Inside Dali's Brain

 

Sunday evening, February 12, 2012 – Dinner in Provence, Breakfast in the Big Apple, and Inside Dali’s Brain

For our first dinner in St. Petersburg, we took a short walk in the evening darkness to a brasserie called Cassis (a sweet reminder of our time in the South of France).  The restaurant was already decorated for Valentine’s Day.  Red bulbs had been installed in all of the globe lights, so we were bathed in a romantic glow as we dined.   The food was delightful – velvety butternut squash soup, asparagus salad with deviled egg and a slice of pungent Tomme (one of my favorite cheeses).  I even ordered a glass of Malbec.  We picked up cookies at the adjoining Cassis Bakery, and brought them back to the Ponce, our home away from home.  

Sunlight began to pour the east-facing window our corner room shortly after 7 a.m.

Sine the hotel doesn’t serve breakfast, we walked up Central and found Lucky Dill, a St. Petersburg institution.  This deli, situated at the corner of 3^rd Avenue, calls itself “New York style,” but its menu also reflects the cuisine of the South.  You’ll find country-fried steak and eggs, biscuits with gravy, and cheese grits on the breakfast menu along with bagels, cream cheese and lox.  When we finished eating, we took an exploratory walk south of Central Avenue.  Although we were in the heart of downtown at 9:30 on a Monday morning, the wide streets and sidewalks were eerily quiet.  One of the few pedestrians was a man walking his small dog, dressed in a rhinestone-studded pink sweater (the dog, not the man).  Our stroll took us past plenty of restaurants, high-rise residential towers, and modern commercial buildings (many adorned with names of banks).  The economy must really be suffering.  

Since we wanted to get a better sense of orientation, we hopped aboard the Looper trolley.  The route is perfect for tourists who are visiting the pier, the waterfront, and any of St. Petersburg’s museums.  After 2 circuits (approximately 30 minutes each), we got off at one of the city’s premier cultural attractions, the Dali Museum.  Now, I’m not a Dali fan, but Elliott was keen on going, and since we’re here….

The visit brought us inside Dali’s brain, and a strange one it was.  Most importantly, though, the paintings and the information that accompanied them gave us a much better understanding of the artist’s work and how it developed.  And the opportunity to examine the paintings at close range gave us a real appreciation for his technical skills.  A gallery of his early works, from 1918-1919, revealed traditional subject matter (boats and the harbor in Cadaqués, Spain).  Picasso’s influence was obvious in a painting that contained female figures.  The small canvases were painted thickly on jute, a material that Elliott also used when he studied painting in Paris in the 1950s.  (Students used it a lot, Elliott said, because it was inexpensive.)  A few of Dali’s paintings from 1923 and 1924 were more classically painted with fine detail.  In another, a 1924 still-life, Dali seemed to be channeling Braque’s Cubist approach. 

Then suddenly, there’s a change in 1926 with a painting entitled Girl with Curls.  The classical technique remains, but for the first time, Dali’s almost cartoon-like depiction of the female figure suggests the surrealist imagery that dominates his best-known work.   By the late 1920s, Dali had entered his anti-art period.  Paintings from this period often are collages that contain materials such as sand, gravel, sponges, cork, and wood in addition to paint.  Miro, a fellow Catalan artist, was a major influence on Dali during this time.  The works are primarily abstract, with many fantastical elements from Dali’s imagination.  This period was a time of transition in Dali’s career from the traditional to the surreal. 

Of course, the largest section of the museum is devoted to the surrealist art most closely associated with Dali’s name.  As a student, Dali had read Freud’s work and this may have piqued his interest in dreams and dreamlike imagery.  Miro introduced Dali to the Surrealist writers and artists, and he soon became an official member of the group.  His paintings from the 1930s contain many surrealistic elements.  However, Dali never shared the political philosophy of the other Surrealists, and by the late 1930s, he was ready to break away from the group.  He did not, however, abandon his surrealist approach to subject matter. 

Two things struck me about his work.  First of all, he had amazing technical skills as a painter.  The way he was able to show glass, metal, and other materials was astonishingly convincing.  Secondly, he loved playing games with the viewer, and his irreverence was incorrigible.  It was impossible not to laugh when I looked at a tiny 1930s painting with the long title, Average Atmospherocephalic Bureaucrat in the Act of Milking a Cranial Harp.   Or, from 1939, Telephone in a Dish with Three Grilled Sardines at the End of September.  By the way, the sardines were partially eaten.  People in the museum were clearly both baffled and amused as they moved through the crowded galleries. 

Another change took place in Dali’s work after 1940.  While in the U.S. during World War II, he rejected the abstraction in vogue at the time and turned his attention to religion, spirituality, and science. He produced several monumental paintings inspired by his Catholic faith, including the Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus.  In addition, scientific discoveries in the field of genetics inspired a large canvas based on the structure of DNA.  During this later period, fantastical and surreal elements remained a significant part of each work.  The title of a1969 painting, The Hallucinogenic Toreador, says it all.  The giant canvas contains multiple images of Venus de Milo, a figure draped in a red bullfighter’s cape, swarms of flying insects that vaguely resemble green bumblebees, the head of a bull, and a section of a Roman amphitheater. 

There was an additional gallery that showcased Dali’s work in other media (pencil, ink, watercolor).  He was even a jewelry designer, with whimsical pieces made of gold and precious stones.  Thanks to the Dali Museum, Elliott and I now have a much greater appreciation for this artist.  Of course, we were hungry at the end of our visit.  But rather than eating out again, we stopped by the Publix supermarket and the Chinese take out on our way back to the hotel.  For less than $7.50, we had lunch chez nous.  Elliott enjoyed chicken wings with macaroni and cheese and I was very happy with steamed tofu and vegetables.  Then we shared a fortune cookie:  Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.