Photo Realism Informs Dali’s Portrait of His Wife

By Paul Chimera

Dali Writer & Historian

Salvador Dali described his technique as “hand-painted color photography.” It may be difficult to find a Dali painting that fits that description better than “Portrait of Gala With Rhinocerotic Attributes” of 1954.

The work, in the Teatru-Museu Dali in Figueres, Spain, depicts a 60-year-old Gala in such a photographic fashion that we can be certain he worked from a photograph of his wife, muse and leading model. This portrayal has always confounded me some, because it is in fact so precise and realistic that I once wondered whether it was a painting of her – or an actual photo collaged with the surrounding oil paint!

Of course, the entire work is in oil, and if nothing else it demonstrates how Dali had the technical skill to paint like a classical Velasquez – or a modern-day Norman Rockwell.

The fifty-year-old Dali was very much steeped in his keen interest in science – nuclear physics in particular – and his output included a host of pictures that employed rhinoceros horns. The idea was to illustrate how, in particle physics, individual atoms do not touch; there is space among these sub-atomic particles – leading to Dali’s amusingly colorful description of things “rumping and jumping about!”

This recently discovered phenomenon, at the time, positively fascinated Dali, who was always interested in science and endeavored to assimilate new discoveries with classical proclivities. Thus, in “Portrait of Gala With Rhinocerotic Attributes,” he gives us a very classical-looking portrait while transforming her neck and upper chest area into a riot of intra-atomic, rhino horn-shaped matter. Some of the coastal terrain is similarly treated in this Nuclear-Mystical approach.

Of course, the choice of a rhino horn was hardly arbitrary. The horn of a rhinoceros is one of the few occurrences in nature of a natural logarithmic spiral – a mathematical principle Dali found to be essential in developing his compositions along rigorous mathematical lines.

Speaking of lines, the gold-colored lines and shapes on the red collar of Gala’s attire adds a bold and curious element to this Dali canvas. It lends a kind of clerical vestment tone to the image, in my view, and recalls – at least to my eye – the mathematical pattern seen on the table cloth in Dali’s “Nature Morte Vivante,” painted two years after this portrait

Table cloth pattern in “Nature Morte Vivante” similar to red & gold design in “Portrait”

What I personally have always especially enjoyed in Dali’s art is when he melded his famously sharp, exacting realism with a looser, more abstract technique. In the present work, clearly the painting below Gala’s face is a more free-form presentation – open, spatial, ethereal – while her portrait itself is painted to an almost extreme level of tight realism.

Consequently, this work should, in theory, please both those who appreciate razor-sharp realism as well as those who lean toward works of a more painterly nature.

Dali’s ‘Infanta’ is Homage to Velasquez; Was Eleanor Morse’s Favorite

By Paul Chimera

Dali Writer & Historian

When I was publicity director of the original Salvador Dali Museum in Beachwood, Ohio, near Cleveland, a frequently asked question was posed to the museum owners (and benefactors of the present-day Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida), Reynolds and Eleanor Morse: “Which Dali painting is your favorite?”

Eleanor was unhesitant: “Velasquez Painting the Infanta Margarita with the Lights and Shadows of His Own Glory,” 1958. Mrs. Morse found the work lovely and enchanting, and it’s easy to see why the woman had such good taste.

This Dali painting is another superb example of how nothing Salvador Dali did was ever predictable or conventional. Indeed, much of his genius lay in his uncanny ability to see differently, to put an entirely unique and unprecedented twist on everything he did.

Here Dali pays homage to his favorite painter, Diego de la Silva Velasquez (1599-1660), and, specifically, to the iconic Velasquez masterpiece, “Infanta” of 1660 in Madrid’s Prado Museum. At the same time, Dali contemporizes his large canvas by using quick brush strokes that capture the look and feel of atomic particles zipping within the space of which all matter is composed – a discovery popular at the time, thanks to then-modern scientific findings. The Infanta’s dress is composed of a dazzling explosion of such high-velocity brushstrokes, so to speak – creating an electrifying look that underscores Dali’s belief that, when you scrutinize very closely Velasquez’s own Infanta, what you see is a kind of abstract-expressionism; the realistic illusion is achieved as you step away to a more normal viewing distance.

‘Infanta’ by Velasquez, which inspired Dali

Dali’s rhinoceros horn obsession also makes a showing here, as seen in the Infanta’s face, which, upon close examination, is constructed entirely of the horn whose logarithmic curve so intrigued the master of surrealism.

Dali detail shows rhino horn influence,

Dali’s title accurately describes the action here. Look just below the very center of the painting and you’ll see the small silhouette of Velasquez himself, standing before and working on the lady’s large portrait.

Detail shows Velasquez working on Infanta canvas.

All of this is overspread by Dali’s large and spectacular “atomic” expression of the same lovely subject, even the suggestion of an exploding rose in her left hand.

The shafts of light, and the corresponding shadows, contrast geometrically with the verticality of the canvas within a canvas, and echo the glances of sunlight seen in the upper left of the picture – Dali’s nod to a painting by J. Breughel (1560-1625) titled “Los Sentidos Corporales, La Vista y El Olfato” in the Prado – a museum he visited often to study the masters.

When we consider Salvador Dali’s genius, a work like this validates that assessment of his intellect. He ingeniously combines an atomic/rhinocerotic technique with a classical theme and creates a hauntingly beautiful illusion of one of the most iconic portraits ever set to canvas.

Little wonder why Eleanor Morse singled this work out from her and her husband’s vast Dali collection as her favorite. She’s shown here with husband and the Master himself, together with the painting when it hung in the Morse’s home on Chagrin Boulevard in Beachwood, Ohio in the 1970s.

Ren Morse with Dali and Eleanor Morse in the Morse home in Ohio, c. 1971.

Dali’s ‘Mirage’ is Little-Known but Surrealistically Seductive!

By Paul Chimera

Dali Writer & Historian

Perhaps there’s a bit of irony in this, but in my view some of Salvador Dali’s very best creations were executed for unabashedly commercial assignments. A well-known example are the wonderful mixed-media pieces he produced for Bryan Hosiery. And this not very well known but spectacular oil painting about which I’m writing today: “Mirage” of 1946.

The irony comes from the fact that many people – during Dali’s heyday and even continuing today – criticized the master of surrealism for being a sort of “master of commercialism.” But I absolutely love what Dali explained about that. He said that most people work so they can get money – while he “got money” so he could work!

What he meant, of course, is that the lucrative and plentiful commercial assignments that came his way allowed him the financial freedom to spend long, long hours painting his masterpieces – unencumbered by worries about how the utility bills would get paid!

One such commission was from Shulton Company in the mid-1940s, in which Dali was paid to produce not one but three separate oil paintings that would appear in magazine ads to promote Desert Flower perfume. It was known as the Desert Trilogy (the other two canvases were “The Invisible Lovers” and “Oasis”).

It seems clear that, just as a mirage is an illusion, so too might love and seduction and sex appeal be largely illusion – sometimes created by the olfactory allure of distinctive perfume!

Everything about “Mirage” is, well, mirage-like: is it there, or is it just imagined? Is it fantasy? Reality? A trance-like state? The beautiful girl, dressed in a gorgeous blue-green outfit adorned with strings of gems, looks like something out of a dream. Her outstretched arms behold a Greek god-like figure, from whose forehead sprouts a desert flower, according with the product’s brand name.

The extraordinarily deep perspective – composed of strange stone buttresses and arches and classical ruins – might suggest a kind of magnetism, implying that when a woman wears Desert Flower, men will be drawn to her like never before. A plausible interpretation, anyway.

The woman is as elegant as a Roman goddess, her sinewy right leg encircled by pearl-studded lacing that is also seen around her chest, tiny waist and curvaceous hips. Her curly, flowing tresses echo those of Apollo (or whomever he is) – all adding to the surrealist aura of this desert mirage.

The flat, relatively deserted plain over which the imaginative elements appear is doubtlessly inspired by Dali’s beloved Spanish countryside – always an inspiration in so many of Dali paintings, Dali prints, drawings, and watercolors.

Blue and gold were favorite colors of Salvador Dali and “Mirage” is a quintessential example of how that color palette resulted in a truly lovely painting – one that very few people are familiar with, but which, in this blogger’s view, is among his finest efforts at the easel. The painting is as tight and sharp and precise as any Dali painting – commercial or inspired.

‘Philosopher Illuminated…’ May be Dali’s Darkest Painting

By Paul Chimera

Dali Writer & Historian

While we can always admire any Salvador Dali painting for its imaginative nature and impressive technique, sometimes the meaning of his works leave us with more questions than answers. For this blogger, that’s certainly the case with Dali’s 1939 oil on canvas, “Philosopher Illuminated by the Light of the Moon and the Setting Sun” (private collection).

This is surely one of the least-known of Dali’s paintings, and certainly one of his darkest – mainly in the literal sense, based on the somber, dark color palette, but additionally in the strange sense of unease about the picture.

What might Dali have been telling us with this work?

The barefoot human figure himself – the philosopher – sports torn clothing, props up his head forlornly, and does not reveal even a hint of what his face might look like. He is literally in the dark here. What’s more, a bizarre and rather foreboding dark object appears in the sky above him. What is that: an oval-shaped moon? A menacing cloud? A strange space ship? A rocket or bomb or some other formidable entity?

Moreover, is it convex or concave? Is it a kind of tear in the sky, such that one could enter through that large dark opening into some unknown space, some unknown future? Or is it an object about to crash into the man’s head?

And what are we to make of the German shepherd dog seated behind the man’s left elbow? Is the man contemplating his finger nail? Reading what appears to be a note on the ground before him? Is it perverse to discern that the shape of his left hand has a masturbatory suggestion to it? And, especially vis a vis the dog, why does the man seem so enormous?

Finally, why do I always look at that paper on the ground and see it as a Valentine? Appropriate, as this blog is being written two weeks before Valentine’s Day, but is that actually a black heart on red paper, or merely my imagination seeing what wasn’t necessarily intended?

I warned you that this strange painting raises more questions than answers!

But there are also some clues that may help us decode Dali’s intent here, at least partly.

One is the year the work was painted – 1939. No coincidence that it was the beginning of World War II, a dark time in human history. Is “Philosopher Illuminated…” a metaphor for the sense of depression and apprehension Dali – and the world – was feeling as mankind was on the brink of a devastating global conflict?

Another way to often approach such paintings by Dali is to consider what works by other artists may have influenced his thoughts and ideas. It could be the case that Dali modeled his overall composition to a 1781 painting by Joseph Wright of Derby – a portrait of the 18^th century poet, Sir Brooke Boothby, seen here.

Portrait of Sir Brooke Boothby by Joseph Wright of Derby

Dali has left us with a whole lot of questions to ponder in this little-known but quite powerful painting.

Dali’s ‘My Wife Nude…’ Ingeniously Links Classic and Modern

By Paul Chimera

Dali Writer & Historian

Some Salvador Dali paintings just seem to embody everything about the man’s genius: his inimitable ideas, his Renaissance-like technical skill, his vision and innovation, and his unique success in seamlessly melding classicism and modernism.

Such is the case in the stunning “My Wife Nude Contemplating Her own Flesh Becoming Stairs, Three Vertebrae of a Column, Sky and Architecture” of 1945.

Just how completely Dali “worshipped” his wife Gala may be up for discussion, but what’s beyond dispute is that this Russian lady, 10 years Dali’s senior, was his leading model and an enormous inspiration in his art. Countless Dali paintings, prints, drawings and other works feature Gala in one pose or another.

In the case of “My Wife Nude…” Dali seems to have channeled Arcimboldo, the 16^th century painter who was famous for creating human forms out of an amalgam of fruit and vegetables and such. Here Dali gives us an echo of Gala’s beautifully painted naked back – her flesh, as the title notes – now transformed into a tall columned architectural structure.

Astute Dali aficionados may notice how this treatment recalls Dali’s spectacular 1945 portrait of Isabel Styler-Tas.

“My Wife Nude…” almost looks like it might have been painted by a Renaissance master. With all due respect, the work exudes a kind of old-fashioned vibe – certainly a classicism and a traditional look that we weren’t accustomed to seeing emerge from the easels of modern-day painters of the mid-1940s. Yet Dali was a master at melding the old and the new. Is it coincidence that, while the classic look of this work is further evinced by the bust of a Greco-Roman man on the wall next to Gala, he has also made the left column of the architectural space in the form of an apparent bomb? It was, after all, 1945, and the smoke of World War II was still rising.

Speaking of war, what about the dandelion at left? Artistic symbolism tells us that a dandelion is a symbol of transience, of change, and surely the world would soon be changed forever, having endured a major war. Gala, of course, changes before our eyes in this picture – her smooth, soft, uber-realistic body reimagined in the mechanical emptiness of the architectural space, in which a tiny figure (Dali?) is dwarfed.

From time to time I talk here about the concept of “Dalinian Continuity,” a purposeful effort on Dali’s part to link his paintings of one time period to those of another. There’s no question this occurred with “My Wife Nude…” when we consider his beautiful 1960 canvas, “Gala Nude Seen From Behind.”

“My Wife Nude Contemplating Her Own Flesh Becoming Stairs, Three Vertebrae of a Column, Sky and Architecture” sold at auction some years back for, if memory serves, close to $4,000,000.00. Since then, Dali’s prices at auction have generally skyrocketed, and I’d suspect that, were “My Wife Nude” put on the auction block today, it could easily fetch four or five times that amount. Just my personal speculation, but I’m pretty sure I’m right.

Dali’s ‘Skull of Zurbaran’ Just Might be Perfect!

By Paul Chimera

Dali Writer & Historian

Ever notice how certain Salvador Dali works just give you a good feeling? I suppose it’s usually when the work is “pretty,” like “Meditative Rose.” Or amusing, like “Celestial Ride” – both discussed in earlier posts here.

For reasons largely unexplainable, I’m compulsively drawn to Dali’s 1956 “Skull of Zurbaran,” in the collection of the Hirschhorn Museum, Washington, D.C. I’ve seen it at the Hirschhorn several times. The work somehow gives me that good feeling! Why is that?

I believe a leading reason is that it’s perfect. It’s one of the few perfectly square canvases by Dali, 39 ½ inches. The execution of the wonderful detail in this painting is, well, perfect. It combines pleasing shapes of arches and cubes. And its colorization and luminosity remind us that Salvador Dali was a true master, possessed of technical skill on par with the masters of the Renaissance. Maybe better. Maybe perfect.

Indeed, Dali was influenced by the masters in two key ways: he learned from and emulated their traditional painting techniques; and he often paid direct homage to certain of his favorite precursors. Such is the case in the present masterpiece, as Dali nods to the 17^th century Spanish master Francisco de Zurbaran, who frequently depicted hooded figures holding human skulls.

Painting by Zurbaran

Isn’t it interesting that Dali made a consistent effort to keep the great traditions of painting alive by paying tribute to those who came before him and helped make possible his own greatness at the easel. All while still making everything he did very much his own – often melding these classical traditions with contemporary thought and discovery.

There can be little doubt that the Zurbaran room in the museum of Cadiz, Spain, inspired Dali’s basic composition in “Skull of Zurbaran” – specifically the arched-shaped painting and the checkered floor seen in the picture below:

Zurbaran room in museum in Cadiz, Spain, which inspired Dali’s modern masterpiece

In “Skull of Zurbaran,” Dali demonstrated his never-ending passion for optical illusion, as witnessed by the cubes that form both the image of a skull and the floor on which six monks stand bowed in prayer. Depending on how your eyes see them at any given moment in time, they appear either convex or concave. Study them long enough and they’ll toggle back and forth (focus on the dark surface of each) between those two illusions.

The monks are painted with stunning precision, doubling as the teeth of the skull, whose naval cavity is created by the ribbed archway in the very center of the picture.

Two “reminders” seem to be woven into the fabric of this great painting, as well. One is that the cubes are reminiscent of one of the greatest paintings ever by Salvador Dali, executed two years earlier: “Corpus Hypercubus.” The other is the bowed figures again, who – for me, anyway – remind me of Dali’s monumental and much larger masterpiece, “The Sacrament of the Last Supper.”

How fortunate for our nation’s capital that both great canvases are located there – “The Sacrament of the Last Supper” hanging in the nearby National Gallery of Art.

In contemplating “Skull of Zurbaran,” we’re also reminded that Dali had a kind of obsession with how people’s craniums reminded him of other objects. In this case, the skull of Zurbaran. In Dali’s sketches of Sigmund Freud, he likened its shape to that of a snail’s shell! And when he observed the head of Sir James Dunn of Canada, and later painted a glorious portrait of him, he had proclaimed that he must surely have descended from Augustus Caesar, due to the morphology of his cranium!

Was there ever a more colorful artist-genius than Salvador Dali? I don’t think so.

Dali’s ‘Naughtiest’ Painting formerly Owned by Hugh Hefner!

By Paul Chimera

Dali Writer & Historian

It sure is fitting that, until it was sold at auction some years back for upwards of $2 million, “Young Virgin Autosodomized by Her Own Chastity” (1954) was one of the long-time prized possessions of Playboy impresario Hugh Hefner. Who better to proudly display what is arguably Salvador Dali’s naughtiest work of art!

What might we suppose Dali was thinking at this time? What message, if any, did he wish to convey? Some have pointed out that the work may have been something of a jab at Dali’s sister, Ana Maria, with whom he had a falling out. There seems to be little question that the young lady leaning out the window is reminiscent of a fine work Dali painted 29 years earlier: “Girl at the Window” of 1925.

If Dali wanted to send some disparaging sentiments Ana Maria’s way, he seems to have done a hard-to-beat job here. The horns (rhino horns, as we’ll discuss momentarily) are unquestionably phallic – especially the shape of her right buttock – and they all converge at a point where (how to say this delicately?) sodomy is achieved. Nicely dressed in the 1925 canvas, if this is in fact supposed to represent Dali’s sister, or at least be suggestive of that possibility, the lady’s unadulterated naked humiliation in “Young Virgin” is framed by the window opening for everyone to ogle.

And yet there’s a paradoxical softness, even sweetness about the work. Her hair is  neatly coiffed. She adopts a relaxed pose, gazing out upon a sun-suffused sky and waveless sea, while it’s all bathed in a kind of Vermeer-like light.

Her stance, accentuated by the casual, almost flirty positioning of her feet in her loafers, adds to the sense of serenity as those horns help comprise her backside and legs, while fulfilling their intended mission.

“Young Virgin” is a great example of how Dali married his surrealist upbringing to his new interest in nuclear physics. He was fascinated by the curve of a rhinoceros horn, since it represented a logarithmic spiral that is a foundation of the mathematical principles with which he imbued his compositions. Three rhino horns float in the space around her, while the others serve a more utilitarian purpose. The dematerialization of the cylindrical black ledge on which the lady is leaning further signifies the discontinuity of matter that scientists were discovering and by which Dali was intrigued. Not to be underestimated, however, is Dali’s erotic proclivities, especially as a voyeur. Surely he intended this painting to be titillating, and I can only imagine the pleasure he took in creating it!

While the “Girl at the Window” painting from Dali’s earlier years surely informed this work, there’s a more pedestrian influence here as well. Elliott King, Ph.D., an art professor and curator of the great “Dali: The Late Work” exhibition in 2010-’11 at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art, revealed in his catalog of that exhibition that a simple lingerie ad inspired the specific pose, right down to the seemed stockings and flats (see photo).

Since I mentioned Hugh Hefner, let me include a sexy watercolor that had also been in the Playboy Mansion collection. It’s a bit kinder and gentler than “Young Virgin Autosodomized by Her Own Chastity”!

Salvador Dali’s ‘White Calm’ an Early Gem of Realism

By Paul Chimera

Dali Writer/Historian

I’m not sure you can point to any other major artist whose catalog was as diverse and, at times, as unpredictable as that of Salvador Dali’s. The man famous – and infamous – for transcribing nightmarish images to canvas was the same man who captured some of the most placid, more conventional, and certainly astonishingly beautiful scenes with his eclectic imagination and steady hand.

One painting Dali created, at age 32, that illustrates this fact is his “White Calm” (1936). Could this be the single most realistic Dali painting ever? OK, if that’s too strong a proposition, how about the most realistic of the decade of the 1930s – the decade most art critics contend was Dali’s most fertile and imaginative? The decade that was the heyday of surrealism, Dali style?

The fact is that, while Dali’s creative juices at this time were spilling over into surrealist creations like his iconic “Lobster Telephone,” he was simultaneously moved to depict images like that of “White Calm.” The inspiration? One of the most important of all influences in Dali’s life: the landscape of his Spanish countryside in Cadaques and Port Lligat, which he saw every day (except when wintering in New York) and from which he drew endless inspiration.

“White Calm” is one of the few paintings by Salvador Dali that’s rigorously devoid of the surrealist props that so typically populated his paintings: no soft watches, rhino horns, or swarming ants in sight. Instead, he shows us wonderfully silhouetted figures as the calm of dusk settles upon the Bay of Port Lligat. The characters, including a tiny figure in the boat seen near the rocky terrain at right, seem strikingly lifelike, their bodies gently reflected in the tranquility, the calm of this restful scene. It has a kind of post-card look to it, but that is not meant as a negative observation; rather, it underscores the photographic realism Dali achieved here.

The man with hat and pitchfork is probably an allusion to Dali’s lifelong obsession with the two figures in Jean Francois Millet’s painting, “The Angelus.” The foreground of “White Calm” reveals the remains of a storage jar known as an amphora, which, according to authors Elizabeth Keevil and Kevin Eyres, “alludes to the many Greco-Roman remains discovered on the coastal plain of Catalunya, notably at Ampurias, just south of Cadaques.”

Is there nevertheless a surrealist irony here?

But what also strikes me about “White Calm” is that its apparent lack of a surrealistic style might actually make it surrealistic! What I’m saying is that there is undoubtedly something dreamlike about this picture. The sky and the sea seem almost one in the same. And Dali creates ambivalence with the two most prominent figures: the female bather, certainly expected in such a scene, but then the mysterious man, fully dressed, with pitchfork, posed on a rock that itself appears oddly close to shore. In a dream, he makes perfect sense!

One might almost think that the “calm” of this Dali painting is about to explode with something unexpected, perhaps a double-image to be found in the craggy terrain. It would not be out of character for someone as unpredictable as Dali!

‘The Soft Watch’ Forever a Symbol of Salvador Dali!

By Paul Chimera

Dali Writer & Historian

It’s high time we returned in this blog to Salvador Dali’s signature image – the soft, melting watch. But this time the floppy watches first seen and best known in Dali’s 1931 “Persistence of Memory” are now giving way to a new altered state in “La Montre Molle (‘The Soft Watch’).

In 1954 – the year this popular canvas was painted – Dali was back in Spain after his self-imposed 1940s exile in the United States. Having delved into all manner of projects in the States – including collaborations with Alfred Hitchcock and Walt Disney – in “The Soft Watch” we see Dali returning to a very familiar scene. And a very successful one!

At this period in his career, Dali was becoming deeply immersed in a new way of interpreting the world around him, owing to the explosion of the atomic bomb and emerging revelations in nuclear physics. “The Soft Watch” is one of the best examples of how Dali bridged the divide between the “old” Dali and the “new Dali.”

Capitalizing on the success and enormous popularity of his soft watches, in the present work he now reflects back on “Persistence of Memory” with a pocket watch not so much melting over a ledge but floating slightly above it, but still maintaining a similar look to its appearance in “Persistence.” Even a fly appears on the timepiece, as it did in the iconic 1931 canvas. And the rocky terrain seen in the lower right distance fairly well echoes that seen in “The Persistence of Memory.”

Now, however, he incorporates his new vision into an old standby, expressing his understanding of and fascination with particle physics by showing the watch “exploding into 888 pieces,” as he announced effusively to host Robert Q. Lewis when he appeared on the American TV game show, “The Name’s the Same.”

Some of those exploded pieces are in the shape of rhinoceros horns – a reference to his obsessive observation that the curve of a rhino horn is one of nature’s rare instances where one can find a perfect logarithmic spiral. That mathematical detail figured significantly in Dali’s painting, as he became increasingly interested in constructing his paintings along classic mathematical lines.

Take a close look, in fact, at the gold edge of the watch. There’s a sense of movement created by the swirl of rhino horns, and that is exactly what science was discovering at this time: that matter is discontinuous and, at the sub-atomic level, is actually a galaxy of fast-moving electrons and protons.

It comes as no surprise, then, that in 1954 Dali painted the ultimate example of his Nuclear Mystical lens through which he was now seeing the world: “The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory,” one of the super-star paintings in the permanent collection of the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory (’54)

Respect, Humor, Masterful Painting Inform Dali’s ‘Ghost of Vermeer…’

By Paul Chimera

Dali Writer & Historian

Some of Salvador Dali’s biggest achievements can be found in his smallest paintings. “The Ghost of Vermeer of Delft, Which Can be Used as a Table” is a perfect example. This is one of those jewel-like miniatures that tend to almost stun with their technical virtuosity.

Like any Dali painting, print, drawing, watercolor or sculpture, “Ghost of Vermeer” (1934) must be seen in the flesh to gain a true appreciation of the painstaking craftsmanship Dali invested in this canvas — one of the most important works in the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. It virtually glows from within, which makes sense, considering it is an homage to master painter Johannes Vermeer, notable for the luminosity of his manicured pictures. This little Dali gem is barely more than 7 inches x 5 inches.

The costumed Vermeerian figure is fashioned after Vermeer’s iconic masterpiece, “The Art of Painting.” Of course, Dali’s brand of surrealism took over in a most provocative way — this ghostly version of the 17th century Flemish master features an impossibly elongated leg that does double-duty as a table, complete with wine bottle and glass. A Dali crutch props up his right hand.

Detail from Vermeer’s “The Art of Painting”

Dali placed the kneeling figure in a lane at Port Lligat, Spain — an exact spot that actually exists in the region, and which Dali Museum benefactor A. Reynolds Morse photographed (with Dali himself kneeling there!) for reference purposes, showing how a surprisingly significant percentage of the images in Dali works arose from actual places and events.

So what do you suppose was going through Dali’s mind to make him pay tribute to Vermeer in this manner?

I always approach such a query this way: Dali almost always endeavored to be different. And he had a career-long passion for visual puns,  hidden images, double images, and paradox. Dali thus turned his version of Vermeer’s apparition into a still life. The disconnected foot is further surrealist license! Dali wanted to nod to his second favorite artist (Velasquez was number one), but also express his passion for surrealism and good humor.

Indeed, we can’t dismiss an important factor that I believe many people too often overlook: Salvador Dali possessed a wonderful sense of humor. They very title of this painting is amusing. Whether he did a portrait of Mae West, which could be used as an apartment…or a ghostly view of Vermeer, whose appendage doubles as furniture, Dali infused much of his work with humor. It’s definitely something to smile about.