Artistic License, Part I

I just got back from the Picasso Museum in Barcelona. Its the second Picasso museum I´ve been to, after the lovely, if quaint, Picasso Museum in Malaga, his birthplace. After seeing all this Picasso, combined with my tour of the Dali Museum yesterday, I´ve figured out how to get ahead in the world.

Now, both of these artists established themselves early as blazing prodigies: mastering and tweaking their studies and training. But both went on to ever greater success by bending, breaking, and leaving for dead the conventions they´d been taught.

Dali got a head start on breaking the shackles of convention by being stark raving mad. His crazy pencil thin, curled tip mustache wasn´t just an act, this dude was nuts. He couldn´t be bothered with reason, meaning, or taste.

{{Of course you balance a loaf of bread on the naked-spider-elephant-thing. What else are you supposed to do?}}

The Dali Museum is in a city called Girona. Or maybe its called Firona, or Fironas. Don´t rely on my spelling. Or anything else, for that matter. Now that I think about it, I´m not a 100% sure what city the Museum was in. But I definitely went to two different cities yesterday, and I´m almost certain that only one of them had a Dali Museum.

What made the Dali Museum especially interesting was the fact that Dali himself had been involved in the design and layout of his museum, and donated all the art himself. He had a very specific vision for how he wanted people to view his art:

High as kites, squinting in the black lights and trying to unfocus their eyes long enough to just see the sail boat, already.

The brochure to the Dali Museum boasts to that there is no rhyme or reason to the layout of the museum (awesome) and that there is no ¨right¨way to move through the museum. While a recommended path is provided, its only to make sure you see everything, and should not be viewed as adding meaning to the objects viewed.

{{No, we aren´t going to explain the 8 ft eggs that line the roof of the building, or the black Cadillac with a 20 foot totem pole hood ornament topped by the bust of a multi-eyed woman. Just loosen your tie, Man. And pass me the Pringles.}}

I´ve never been a huge Dali fan, but it was fascinating to see in flesh and blood the paintings which had been rendered into posters and tacked up on the walls of every Dungeon Master I ever knew growing up.

The very best of Dali´s work reminds me of what MC Escher would have done if giving a box of high end watercolors, and a bag of seriously wack mushrooms. The very worst of Dali´s work is strewn about randomly, unlabeled and unloved except by the pigeons.

Of course, even at his worst, Dali is still 1,000 times better than Cy Twombly. An ¨artist¨, who for some unexplained reason, evokes an overwhelming level of anger and outrage within me. Its true, I hate that guy.

If our paths ever cross, that dude better watch it or he´ll end up with a mouthful of teeth, and an eyeful of monacle. Stupid Cy Twombly. Wait, where was I?

Oh yeah. The Dali Museum was more fun house than gallery, with patrons forced to climb ladders, interpret holograms, and squint into random peep holes. While I enjoyed the Dali museum, it was almost a relief to exit onto a nice, ordinary street, with non floating, non melting non incongruous (I´m in Spain, I get to use double negatives) objects.

The Picasso Museums were quite the opposite. Straighforward and serious. So imagine my surprise when I discovered the secret waiting for me at both locations.... But, we´ll get to that next time.