Sunday, March 20, 2011

The Doll in Dali


I'll start with excuses for not posting. I wont lie and say I had something better to do two weeks ago, I was just plain too lazy to stop eating my Kinder chocolate and post something wonderous and I didn't post last week because I was in Barcelona with my school, busy getting rained on (you all needn't worry about a global drought, I have proof now that Spain has all the water we will ever need) until the last day when the sun came out and it was 60 degrees. Enough complaining. Despite the rain, the hotel that served the coackroaches better than the cutomers, and traveling with 70 other smelly, loud, teenagers (notice that I include myself in this) I spent my days in a city drenched in "The Liberty Style" or "Art Nouveau", with it's (the only suitable word) colorful inhabitants that never EVER sleep, (travel to Barcelona and you'll find New York has lost it's title) and eating. Oh how I ate.
Am I the last soul on this earth to know that Barcelona is one of the most magical places in existence? I'll tell you all right now, I can't decide wether or not I want to live at the Salvador Dali Museum, his house, or the Gaudi house. I'll bulldoze all tourists out and live there for the rest of my life with my guinea pig farm, sewing machine, and have paper crown tea parties.
Dali, to begin with, is a pure genious and one to be admired for living the way I always want to. The most marvelous thing about him is that despite the inevitable negative critisim for the way he was and his work, he kept doing it. He kept pouring out every idea, every notion and every trippy day dream into a "reality" therefor created thousands of pieces for us to admire and utterly adore. To me, he lived the way I strive to everyday. In other words, from what I gathered from his work, he lived seemingly without fear of others and or of himself.
Here are a few pictures of so many I took:




This one is pure genious. If you stand far away, the painting is Abe Lincoln's face, but if you walk up close you can see a woman in the midst of blur. ....?:)
Anyways, this is just a taste of the enormous muesem that he helped design himself. (How incredibly cool is that? As the Italians would say, "รจ un grande)
The museum was like a menagerie of his inspriations or a theatrical production based off his dreams, whereas, his house was his home. You could just feel that he lived where he wanted, he made his house his sanctuary. He made life according to him. One of my favorite examples of this is the easel he made for himself.

He cut a slit in the floor under the easel so that he could move the frame up and down to his liking since he never painted standing up. Don't like painting standing up? Make yourself a custom easel! Why should you have to suffer while creating a masterpiece?? Thats what i'd like to know.
The backyard decked out in Michelin Men was even more mind blowing:



As if the art in Barcelona wasn't enough to sit and stare and drool at for hours on end, the street fashion scene is quite up to par. At times I felt like I was in the middle of a runway when we were really in a museum trying to give the artist a bit of respect yet my eyes kept wandering over to shoes, jewlery, dresses, more shoes, tights, purses and more shoes. I even apologized under my breath a few times to the artist that we were currently admiring as if I were caught looking at a Vogue in the middle of church. (it's even easier to get distracted if the muesuem you're at is a boring as church can be.)
I mangaged to capture a few examples of what i'm talking about in these pictures. That is, after I throughly pestered and terrorized innocent pedestrians and museum goers by first, asking if they speak English and second, asking if I can take their picture and having to explain to their horrified faces, why. Hey, now you are all celebrities on my blog:)
Note: My camera sucks at it's job so use a bit of your imagination as well. A Canon Reel was put on my Christmas list but it wasn't under the tree so blame the fat man with a beard for the crappy shots.

These lovelies are from Japan and were kind enough to let me take their photo. When I said I liked their style they said waving their hands, "Oh it's Japan style" like...that's a bad thing? Afterwards they thanked me but I don't know why because they were the ones doing me the favor.

This one was taken in the market on an obviously rainy day. Thanks to one of my classmates for translating from my broken Italian to her perfect Spanish that I forgot.
I of course admire her for being a fellow lover of the raincoat (don't be afraid of the raincoat, it does you good) and this reminded me of the one I had when I was little that I wish I had now in my size. It was a mid thigh, clear white, raincoat with pastel colored hearts. Don't be afraid of the description. Words hardly do it justice.

This next one was taken in a house of Gaudi. Thank you to a lovely English girl who travels in style.




The last one is from another Spanish girl whos style was a good representation of the truely unique and colorful (theres that word again) style you find in Spain. She also represented something I believe to be the most important part of carrying a fashion which giving life and style to the garment instead of just being a mannequin with cloth draped about you.

Keep eating twinkies and butter,
Love, Olive

1 comment:

Tess said...

Olivia this is amazing! I had a similar experience strolling around London and Paris this summer in my peasant garb. One of my favorite parts of traveling is seeing different styles. Hope you're having fun and miss you lots:)- Tess