Salvador made my day, Turkey didn't.

Hello Joofers,

Disclaimer: My apologies to all Turks that I know and love but I was quite frustrated today. Of course these observations do not extend to all Turks.

As a little background info, my favorite artist for years has been Salvador Dali. It is in fact why I originally became interested in Spain.

Today Rana and I got up early and headed to the Salvador Dali Exhibit that has been on display in Istanbul for about a month now. Time and again we tried to go but something had impeded our trip each time. Today only heavy rain tried relentlessly to persuade us to turn back. We persevered and walked into the Museum at around 11 am.

We were searched thoroughly until the beepy machine didn't go beepy anymore. Apparently museum security is quite tight. As tight as Dali's mustache. We walked into the first room and saw about a hundred people crowding around little snipits of info pasted on the wall about Salvador. At the end of the very crowded area was a lovely photograph of him. Seen here. What a dashing fellow humm? As I took this photograph a woman bumped into to me. Why? because she was attempting to video tape the entirety of the gallery, every photo, every word. My "tacky" meter went off, and it just went downhill from there.

As Rana and I walked to the first room of paintings we became acutely aware that we were less important than all of the other people there. As we were admiring a lovely piece entitled, "Two Pieces of Bread Expressing the Sentiment of Love," shown here, we were shoved aside by a woman using one those obnoxious little cell phone talky wands that tell you information completely unrelated to the painting when you punch in the numbers. We gave her the evil eye but she seemed in no way perturbed that she had walked right in front of us. Apparently the talky wand had told her that museum etiquette was passe.

Ok Ok we thought, calm yourselves, it's just one lady I'm sure the other people here has some respect for art. Wrong again. We walked to another painting, one of my personal favorites (well now it is), The Grape Pickers: Bacchus's Chariot.As we were admiring it a man stepped in front of us and took a FLASH photograph of the painting. Now look I understand that the people don't feel the need to follow all of the rules. I've seen how they drive but for gods sake this is a rule I can't believe anyone who cares about art would break. (Therein lies the rub as they say) Flash photography causes great damage to paintings. It only takes a few times. ERRRR.

We then made our way into a small hallway that had a video playing at the far end. It was a previously unfinished animated short by Salvador Dali and Walt Disney, Cool! It was called Destino. It was by far the coolest thing I had ever seen by Disney. As we watched it, a Turkish woman videotaped the whole thing on her camera. Tacky alert at dangerous levels! If you want check Destino out here. (Yes I do realize the irony of posting a camcorder version of the video but go with it)

We then went to the sketch area which really turned out to be our favorite because it contained most of the work we had not seen before. Rana and I exchanged pained glances as a girl barged her way in front of us and proceeded to take a picture of each and every one but never stopped long enough to look at one. I guess she was saving them for later. Here are a few of our favorites, taken without flash.



I particularly like the dresses! So swoopy and angular respectively. We also looked at a bunch of pieces he did for New York magazines and Newspapers during is 8 years in the US. My favorite was this high society piece for The American Weekly. Dead and drunk aristocrats enjoy a field of burning giraffes. How cool would it have been to see Dali's work in your local newspaper? Right after I took this a woman who had decided to take a video of all of the newspaper clippings backed right into Rana. I gave her an "Excuse me!" in Turkish but just as the others, she did not acknowledge that she had done anything wrong.

As we approached the water color section a elementary school class entered the exhibit with their teachers. They quickly raised the volume level about ten times and proceeded to smash kick and push eachout around each painting only to take a quick picture with they cell phones (yes they had them) and push and fight to get to the next painting.

All the while the "guards" stood by.

I found this amazing booty playfully painted by a master over 50 years prior. I loved it in the rising din. We envisioned her luxurious posterior as a kind of port in the storm of uncouth museum goers. We stayed a little while longer but we'd kind of had it at this point.

On our way out we got in line to get our coats from the check. A line as clear as day mind you. This woman walked in front of all of us and gave the valet her ticket. She and her two umbrellas were apparently more important than the 12 people in line.

THIS shit happens all the time and I'm tired of it.

We finally made it out feeling relieved to exit an exhibit of my favorite artist. There's something wrong with that. Rana remarked later how she wasn't sure if we were in a museum or at a football match.

Look I'm the last person to be culturally insensitive but WTF Turks? I thought museum culture was UNIVERSAL. I felt as if no one in there had ever before been to a museum. Art isn't an amusement park or local celebrity, it is beauty. It seemed that someone had put all this time and resource into bring a famous exhibition to Istanbul but the patrons did not have the cultural awareness, sensitivity or courtesy to appreciate it.

...

Out side men who peacefully fished in the Bosporus were probably oblivious to the very existence of Salvador Dali. Indeed a great portion of the people in the museum seemed to suffer from the same oblivity.