A pleasant and efficient train ride from Barcelona to Figueras (had we gone any father north, we’d have been in France) on a perfect sunny day brought us to within a mile of the Dali Museum. We decided to walk instead of taking a cab and enjoyed it so much that we walked back at the end of the day. The wildflowers were out and the green spaces in this remote town were a welcome break from the stone facades and busyness of Barcelona for a day.
I think a lot of people visit the Dali museum expecting to see all of Dali’s more famous works. With a few notable exceptions, most of those are on exhibit elsewhere. What you do have in Figueras is an eclectic and dilapidated former theater building that Dali himself renovated and turned into a showcase form some of his creative imaginings—not just paintings, but sculptures, assemblages, rooms, and some items that really can’t be labeled.. Much of the work was retrospective—sketches, studies and some early works that one would not immediately identify as Dali’s. I love seeing the progression of his work and the elements that show up and get repeated and amplified as his style developed. Dali’s sketchbook for his Christ of Saint John of the Cross (see below) is there, in actual form and viewable electronically page by page.
What I didn’t like are the crowds. The entry process is interesting. You purchase a ticket for a specific entry time. Those times are spaced 30 minutes apart. Ostensibly this is to limit the number of folks in the museum at any given time. The actual result is more interesting. On the half hour, a crowd enters and immediately fills every space available. As time goes by and people realize that there are many levels to the museum and many corridors and turns on every level, and that melting clocks are nowhere to be found (that’s not entirely true—The Persistence of Memory is there, high on a wall in a strangely appointed bedroom) the crowds tend to thin out and you can spend time taking the works in in a more leisurely manner. Also, many middle-school aged groups visit the museum, and it doesn’t take long for the girls to form little groups around their phones and the boys to from little groups around the girls and act like idiots, so if you can avoid that…
The bonus church I mentioned is the Eglesia Sant Pere, which is next to (well, perpendicular to) the Dali Museum. It’s open for viewing but we saw very few people actually doing that. It’s really a charming little 13th century Gothic/Romanesque space with some beautiful stained glass and a very special capella to the left front of the narthax. Definitely worth a visit.
Anyway, here are some images. there are more on the Photo Dump page.
