Santiago Rusiñol and Sitges

 

I always enjoy a trip to a seaside resort. For someone who lives over an hour from the sea, I find in a resort there is such an emphasis on pleasure, such a contrast to the drab inland towns, and so it is disappointed indeed to go to the seaside only to discover towns like Great Yarmouth or Margate that have lost all the pleasurable aspects they must once have had.

That’s why a day trip to Sitges, around 20 km from Barcelona, is such a pleasure. Of course, there is the sea, which is necessary, but not sufficient. Here it is in the form of several bays; the beaches, each one with a slightly different character; and for one of the beaches, the most central one, a long row of seaside cafes, selling everything from cocktails, tapas, to full set meals. While you eat, you can see various enjoyable public sculptures of curvy classical nudes and notable Sitges residents (not in the same sculpture, I should add) that seem to have been chosen to provide pleasurable associations while you eat and look at life on the beach.

There are probably stylish venues in Sitges, but for the most part, the town has a turn of the century charm, the air of a minor resort that was initially developed in the late 19th century, and then grew dramatically, and with considerably less charm, in the 1960s and 70s with dreary nondescript apartment blocks, which don’t have anything like the charm of the few blocks of the historic centre. 

But there is one aspect of Sitges that seems to combine the vulgar and the refined in a very charming way: the local museum, which is actually two separate collections. There is the municipal gallery, with the expected miscellany of fine and applied arts, but there is also Cau Ferrat (something like “the iron den”), the former house of Santiago Rusiñol, which provides the quirkiest and most entertaining view of the town. The Rusinol house contains a plethora of objects of all kinds: iron, glass, tiles, high and low art, all stacked several deep on every wall.

The best view from the museum is the view from the loo.  Inside the toilet at the Cau Ferret Museum, there is a plain glass floor-to-ceiling window; but there is little chance that you will be seen – the Museum is built right over the sea, and this window looks straight out to the Mediterranean. The view is like an infinity pool, with no buildings to enable you to judge the distance. The view seems to pay tribute to the magical sea, which you have the opportunity to contemplate for a few minutes.  

I’m not sure if Rusiñol was responsible for putting Sitges on the map, but he didn’t do the town any harm by his long-term association with it. Difficult to sum up Rusiñol as an artist: although not a world-shattering painter, his drawing and composition skills were excellent, and he seems to have been equally fluent in writing novels, plays, as well as painting, quite apart from being a major collector. His house in Sitges, although it has a bedroom and a kitchen, seems more suited to display than to everyday living, and doesn’t appear to be large enough for more than one person, even though it could (and did) host banquets for many. I don’t get the impression that anyone other than Rusinol stayed there, and in fact Rusiñol deserted his wife and child for several years to “live the life of an artist”, which he felt he could not do at home. Since he had inherited enough money to never have to work, it seems rather strange that he  couldn’t be an artist with his family, but whatever the case, one result is that he drew exquisite depictions of the local Sitges brass band, which I found far more appealing than conventional insipid portraits of young girls holding a carnation.

The Cau Ferrat, containing the Rusinol collection as he left it, is quite something to behold. It is a typical 19th-century art collector’s trove, where different art forms, periods and styles are all jumbled up in the most amazing cacophonous collection. The result is a jumble that makes more sense as a whole than by the individual works.  It reminded me of the Burrell Collection in Glasgow, with individual artistic creations dragged out of their context and displayed alongside completely.