Dali entrances in Saint Petersburg By Emma Palova EW Emma’s Writings St. Petersburg, 3-12 On a misty Wednesday morning, we headed out from our base camp in Venice southwest Florida north on I-275 to St. Petersburg on Tampa Bay. Mom Ella feared crossing the Sunshine Skyway Bridge perched into the sky high above the bay. The winds were only 25 mph, nothing to fear. The bridge closes to traffic when winds are over 45 mph. St. Petersburg greeted us with a mix of sunshine and tropical rain like spring in the North. We parked on Beach Drive near the other big arts venue, the Museum of Fine Arts, ( MFA) in this fashionable city. Since, it was lunch time, we walked the Beach Drive in search of the perfect joint. We found one at Parkshore Grill. But, along the way, I peeked into some fashionable boutiques like Bella Moda. The Parkshore reminded me of the decadent cafes in Prague and Brno, always full with old ladies drinking coffee. We sat next to a round table taken by a group of dames wearing print blouses. Overall, the place buzzed with conversation and carefree laughter. Our waiter Dakota fit the bill. He was entertaining and multilingual. We ordered small plates for $16 which consisted of Caesar salad, jumbo sautéed shrimp with angel hair pasta and a mini dessert. In the tropics, no lunch is complete without a cocktail. The Pisco Margarita with reposado tequila and aloe nectar was smooth like the day. I watched the tropical rain whip the sidewalk with café umbrellas. Après lunch, we cruised down First Avenue to Dali Boulevard. This was my second visit to the Dali Museum located on the marina on the bay at One Dali Blvd. The three-story futuristic building, constructed in 2011, is just as striking as the artist. It was built in the shape of a rectangle with a glass bubble erupting out the backside facing the bay. The bubble made of triangular pieces of glass is known as the “enigma.” A spiral staircase reminiscent of the DNA molecule and Dali’s obsession with spirals leads to the galleries on the third floor. This time I took the audio tour rather than the docent-led tour to take in the impossible; that is Dali in all his greatness.
The second largest collection of Dali’s work after his homeland gallery in Figueres, Spain was made possible by his close Cleveland friends, Reynolds & Eleanor Morse. America brought fame to Dali in 1936, when the Time magazine featured Dali on the cover. Dali and his wife Gala lived in the USA from 1940 to 1948 to escape German occupation. It is divided into his early work, anti-artist period, surrealism and nuclear mysticism. The audio describes in-depth featured paintings mostly turning points in Dali’s career. I was absolutely blown away by Dali’s double image paintings such as the “Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire” and “The Three Ages”, oil on canvas 1940. His epic “Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea which at Twenty Meters Becomes the Portrait of Abraham Lincoln” is a prime example of double imagery. The title describes precisely the 121-pixel painting that at second look from a distance becomes a large head of Abraham Lincoln filling the entire canvas. The Gala/Lincoln painting reminds me of the 3D pictures popular in the mid-90s. At first you only see the blocks, but staring deep into them will uncover a unique 3D scene. I loved these, I wish I had kept some of them. My other fascination with Dali is his depiction of progression of time as in “The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory.” This painting has the famous melting watch. He was inspired by an oozing cheese melting on a hot day in his studio. I often ponder the twisted clocks as I am sure Dali wanted us to do just that; ponder and contemplate over his paintings and images. Like Einstein & Dali, I have my own fascination with time; not as it’s measured with devices, but its progression and evolution in space. My major work, literary novel manuscript “Fire on Water” has been labeled by agents and critics as having no sequence in time or a juggled sense of time. The story moves between various episodes loosely connected, like Dali’s “Still LifeFast Moving.” In the novel, just like in the painting, everything all of a sudden is thrown into action, only to be brought back to stillness. I don’t know if that categorizes me as a surrealist writer that has skewed perception of time. As a writer, my goal is to connect the past, present and the future into one fluid movement. Along the way, the writing path winds, twists and bends as life itself. In my stories, whether fiction or non-fiction, I attempt to fuse time in its different phases into one powerful elastic body of work.
Related links: St. Petersburg chamber http://discoverdowntown.com City of St. Petersburg http:// www.stpete.org Museum of Fine Arts http://www.fine-arts.org Parkshore Grill http://www.parkshoregrill.com Dali Museum http://thedali.org Copyright Š 2014 story and photos by Emma Palova