Dali Planet #179: The Cafe Meliton
A photo of the Cafe Meliton on Cadaques’ El Passeig by Hamburg artist Art Collart from his website. Guests of the the cafe sit among mementoes of Marcel Duchamp, who took refuge in the scenic seaside town and sometimes dined there with Dali in the early days.
It was the bar’s owner, Meliton Casals, who took snapshots at Dali and Gala’s 1958 wedding. Duchamp is remembered playing chess almost every day there with the local fishermen and occasional special guests, among them John Cage.
“When Duchamp realised that he had scattered the ideas of his youth to the winds, until he himself was left with none,” Dali observed, “he most aristocratically declined to play the game, and prophetically announced that other young men were specialising in the chess match of contemporary art; and then he began to play chess.”
