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Surrealism At The Dali Museum

Come into my brain, the Dali Museum told visitors. Immerse yourself in the world of Surrealism! How can one turn down such an invitation?

I put my museum pass to good use today, starting with the Dali Museum at Leipziger Platz. The Dali Museum opened in 2009, 20 years after Dali’s death and 20 years after the fall of Berlin.

The permanent home features a rotating exhibition of over 400 works by one of the leading 20th century Surrealist, including drawings, illustrated books, lithographs, etchings, paintings, sculptures, film sequences, and other 3D works.

The exhibition on display during my visit was Dali: The Exhibition at Potsdamer Platz. The collection featured Dali’s artistic takes on classic stories and operas, such as Don Quixote de la Mancha, The Divine Comedy, Tristan and Isolde, Faust, Carmen, and Alice in Wonderland. Dali had illustrated the 1969 edition of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland by Random House for the 200th anniversary of the story.

Don’t expect Dali’s iconic pieces of art to be on display, rather it featured Dali’s lesser known works. It was still interesting and if you’re a fan, the Dali Museum is worth a visit.

I headed over to the Kultureforum, a unique complex made up of museums, libraries, and concert halls. Located in the former West Berlin, the Kultureforum is somewhat of a counterpoint to the Museum Island in former East Berlin. Museums here include Gemaldegalerie, Kunstgewerbemuseum and Neue Nationalgalerie.

The Gemaldegalerie is Berlin’s largest art museum, featuring some of the finest collections from the 13th-18th centuries with masterpieces by Van Eyck, Raphael, Rubens, Bosch, Holbein, Vermeer, Brueghel the Elder, Titian, Carvaggio and Rembrandt, amongst others.

I just had to see the Madonna with Child and Singing Angels by Sandro Botticelli and Portrait of a Young Lady by Petrus Christus.

The Kunstgewerbemuseum houses Italian tin-glazed earthenware, Renaissance faience and German baroque glass, jugendstil art and Tiffany vases, but what really caught my eye (and time) was the fashion gallery.

The darkened gallery was like a walk through 150 years of fashion history. It’s couturiers heaven, featuring groundbreaking designers such as Paul Poiret, Elsa Schiaparelli, Jeanne Lanvin, Christobal Balenciaga and Christian Dior.

But having spent most of the day indoors, it was time to take it outside. I walked up to Potsdamer Platz nearby to see the Berlin Wall Memorial, then over to walk and reflect amongst the 2,711 concrete stelae of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.

I walked over to check out Checkpoint Charlie, which had marked the former east and west Berlins. A white sentry guard house remains, however, the mock guards standing there were strictly for tourists to take photos with, after paying a nominal fee, of course. I wasn’t so jazzed about seeing that spectacle – it felt very sacrilegious at a place with such historical significance during the cold war.

This was the spot where American and Russian tanks faced off for 6 days, muzzle to muzzle and where an 18 year old East German man was shot by Communist guards and left to bleed to death in ‘no man’s land.’

And now, it’s tour buses, street vendors hawking “authentic” pieces of the Berlin Wall, MacDonald’s and other fast food joints. It was hard to be reflective when there was a very out-of-place Times Square, Disneyland, Vegas vibe to it.

However disappointed as I was about commercialization of Checkpoint Charlie, I was able to cheer myself up with some Thierry Noir decorated cars nearby.