali to take us on his phantasmagorical trip."Gala's Boat and Umbrella" in the court in front of the geodesic dome, under which Dali wished to be buried

One of the most visible elements of the museum is the transparent grid structure in the form of a geodesic dome crowning the building, an idea by Salvador Dalí which was realised by the Murcian architect Emilio Pérez Piñero (1935-1972). The dome has become not only the emblem of the Theatre-Museum but also a symbol for the town of Figueres itself. On the walls of the old theatre, the mannequins welcome us between the remains of the burned beams, the “grotesque” monsters, the eight bas-reliefs, and metaphysical washbasins that seem like angels. Four flowerbeds form the letter “G” for Gala, the muse, wife, and love of Dali’s life.

Within and without the maze-like warren, we notice the repetition of several images and devices that give us clues into the thinking of this enigmatic artist:

Moorish Architectural Details
Salvador Dali told the world that his ancestors were descended from the Moors who invaded Spain in 711, and that this was where his love for all things grandiose came from. Dali is neither a Spanish nor a Catalan name, and has almost completely disappeared throughout the Iberian Peninsula. Insisting on Arab lineage, Dali claimed the date of the connection to the Moors who invaded Spain in AD 711. “From these origins, comes my love of everything that is gilded and excessive, my passion for luxury and my love of oriental clothes.” Dali even liked to think that the readiness of his skin to go almost black in the sun was another Arab trait. (last photos in the gallery, below, demonstrate Casa de las Conchas in Salamanca and Moorish architecture in Toledo, both of which the Dali Museum appears to reference). It seems that Dali was right to claim Arab blood--or, at least, Moorish. The surname occurs regularly throughout the Muslim world, and there are several Dalis in the Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria. In Spain's Muslim past, there is the noun dali, from the Arabic for a guide or leader.

The Egg
Dali connects the egg to the prenatal and intrauterine, used to symbolize hope and love.

Plaster bread details on building exterior--a small rectangular view of old museum wall can be seen behind facadeBread
During his early years within the Surrealist movement, Dalí sought an object that embodied a number of the concepts and problems that preoccupied him and other Surrealists, but also satisfied his specific requirement of being profoundly figurative rather than abstract. That the artist chose bread as a sort of personal device or emblem, similar to his famous moustache, points to an acute awareness of the potential for the art and artist’s personality, to become an object of mass consumption, to be “eaten” or “devoured” by the consumers of art and celebrity. Dalí described this phenomenon in terms of what he deemed the “cannibalism of objects,” presumably pertaining to the perpetual cycle of consumption requisite to high capitalism. By making a very careful comparison of this same object in both his sculpture and painting we “can study all the history of painting right there, from the linear charm of primitivism to stereoscopic hyper-aestheticism." Plaster loaves of bread also adorn the exterior of the crimson building, reminding us at once that we are in the house of a Surrealist and in Catalan, where the flag is crimson and yellow.

The Diver
The journey into the depths of the subconscious that Dali feels is important to life of integration. He takes this journey through his work and the same awaits the visitor who allows himself to become responsive to his Theatre-Museum.

Drawers
In his paintings and sculpture, we find several figures with drawers protruding where there is usually a torso. The psyche, Dali believed, could only be revealed to us by psychoanalysis. “The only difference between the immortal Greece and contemporary times is Sigmund Freud, who discovered that the human body, purely platonic at the Greece epoch, nowadays is full of secret drawers that only the psychoanalysis is capable to open.” These drawers represent the psyche, which each of us may open, in our own time and place.Mark Brinkerhoff, one of our fellow travelers, stands beside the crypt of Dali where low lighting and no-flash photography provides a fittingly eerie experience for all of us

Surrealism

Few artists have had a greater impact on 20th century art than Salvador Dali. He is widely acknowledged to be a pioneer - and the living embodiment - of Surrealist art, a bold movement that emerged in Europe in the 1920's and flourished for generations thereafter, embracing not only fine art but literature, music, philosophy, psychology, and even popular culture. Surrealism attempts to express the workings of the subconscious and is characterized by fantastic imagery and incongruous juxtaposition of subject matter. Among surrealism's most important contributions was the invention of new artistic techniques that tapped into the artist's unconscious mind. Leader André Breton was explicit in his assertion that it was, above all, a revolutionary movement. Freud's work with free association, dream analysis, and the unconscious was of utmost importance to the Surrealists in developing methods to liberate imagination. They embraced idiosyncrasy, while rejecting the idea of an underlying madness. Salvador Dalí explains it this way, "there is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad."

The "Mae West" Room, as seen through the Dali's 'room minimizer'

Whether working from pure inspiration or on a commissioned illustration, Dali's matchless insight and symbolic complexity are apparent. Above all, Dali was a superb draftsman. His excellence as a creative artist will always set a standard for the art of the twentieth century. As an artist, Salvador Dali was not limited to a particular style or media. The body of his work, from early impressionist paintings through his transitional surrealist works, and into his classical period, reveals a constantly growing and evolving artist. Dali worked in all media, leaving behind a wealth of oils, watercolors, drawings, graphics, and sculptures, films, photographs, performance pieces, jewels and objects of all descriptions. And most importantly, he left for posterity the permission for us to explore all aspects of his life, in turn facilitating the ignition of our own artistic expression.

The Theater-Museum houses the single largest and most diverse collection of works by Salvador Dalí, the heart of which was from the artist's own collection. In addition to Dalí paintings from all decades of his career, there are Dalí sculptures, 3-dimensional collages, mechanical devices, a living-room with custom furniture that looks like the face of Mae West when viewed from a certain spot, and other curiosities from Dalí's imagination. The museum also houses a small selection of works by other artists collected by Dalí, ranging from El Greco to Marcel Duchamp, and a gallery devoted to the work of Dalí's friend and fellow Catalan artist Antoni Pitxot, who became director of the museum after Dalí's death.

Painting is an infinitely minute part of my personality, says Salvador Dali. After the tour of his Theatre-Museum, we know first-hand that he is more than painting...he's a shaman, an actor on life's stage, a sleight-of-hand trickster, and a psychic who re-unites us all with our own creativity. Dali teases us to learn more about him and ourselves through this remarkable piece of architecture. You may not like him, his art, or this building...but, you can't ignore the oeuvre of work embodied here and its impact on your senses and thinking about art.

Photography credit (with exception of last three in gallery, obtained from internet): Stephanie Chambers

Houses that surround the beach in Cadaques, including The Blue House (orange roof).The colorful seaside resort of Cadaqués bears little relation these days to the rundown backwater fishing village with which Dalí fell in love during his childhood vacations before World War I. Today, expensive whitewashed homes cozy up to neat esplanades. The carefully preserved swimming coves share no hint of the grit and shingle strand from which Cadaqués’s fishermen launched their boats in former times to pursue sardines, the precious commodity that kept this economy fueled.

Cadaqués is a town in the Alt Empordà, in the province of Girona, Catalonia, Spain. On a bay in the middle of the Cap de Creus peninsula, near Cap de Creus cape, it juts from the Costa Brava (“wild coast”) into the Mediterranean. Cadaqués has a special place in art history. Salvador Dalí often visited Cadaqués in his childhood, and later kept a home in Port Lligat, a small village on a bay next to the town. A summer holiday here in 1916 was pivotal to Dalí's artistic career overall and in the production of two of his most famous pieces, The Persistence of Memory and The Spectre of Sex Appeal. Other notable artists, including Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Marcel Duchamp, Rene Magritte, Man Ray, Andre Breton, Federico Garcia Lorca, and John Cage, among others, also spent time here. The shores around Cadaqués and Portlligat, which inspired Dalí, have very little in common with those further south, where jet-skis and the beach bars lure tourists.Steve Chambers at top of narrow street, one of the many in the village, carved from cliff rock

Cadaqués’ northern wind, the tramuntana, is the plot device in the short story, Tramontana, by Gabriel García Márquez, a Nobel Prize winner for literature. The placid blue seas of summertime become a very different environment when the local wind, the tramuntana or mistral (in France), howls down from snow-clad summits of the Pyrenees and provokes the Mediterranean into rages. The tramuntana is thought to affect the emotions as brutally as it does the sea and countryside, and is a constant topic of conversation in this region. The Empordanese are known for their intransigence (the Dalis were no exception). One writer attributes this regional trait to having to push constantly against the wind. Anyone mentally fragile, or with a tendency to sudden flare ups, is likely to be labeled atramuntanat (touched by the tramuntana).  Crimes of passion committed when the wind is raging were historically half-way forgiven. It is alleged that the tramuntana is responsible for depression and suicide, especially in Cadaques. The protagonist of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s short story, `Tramuntana’, is such a victim.

If you leave the beachside during peak seasons of calm and warmth and wander off into the rugged terrain surrounding the village, it does not take long to see what a profound influence this strange landscape might exert on Dalí’s fanciful sensibilities.  He was strongly drawn to the texture of local rocks and their juxtaposition with the surrounding sea in all of its moods. These contrasts feature both in his early, realistic work, and in the paintings of his Surrealist phase. In the painting, The Persistence of Memory (1931), the passive, ochre cliffs of Cadaques dominate the right-hand side of the canvas, while the inert sea barely has enough energy to lap the base of these cliffs, adding to the sense of decay and dissolution that pervades the piece. (See the comparison of the painting and cliff photo in gallery below).  Dalí uses these compelling cliffs and coves to symbolize his traumatic perceptions of the Cap de Creus as a child. These images integrate the painting and convey conflicting dynamic of fear and affection about this area near the sea.

A sensitivity to these natural surroundings is even more striking in The Spectre of Sex Appeal (1934), in which the child Dalí, clad in sailor suit, stands overwhelmed by his first sight of female family members swimming and sporting their far-from-size-four figures in the ill-fitting bathing gear of the period. The same cliffs are prominent in the background of this painting and can be seen in the photo gallery, below, along with today’s more slender version of a Cadaques bather. At such times it is exhilarating to stand beneath the cliffs of Cap de Creus and watch, as Dalí did, the swells crashing against them, while flocks of seabirds — gannets, gulls and shearwaters — dive and soar in sheer excitement on the gales. Dalí was strongly drawn to the architecture of these rocks, as were we by the narrow streets carved from the promontories that line the Cadaques coast.

The winding approach to Cadaques, on Spain's Costa Brava ("wild coast")Besides the blinding white buildings with colorful trim, often imitating the deep blue of sea and sky, we noticed the use of green Majolica, a lustrously glazed earthenware as exterior treatments on gutters, patios, trim. This colorful enamel was probably introduced into Spain from Persia through Arabia. The tableware was produced on the island of Majorca as early as, if not before, 1235, and was largely exported into Italy, where it was called Maiolica ware, Maiolica being the old pronunciation of Majorca. Majolica is created with a tin glazing that creates a brilliant white, opaque surface for subsequent painting. During the 14th century, the limited palette of colors was expanded from the traditional manganese purple and copper green to include cobalt blue, antimony yellow and iron-oxide orange. In Texas, we collect Majolica as precious decorative items, but our hailstorms do not allow its use an exterior architectural detail! We stumbled on a 17th century Baroque Church, Santa Maria, whose gilded interior altars contrast dramatically with its surrounding streets of jagged natural rock.

There are many seaside resort areas along the Costa Brava. Many are filled with sunning (topless) locals and tourists from cruises. But, for us, none of them enchant as completely as Cadaques because of its remoteness and artistic legacy.  In the words of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, “What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.” We cannot help but think that this place altered Dali's thought about his memories…and we are grateful that Cadaques etched itself so indelibly in his sub-conscious. We will share more about this enigmatic artist, his life, and the museum/temple he created in Figueres, in a later blog. (Photography credit: Stephanie and Steve Chambers).

Front view of English Cotswold home in Dallas, TexasFor a home in University Park, Dallas, Texas architect Steve Chambers incorporated a range of elements, including English antiques as well as classic architectural detailing. Many of these details can be found in the stonework, which was employed in a range of traditional formats.

“One of the controlling factors in the design of this house was that the couple collects English antiques,” says Steve. “They get a container full and bring them back.  They brought back old English doors, and they have one room with paneling from the 1600s. The idea was to make the house look as authentic as possible, and to do that, we used elements such as cut stone around the windows and entry door.”

The residence is sited on a narrow urban lot within University Park. In addition to incorporating the antiques collected by the couple — who travels extensively in the Cotswold countryside of England — the home needed to provide light, openness, convenience and other amenities of modern design.Foyer of the English home

Chambers Architects' approach was to use authentic English details and architectural antiques, and one of the most noteworthy details was the use of limestone at the windows. “We designed an authentic 16th century detail of fixed leaded glass windows that were set directly into the structural stone,” Steve explains. “It was a challenge to convey this to the contractor. We actually spent time looking at old historic gothic details to figure out how to do it. It was something I had never done before, and neither had the stone or the glass contractors.  We did some research on how it would be done, and we do have some very old books with old English details in them.”

Once the windows were installed, they quickly contributed to the overall goal of creating a home that looked centuries old. “These are single-glazed windows in a metal frame, so they ‘sweat,’ and when the condensation runs onto the stone, it looks like what you would see on a building that is 200 or 300 years old,” Chambers said. “That is part of the natural effect of what happens with the stone. Some might consider it an imperfection, but we liked the natural effect. The homeowner loves the idea that the house looks like it was built in an earlier period of time. She didn’t want something that looked as though it was built today.” This home was recently published in Stone World magazine for its use of authentic stone detailing and craftsmanship. For more photos of this home, go to the portfolio.English window set into cut stone