Theater of Memory: The Dali Museum

Theater of Memory shows the unique theater museum in Catalonia that brings together the works of the self-styled Surrealist genius Salvador Dali. It does not present a conventional survey of the artist's career, but aims to show the museum itself as a work of art. Everything in it is important and significant; nothing is incidental. The voice-over is by Dali himself. He speaks of his pride at being Catalan, of his love for his 'muse' Gala, and of his collaborations with the artist Antoni Pitxot, for whom rock and granite are an obsession. Dali guides us (and a mysterious little girl in a sailor-suit who 'shadows' us throughout) past gilded statues and manikins, past curious columns of tyres, and up and down staircases guarded by bizarre automatons. We see a room in which the furnishings create the illusion of a haunting face, and we see Dali's Cadillac, which, he boasts, is one of only six of its kind, others being owned by Roosevelt, Clark Gable and Al Capone. Dali tells us of the alchemist's fascination with creating gold, and of his own parallel obsession with creating the perfect illusion through his immaculate painting technique, by which he claims (presumably in opposition to Expressionism) to have 'saved modern painting from slackness and chaos.'