STRIKE A LIGHT

As Olympic legacies go, Barcelona’s is better than most. 

The stadium and diving pool complex may now be a bit underused, but the 1992 Olympics were the shot in the arm that revived the city’s fortunes and propelled it into the first rank of international cities, a tourist hotspot and regional hub for multi-national commerce.

One legacy is a however a forgotten curiosity the giant matches are the Olympic site of at Vall d’Hebrón, uphill on the Barcelona’s eastern side.   

Swedish artist Claes Oldenburg produced this massive metal monument, a book of matches on the side of a road, with others scattered around the nearby pavements. It was a area that was greatly improved for the Games, and at the time with all the excitement a visitors the matches must have been marvellous to behold.

But the pop art styled statues have not stood the test of time as well as other Olympian public artworks works and now look forlorn and incongruous in the middle of a housing project, in an area that features on few tourist trials.

If you want to have a look at them the address is Av. Cardenal Vidal & Barraquer Cantonada Pare Mariana on buses 10, 17, 112 and 185.

THE ATTACK OF THE 30 FOOT CRUSTACEAN

It isn't a Rock Lobster

It’s a big plastic lobster with a silly smile near Port Vell.

It used to sit on top of a sea food restaurant; the eatery has gone, but the lobster remains to amuse, bemuse and confuse.

(And yes, that is a Roy Lichtenstein work in the background.)

  

The Lobster is the work of Javier Mariscal, aka  “the Peter Pan of Spanish design”.  The Barcelona based artist, also designed "Corbi", the mascot for the 1992 Olympics. 

Perhaps a nod in a direction of Dali's experiments with crustaceans?

  ...and an excuse to link to a B52's video. (Lift the phone.)

BACK TO THE EGG

Turn, face the strange: and it does not get much stranger than the Dalí Theatre-Museum, in Figueres, about an hour’s drive to the north of Barcelona.

It houses galleries of the Catalan artist’s work together with several site specific installations; though these are just layers of the onion of weirdness, as the whole building is one great surrealist masterpiece. It is also a mausoleum made entertainment, a joke on the gawping visitors who unknowingly trample over the great trickster’s grave.

Even amongst surrealists Dali was an enigma, he was perhaps the finest draftsman of the twentieth century; his technical skills and ability to capture the minutest details often overwhelmed by the shock of his rampant imagination.

The galleries give s good overview of Dali’s career and obsessions, from the pen drawn grotesques to the beautiful vibrant paintings, from gimmicky noodlings to eye-scorching masterpieces, sculpture, jewellery and installations.  Symbolism, and especially the great Spanish obsessions with sex and death, leaks out everywhere, but there is also plenty of absurd, random, fun.  Look for the hidden surprises in little nooks and on ceilings.

Dali: Barcelona Mannequin

If Salvador intended this strange place to remind the world of his brilliance, he has succeeded. It is striking just how many ideas he visited, en passant, and discarded, which later made the career of many “groundbreaking” modern artists.

His output was prodigious, there are several other Dali museums in Europe as well as permanent exhibitions in most major art museums around the world, and while there is too much to take in during a single visit to Figueres, I was still disappointed that iconic works such as the lobster telephone were not there. But perhaps to fixate on individual works is to miss the point of the Theatre-Museum.

Dali of course was noted / criticised (delete as your consider appropriate) for combining populist commercialism with high art, so don’t forget to visit the gift shop.