Adventures in Nice, France

October 26th, 2011

I thought that the spectacular ocean view from our balcony at the Hotel la Perouse http://www.hotel-la-perouse.com/en/ would be the high point of our trip-until we walked the short distance from the hotel to our breakfast spot, Le Pain Quotidien http://www.lepainquotidien.us/ . Expecting to find the Farmers Market, which usually occupies a spot a block away from the Promenade des Anglais at the beginning of Old Town, Nice, I was beyond thrilled to stumble on a flea market. I instantly regretted renting the convertible sports car for the long weekend due to its lack of storage space as I knew that I would find incredible treasures here!It didn’t take me long to spot this scarf signed by Salvador Dali http://www.salvador-dali.org/, dated 1961 with the word Auca.  I knew I had found something very special but didn’t realize how special until I came home and did some research.  The story goes that in 1961 the city of Figueres, his hometown, wanted to honor Dali for his work and decided to do so with an “Auca”, which is a traditional Catalan comedic poetic verse which tells a story with usually 48 illustrations and captions that are rhyming couplets. With his friend and former schoolmate, Carles Fages de Climent, who was a writer and poet, they made an auca that tells the story of the life of Dali.  Dali provided the artwork and Fages the poem, and they completed their work “El triomf i el rodoli de la Gala I en Dali – The triumph and the couplet of Gala and Dali” in less than a week’s time. The collaborators chose 43 pairs of drawings and verses to tell the story of the people, dreams, fantasies and memories that influenced them.  Within the auca are references to Dali’s wife Gala, Pablo Picasso and Gaudi, who were very important to his development as an artist.  Dali sold many copies of this work during the festival and decided to give all licensing rights to Fages.      I would love to know how this scarf made its way to the Nice flea market but at the moment I am so happy that it ended up in my hands.   The couplet that accompanies the main motif of my scarf  (which is the first pair of the auca) is: “Already in his mother’s belly He was thinking about his way”.  The second couplet with the image of the crown is: “He wasn’t good enough not even for remedies and he was cared by kings and popes.”  It was so serendipitous that I found this scarf with such a background as I too have been translating my paintings and my poetry onto scarves. Seeing my work mirrored in this historical design and context inspired me to think about my art in a new way and to broaden my vision of art and poetry.