I have long been mesmerized by Salvador Dali’s conception of “The Madonna of Port Lligat,” where architecture, figures and objects are suspended, disintegrated, separated, as if the atomic bomb had exploded over the canvas. After seeing, for the first time at the age of seven, Salvador Dali’s two religious paintings “The Madonna of Port Lligat,” 1949 and 1950, my world had never been the same, as if learning from angels of the arts that we all have an eternal child within. Set above the waters, the Madonna and the Child and the architectural surround were torn and separated into parts, floating in space. The open windows in the form of rectangles were pierced through the flesh of both the Madonna and the Child, as if they were architecture. When I asked my mother about the strange rectangles, I learned that these were called “tabernacles.”
The word “tabernacle” comes from the Latin tabernāculum, which literally translates “a tent,” or the Latin tabernae, which means “a hut.” The ancient Romans who traveled a great deal went to the tabernae, the establishment offering food and drinks, as well as a place to spend the night. The English derivative of this word ‘tavern’ means ‘an inn for travelers.’ The Tabernacle, according to the Old Testament, was the portable sanctuary, in which the Israelites carried the Ark of the Covenant through the desert. In Christianity, the tabernacle, as the human body, is regarded as “the temporary dwelling of the Soul.”