THE ROAD TO PUBOL

THE ROAD TO PUBOL (ALONE WITH DALI AND DUNCAN, PART 4)

This is the fourth posting in the series recounting the trip my son Duncan and I made around Dalí country in Catalonia, Spain about seven years ago.

After our incredible and never-to-be-forgotten visit to Casa Dalí at Port Lligat and an exploration of Cap de Creuz and the surrounding mountains, I was ready for another adventure. Duncan needed some time off. One can only keep up with the Artpro-On-The-Go for so long. First we made the pilgrimage up exhilierating mountain roads to the other “roads”: San Per de Rhodes Monestary. This is the institution that created and exported all over Europe the Romanesque culture and style.

A gorgeous ruin now, it hangs on the side of a crag, on top of which is a ruined castle named San Salvador. Just down the ridge is a ruined abbey named Santa Helena. To Dalí, this was a tremendously significant place because it had the foundation of scholarship and culture and a castle named “Salvador” and an abbey named “Helena” in close proximity on top of a bare and wind-swept ridge. “Helena” was Gala Dalí’s actual name.

I was ready to be off on the search for the tiny village of Pubol and its castle which had been discovered by Salvador Dalí in 1968 (the year he finished the Teatro-Museo Gala-Salvador Dalí in Figures.) He had been promising Gala that he would buy her a castle as her personal retreat for thirty years. The first time he made the promise they were living in Northern Italy during the Spanish Civil War, which was closely followed by the Second World War, most of which they spent in the United States.

Can you imagine living with Salvador Dalí? Gala—an exceedingly strong and domineering woman—wanted a place of her own where Dalí could visit her by written invitation only. Whoa!

With Duncan chillin’, I set out through the labyrinth of farm roads that spider web the Plane of Ampurdam between Figures and Cadaques (and Port Lligat). I eventually was at the base of the slope on top of which was the silhouette of the village, castle and church of Pubol. They formed an almost solid stone mass because most of the buildings were connected to each other like a Southwestern Indian pueblo. (Yes, I know. “pueblo” is the word the Spanish use for tiny villages like Pubol)


Fields, vineyards and orchards flowed down the sloped below this towering, dark edifice. As I approached, I was fascinated to see the mass evolve into individual houses, stables, taverns and small plaza (but all connected). I think this place was built with consideration for defense.

Just above the village (a street’s width away) stood the conjoined church and Castle Gala Dalí. How nice, it was rather modest in its proportions, being basically a tower house, built without extensions for easier defense. No longer very fortress-like, it had served as a home to the Marquises of Blondel and the family now lived in Madrid. As a result, the castle was more of a “fixer-upper” than a great find.

Dalí bought it in 1970 and the restoration began. When it was completed, Dalí spent four months decorating the vestibule and various nooks of the castle. Everyone’s favorite story about that time was that Dalí was offended by the old iron radiators so he had them ripped out—and then painted radiators on the wall where they had stood! What a goof-ball. I think we would have liked each other (although there are many things about his character that I do not appreciate.)

The yard in front of the south-facing arched castle entrance is taken up with a maze of paths among high evergreen hedges arranged so that a visitor frequently turns a corner and is confronted by some very weird Dalí sculpture or construction. The fish pond is pretty wretched, but architecturally attractive.

Oh, incidentally, the exterior north wall of Gala’s castle faces the little plaza in front of the church and is joined at the corner to the church. Imbedded in it are three skulls.

Time to go in. The entrance is a low arch through what is called “The Persian Room” which includes a peep hole through which one can see into the basement—the former dungeon. And what to the wondering eye should appear but a 1976 Cadillac and a carriage that had been used by the previous proprietor. At one time it also housed Gala’s orange Datsun. (Didn’t know about that one, did you?)

The Cadillac de Ville was purchased in the United States in 1976 for $10,000. (Years later I would buy two 1976 Cadillac Sevilles. Beautiful small cars. One I got from my dear friend Marty Gordon, the legendary print dealer and publisher.)

The small court yard between the front wall and gate and the house proper has the feeling of being in a large stone well. The front of the house exhibits various decorative elements, but is dominated by the decorative stone staircase leading up to the front door which is surmounted by a carved coat of arms.

As an aside, I am reminded that later King Juan Carlos granted Salvador Dalí the title of Marquis of Pubol. Sort of like children playing kingdom in the living and dining rooms and one of them being designated Duke of the Red Chair.

The wonders that I found inside Gala’s Castle will be the subject of my next posting. Since I’m behind, I’ll try to get to it in a few days. I may be here to write, but I’m also on vacation.

ALONE WITH DALI AND DUNCAN PART 3

ALONE WITH DALI AND DUNCAN PART 3

While we waited to enter the Casa-Museu Salvador Dali at Port Lligat, we walked over to look at the doors on the Clock Hut which now serves as the coatroom for the main attraction. Dali asked the fishermen for years to finish off the paint and dry their brushes after they painted their boats. The doors are thus painted with many shades in what Dali called "the best abstract pictures in the history of painting."

As we climbed the stairs to the front door and entered "The Hall Of The Bear" (dominated by a stuffed polar bear), we again glanced out over the island-choked bay. There lay one of the artist's greatest inspirations. Later. looking out the windows facing the bay in the Bedroom, The Bird Room, The Yellow Room and, of course, the studio we were struck with the fact that every window serves as a living Salvador Dali painting. Each is so beautiful.

For me the greatest rewards came in the studio where I could see up close (but not touch) the brushes, paints, and paraphernalia. I learned so much in that room and only briefly thought about how much one of the hundreds of brushes or one of the palettes hanging on the wall would add to my collection in Santa Fe.

I think Duncan liked the pool-side terrace most. There they were, the famous penis-shaped swimming pool, a Mae West lips couch in painted cement, the Firelli tire signs, and all the other decorations that are so familiar from numerous post-1968 photographs. So much to see. So much to discover. So much to point out to each other. When I took my wife Melinda a couple of years later I could barely restrain my anxiousness to show her things. As always, she was patient with my enthusiasm.

As with the Teatro-Museu in Figures, we were completely alone. When the caretaker left, she instructed us to push a wall-mounted door bell when we were ready to be let out. For a couple of hours we explored the multi-layer house and tried to figure out the nine stages by which it had grown and expanded up the hill absorbing one fisherman's cottage after another.

We took pictures of each other in various locations (but stayed off the bed) and identified objects we knew from our research.

For instance, in The Yellow Room was a lumpy plaster globe with a clock and various nails and screws pressed into the plaster when it was wet. "That," I told Duncan, "is a bomb. It contains nails and screws and when Dali set a similar bomb off inside a box made of six zinc printing plates, the plates were marred in ways that Dali enjoyed turning into printable images."

I was disappointed, however, that the Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali--who owns the house museum and arranged our solitary visit--had removed all of the Master's books. They, like the paint brushes and paper, would have carried much information for me.

After seeing hundreds of photographs of Salvador, Gala, the Reynolds Morses, Giuseppe and Mara Albaretto, Pierre Argillet, the Tibetan monks, hippies and a great many other visitors, I was a bit surprised not to feel the presence of any of those personalities. The place was stuffed with objects that I associate with the painter, but it didn't feel as if he had been around for a very long time. He seemed even more remote on my next visit when small groups of people were being toured though the house.

There are a great many fantastic things to see and visitors seem always to enjoy themselves. One of the favorites is the dovecote, a plastered and white-washed tower which Dali designed and decorated with wooden Catalan grape forks that stick out on all sides to serve as perches for the doves. The forks are carved from young trees that are trained to grow in the appropriate shape for long-handled implements that are used in the vinyards to life the low-growing grapes off the ground.

Near the barbecue is found a telephone booth. It was one of the first in Spain and Dali like to provide it for his guests to make calls. I can only immagine what it was like stringing those first wires over the ridge from Cadaques and down across the stone terraces. If not burried, the wires would become goat snacks.

Another favorite of mine was the half-dozen six-legged chairs that sat around the terrace. I was told by one of Dali's old friends who generously shared his private collection with me (as did several others) that his father had built them for their painter friend who liked to lean back in a straight chair and was known to sometimes tumble over backwards. That's why two additional legs had been added at an angle at the back so the chair would lean securely back on them.

The Foundation has made an enormous amount of money from admissions to the Teatro-Museu, the Casa-Museu Salvador Dali (the house) and the Castell Gala Dali at Pubol. The last is the castle that Salvador bought Gala so she would have her dream of a retreat from him where he would be summoned by written invitation only.

My visit to Gala's hidaway is the subject of the next posting. See you then.

ALONE WITH DALI AND DUNCAN PART 2

ALONE WITH DALI AND DUNCAN Part 2

A couple of days after our extraordinary visit to the Teatro-Museo Salvador Dali in Figures, my son Duncan and I drove down across the Plane of Ampurdam which is often depicted in Dali artworks as a flat surface with orthogonal lines converging at the horizon. This fecund agricultural region was spread out below the boy Salvador as he painted in his first studio, a converted laundry shed on the roof of the apartment building in Figures where the Dali family lived.

At the far edge of the plane, he could see the coastal mountains on the other side of which lay the fishing village of Cadaques where the Dali family visited many summers. It was this delightfully picturesque town build around one of the many bays on the rugged coast that later became the home to Salvador and Gala Dali. They bought and joined together several fishermen’s houses on the tiny, island-choked bay of Port Lligat.

That house, a labyrinthine structure climbing the hill above a stone landing at the shoreline, was our destination. The Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali had kindly made reservations for us to visit at 4:00 of the first day we spent in Figures.

Having discovered very shortly after dropping down from the steep and winding mountain road into Cadaques that we would be smart to stash the car and walk about the town, we started out for Port Lligat early in the afternoon. We later found out there is a steep path over the ridge between Cadaques and the little bay, but in our ignorance we followed the hot winding road that climbed up through ancient, and now abandoned, stone terraces.

Such terraces, almost without any vegetation on them, covered every possible slope along this part of the Costa Brava. The vines had died in the Phyloxea epidemic that wiped out most of Europe’s vineyards. The cork oaks had died during several unusually cold winters and the olives had also perished through almost forgotten environmental disasters. At one time Cadaques had been a busy port exporting cork, wine and olives, but that was before the memory of its current inhabitants. It now serves not freighters, but international yachts and is a popular resort.

A couple of years later, my wife Melinda and I would rent for a while a marvelous restored farm mansion set on a mountainside among the terraces south of Cadaques. At night the only lights we could see were those on boats out in the Mediterranean.

At the top of the ridge where the path to Dali’s house drops down the slope to the sea, Duncan and I found a small chapel sporting a belfry which inspired Dali’s often used image of a girl skipping rope. In the grave yard is a Dali sculpture featuring his hypercubic cross. It felt to us as if we were getting very close to the heart of Dali country.

When we arrived in the small plaza in front of Casa Dali, we were charmed by the view past the beached fishing boats (including Gala’s small yellow one) to the islands and promontories with their horizontal layers of terraces. Everything looked so Dalinian! That is the wonderful thing about visiting this part of Catalonia—one sees Dali images everywhere, especially in Cadaques, Port Lligat and on Cap de Creus. Everywhere I looked around Port Lligat, I saw Dali paintings that I knew very well. Later, looking out of the windows of Casa Dali, I again saw paintings that I know well.

What a thrilling experience to walk into the plaza decorated with a fishing boat out of which grows a cedar tree. Why, that’s “My Cousin Carolineta On The Beach At Rosas”. Never mind that the famous beach is many miles south over very rugged mountains from this boat and tree. They are featured in that painting along with the little girl.

Duncan walked over to the ticked-seller to buy our tickets for the 4 o’clock time slot. He returned with a Duncan smirk that I love. “OK, Dad.” He said. “I’m impressed. They’re closing the house at 4:00 so we can be alone inside.”

It was very hard to relax on the hillside in a more recent olive grove while we awaited the witching hour. We lay on golden dry grass in dappled sunlight and passed a Cuban cigar back and forth. Duncan had bought it for me in Cannes after he left his three traveling buddies to join me in Spain.

A few minutes before 4:00, we worked our way down through the trees and across the terraces to arrive right on time at the front door of Casa Dali. We were welcomed by the caretaker who asked us to wait a few minutes while the earlier visitors left the house.

What happened then (Oh, it was lovely) will have to be the subject of ALONE WITH DALI AND DUNCAN PART3. See you then.