Salvador Dali + Larry Halprin
A FEW RECOLLECTIONS FROM A MEMORABLE TRIP
My friend Larry Halprin called. “I’m about to make a film with Salvador Dali. We’re going to his home near Barcelona for two weeks. I’d love for you to shoot it...”
Larry was a renowned and revolutionary landscape architect. Architect of the FDR Memorial, Sea Ranch, United Nations Plaza, and many others. I had worked a lot with Larry and his choreographer wife, Anna, in my San Francisco days, filming and photographing their projects. They were as much my creative mentors as I’ve ever had.
This was an offer I couldn’t refuse.
Our team, Larry, Su Yung Ikeda (producer), Lenny Lipton (sound), and myself (cinematographer), left for Barcelona.
On our first night, Dali arranged a dinner at the Barcelona Ritz. As we were seated, Dali summoned a waiter who quickly arrived with a red silk pillow.
“You may take off your shoes and rest your feet on this, Su Yung.”
The days were an ego match of style between Larry in his Western hat, Dali in his flamboyant attire. Dali had the home team advantage.
Larry was clear that he did not want to just make a film on Dali as the celebrity artist. He wanted something more.
“I’m curious about his environment, where he grew up and spent time, how that influenced his painting…”
My reaction was that Dali’s images came from some dark recess of his mind, from nightmares, from his self-processed “paranoid-critical” state of mind. Certainly not the rocks and sand dunes surrounding his Port Ligate home.
But, as we went out and explored, with Dali images in our minds, Larry’s idea became viable. The wet and wide beaches were desolate, an occasional figure passed in the distance. The twisted rock surfaces that aroused curiosities. Anthropormorphic interpretation was not far away.
Dali’s home was in the the village of Port lligat
He had bought a tiny fishing house in 1930. Then, as if constructing one of his strange organic sculptures, he added, over the years, piece by piece, rooms, sculptures, gardens… crawling up the hillside. It was a labyrinth. Another manifestation of his wildly fertile mind. A pool with a transparent bottom, and at the edge of the property, a contrasting Zen garden. Even amidst the rush of filming it was calming and meditative. Larry in his Western hat was an outlier.
Dali took us to his museum in Figueres
He showed us this painting, “Lincoln in Dalivision,” a work in progress. In 1975, digital imagery before its time. He combined multiple images, perceived quite differently on different scales of resolution.
The next day Dali had to attend to his duty as official city greeter. So we explored. This was Catalonia, a part of Spain that prized itself in its individual eccentricity and creativity. It’s the home of Picasso, Gaudi, Joan Miro, Antoni Tapies, as well as Dali. It was all around us in everyday places— Parc Guell, Sagrada Familia church, Gaudi’s apartment buildings.
On our last day in Cadaques, after morning coffee, we happened on a young French woman in a flowing dress sitting by herself on a wall, gazing out to the bay. We struck up a conversation. Where are you going? “Just passing through.” She had come to see where Dali lived and now on her way to uncertainty. To uncertainty in total comfort.
Larry just had his 50th birthday, I was 37. This woman took our thoughts and imagination back to our own exploratory youth adventures. She was wild and looking for something she didn’t know. Dali expanded our imagination, so did she.