Dali Is Center of the Universe for French Town

In September 1963, Salvador Dali had an inspiration.

An illumination.

An epiphany. With a flash of cosmic certainty, the Spanish surrealist realized that the train station in Perpignan was the center of the universe.

Since then, this French border town where the Mediterranean meets the Pyrenees hasn’t been the same. It embraced Dali’s idea and, in a mix of art and commerce that would have pleased the sly, entrepreneurial maestro, promotes itself as a shrine to a 20th century genius. Because 2004 marks the 100th anniversary of Dali’s birth (he died in 1989), the spirit of celebration has peaked with a yearlong extravaganza of tributes both sublime and silly.

Last month, the city museum opened a photography show dedicated to Dali, featuring a newsreel of the day in Paris 41 years ago when he announced his momentous discovery. The black-and-white footage shows him in his natty, trademark ensemble of suit, tie and walking stick. His legendary mustache surges heavenward. His solemn, feverish eyes bulge.

“The station of Perpignan is destined to become one of the most important cosmic places in the Dalinian cosmogony,” Dali intones in his raspy, Catalan-accented French, drawing out syllables with languid precision.

“Every time I see the station of Perpignan,” he continues, “I discover in my brain such utterly sublime ideas that it is a kind of veritable mental ejaculation, that my friends practically have to prop me up because I become exhausted. And I have arrived at the conclusion that all the great inventions of humanity, all of them, took place at the exact center of the station of Perpignan.”

Two years later, Dali unveiled a painting dedicated to his railway muse. “The Mystique of Perpignan Station” depicts cosmic debris floating amid streams of orange light that converge in a cross, along with disembodied images: peasants with bowed heads, wheelbarrows, a locomotive, a couple preparing to couple.

On Aug. 27, 1965, the painter staged a triumphant entry into Perpignan by train. A throng of 5,000 admirers, dignitaries and gendarmes greeted him and his wife, Gala, who rode in a horse-drawn carriage at the head of a procession. For the occasion, Dali carried a leopard cub on a leash. He sported the resplendent uniform of an admiral in “the yellow fleet of Catalunya.”

Crazy, you say? Dali’s disciples here quote a pronouncement of his that could be the local motto: “The only difference between me and a madman is that I am not mad.”

It’s open to debate whether the rather drab outpost of France’s SNCF railroad is in fact a mystical edifice illuminated by an aura in which “all parts of the Earth converge.” And that, as Dali maintained, the train station predates the pyramids of Egypt and once saved Europe from devastation when the continental plates split apart.

But unless you want to get really uptight about it, the obsession has a certain convoluted logic. For a variety of reasons, Perpignan was Dali’s gateway to the world.

For most of his life, Dali painted in a white house on a cove of dreamlike beauty in Port Lligat, a fishing hamlet on his native Costa Brava about 30 miles south of Perpignan. His peak creative period was the summer; the long days maximized the spectacular play of light on water that infuses many of his works.

“When September came, his work was done,” said Jean Casagran, Perpignan’s director of museum exhibits. “It was off to Paris for the parties, the good life. He’d spend three months there in the royal suite at the Hotel Meurice. Then he’d go to New York for a while.”

To reach Paris or just about anywhere else outside Spain, Dali had to cross into France and take the train from Perpignan. He was afraid of flying, which is not a surprise, judging by the demons and phobias haunting his work; he had a habit of traveling with a suitcase tied to his wrist stuffed with talismans and good-luck charms. So he would journey to New York aboard the Queen Mary from the port of Le Havre, France.

Dali also spent a lot of time at the customs offices of the Perpignan station because of the border town’s strategic location and the stifling realities of Spain. Art sales were restricted by the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, which lasted from 1939 to 1975, forcing Dali to move his market-bound works by rail through France.

In those days, Perpignan thrived as a beacon for Spaniards, who came to buy goods that weren’t available at home, to find books and movies whose political or erotic content ran afoul of censors in Madrid, to breathe a bit.

Perpignan benefits today from its proximity to hip and booming Barcelona. France’s Roussillon area, known for rugby and bullfighting, now asserts the Catalan culture it shares with the Spanish region to the south. The elevation of Dali as a local hero reflects that cultural shift and a need for revitalization.

Plus, it’s fun, said Casagran, a son of Spanish refugees from the Franco years. He has unruly gray hair, a taste for American psychedelic rock and an encyclopedic knowledge of Dali.

“Surrealism is a thing that is good for people,” Casagran said. “It makes them laugh. It helps them deal with today’s world.”

Casagran helped organize this year’s roster of homages: concerts, films, seminars and a play about Dali and Freud. One exhibit, “Dali and the Greatest Photographers of His Century,” shows the artist in his demented splendor captured by luminaries such as Man Ray, Willy Rizzo and Philippe Halsman, known for Life magazine covers. The show also presents videos, music and rarities such as the posters Dali painted for the French national railway system in which trains morph into butterflies.

But what about the center of the universe? The train station’s plaza, where the artist once marveled that overhead trolley lines formed a celestially perfect circumference, is named in his honor. The merchants on the street leading to the squat, two-story brick terminal with a clock tower -- Dali had a thing for clocks -- have formed an association intent on marketing the connection to the hilt. And there’s a plaque. (His statue has been removed for repairs.)

Strangely, though, the hallowed hall itself contains few signs of its notoriety. The most prominent homage can be found near the entrance to the tracks. It’s a hot dog stand whose misspelled name would have no doubt transported the artist into otherworldly ecstasy: “Daly’s.”