racing and art in Monterey

We went to Monterey today for two very different purposes. The first: Pete's coworker invited him to ride along during a track day at Laguna Seca Raceway. Pete had been to the raceway for motorcycle races but had not been on the track itself. The Raceway opens the track for racing enthusiasts multiple times a year and Pete's coworker has been going for many years. We arrived just after 9 am and after signing a passenger waiver, they were onto the track at 9:20 for twenty minutes of racing around the 2+ mile track. As a bystander it was difficult to tell how fast they were going, but Pete assures me they were going very fast. Controlled fast. 

getting ready to enter the track

coming down the straightaway

Our second stop for the day was at the relatively new collection of Salvador Dalí works at the Museum of Monterey. Dalí lived on the Monterey Peninsula in the 1940s and was a huge presence in the local art scene. The museum holds the only Dalí collection on the U.S. West Coast and it is the largest Dalí collection in the U.S. We didn't know what to expect, but we were blown away by the extent of the collection and the breadth of Dalí's art. Many of the works on display were collections from books he illustrated or illustrations of people's work as a celebration of their accomplishments. There is a really interesting collection based on Dante's Inferno, as well as another collection based on plays written by the Marquis de Sade. The "typical" Dalí surrealist paintings were certainly part of the museum's collection, but there were many of his earlier works that came before he made his name as a surrealist painter. If you are in the Monterey area, you should definitely visit. Here are a few photos of the paintings to give you a sense of the diversity of the collection.

Biblia Sacra - an early collection of paintings
based on stories from the bible

100 prints from the Divine Comedy,
based on Dante's Inferno

minotaur sculpture accompanying the Divine Comedy prints

from Les Songes Drolatiques de Pantagruel

 this one is in the "Ten Recipes for Immortality" collection.
The accompanying text described how to obtain
immortality by eating a squirrel. So simple! 

"The Sistine Madonna." This one was created in part by Dalí shooting ink from a gun at a piece of limestone.

Go check it out!