‘Portrait of Gala’ Shown Fading from Dali’s Life?

By Paul Chimera

Salvador Dali Historian

Salvador Dali probably painted Gala more often than any other subject. She was virtually always painted in an exalted manner, often as a Madonna or angelic figure.

Consider her scrupulously noble and realistic image in “Assumpta Corpuscularia Lapislazulina.” Her reverent beauty in “Corpus Hypercubus.” Her Raphaelesque pose in “Virgin of Guadalupe.” Her conquering hero look on the banner in “Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus.” And her commanding maternal presence in “The Madonna of Port Lligat.”

So it’s an interesting and curious departure when we consider the 1965 “Portrait of Gala (Gala Against the Light).” Unlike most of the portraits that came before it, this is remarkable in its vacant, sketchy, and rather unflattering look.

Gala — barely there.

Why did Dai paint his muse this way – an almost faceless, certainly faded depiction of her usual features? Was it a sign that the legendary love between Salvador and Gala was eroding? Was it a statement about what was already being viewed as an evolving loss for Dali?

After all, it was no secret that Madame Dali had a voracious sexual appetite and frequently found herself in the romantic company of young male lovers. Dali was aware of this and reportedly didn’t consider it a problem, but how do we really know that?

If there’s any other painting of Gala by Dali that captures her looking glum, if not nearly lifeless, it would be the image of her in the upper left of the large canvas, “The Hallucinogenic Toreador” (Salvador Dali Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida). She does not look happy in that unflattering pose. But we know the reason for her displeasure: she didn’t approve of bullfights! Dali knew this. That’s why he painted her looking so forlorn.

I can offer one additional – perhaps quite logical—theory regarding this 1965 portrait. The clue may be found in the title itself. If Gala posed for Dali in a backlit condition – against the light, as it were – it is conceivable that the details of her facial features would be darkened and less distinct.

Even so, there’s an undeniable grimness to the portrait, which hangs in the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, Spain. Not a single feature of her face or hair or even her garment is distinct and clear. What’s more, do you sense a kind of anger in her look? Maybe a profound sadness? I do.

It’s clear that, unlike most depictions of the woman who ran his world, Salvador Dali’s “Portrait of Gala (Gala Against the Light)” captures a rather disquieting and, on some level, depressing view of the woman who was the power behind the throne. Gala died in 1982; Dali would never be the same. He died seven years later.

‘Portrait of My Dead Brother’ a Dali Show-Stopper in St. Pete!

By Paul Chimera

Salvador Dali Historian

Salvador Dali died in 1903. The first Salvador Dali, that is.

Dali-the-artist’s life was preceded by the tragically brief life of his brother, who died at around age 3 of meningitis. Almost literally nine months later to the day, Dali the future titan of 20^th century art was born in the town of Figueras, Spain.

Incredibly, his parents named him Salvador, too!

The significance of this unfortunate twist of fate cannot be underestimated when examining the life and work of Salvador Dali. Dali’s parents were crestfallen when their first child died. Even when their artist son was born, they kept a picture of the first Salvador hanging on a wall, not far from a picture of the crucified Christ.

Dali “number 2” knew instinctively he would have to work very hard to establish his own identity, to make it abundantly clear to all that he was who he was – not somehow a shadow or echo of the “first Salvador.” It must have been an onerous emotional burden for the artist-to-be, and it was an early indication of the exceptional public persona that would characterize Dali’s entire life.

It bears noting, as well, that two other highly significant family matters would play a major role in shaping young Salvador’s life. One was the death of his mother from ovarian cancer when he was just 16 years old – a devastating blow to any adolescent. Then, in another surrealistic twist of fate, Dali’s father would go on to marry his deceased wife’s sister – Dali’s aunt!

And so it was that, in 1963, Salvador Dali painted the large, perfectly square canvas, “Portrait of My Dead Brother” (Salvador Dali Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida). Scholars seem to agree that Dali really didn’t know much about what the dead sibling looked like and that, moreover, this male image was simply too old to be a likeness of the ill-fated child.

However, it’s my belief, from having seen a few black & white photos of the “original” Salvador that, in fact, the image Dali depicted in the painting here actually resembles those early snapshots. It’s all, of course, a subjective observation, but I depart from the conventional wisdom here.

Whether plausible or imaginary, the picture is one of Dali’s most popular, and brings together two major influences in Dali’s life, in addition, of course, to the death of his brother. One is Dali’s career-long fascination with all manner of optical effects and illusion. In “Portrait of My Dead Brother,” Dali draws upon what was known as the Benday dot pattern used in the process of half-tone printing of photographs in newspapers and magazines at the time.

From a proper distance, these dots converge to allow us a clear view of the boy’s face; up close, they’re merely circles and dots and even a few cherries!

The other key element in this remarkable painting is the scene at lower left – peasants in a field, clearly inspired, especially because of the presence of the wheelbarrow, by the painting, “The Angelus” by Millet, a work with which Dali was obsessed since his school days. It appears the peasants may be hoisting a body into the wheelbarrow, while forlorn onlookers view the deed.

‘Little Ashes’ a Quintessential Dali Dream Snapshot

By Paul Chimera

Salvador Dali Historian

“Little Ashes” of 1928 (also known as “Little Cinders”) is pure surrealism as Salvador Dali defined it best. The surrealists were determined to explore the subconscious world, the dream world – and here Dali has opened a window for us onto a moment in the endless film reel of his secret – yet public – life.

It has been suggested that the sleeping head at left represents Dali in a dream state. That may be. True or not, the work in its aggregate is a dream snapshot – or should we make that nightmare? The admixture of elements is dominated by disquieting images: several dismembered human torsos, including the predominant form that seems part-human and part, well, something else; its derivation is enigmatic, unclear,  and a bit grotesque.

Do your dreams look like this?

Hair-thin ashes (or cilia?) swarm around the edges of part of the strange form’s contours, as it seems to balance on a single undefined appendage. Several amorphous bird figures seem to be integrated into its fleshy form. This dominant presence may recall the large figures that dominate the space in such other, later iconic Dali pictures as “Soft Construction with Boiled Beans,” “Sleep,” and “The Great Masturbator.”

Meanwhile, a cavalcade of disparate objects swirl about the composition, bringing to mind certain of the works of Joan Miro and Yves Tanguy, and perhaps even quoting – consciously or otherwise – the great Spanish surrealist precursor, Hieronymus Bosch. Some might see a bit of Marc Chagall here, too.

Rotten donkeys, pools of blood, headless torsos, floating arms and breasts, geometrical assemblages, a thumb whizzing through space, a triangle with noted coordinates out of a mathematics book – it all swirls through a dream-like space that defies logic.

And that may be the very definition of surrealism: illogical juxtapositions of elements that go beyond the normal, real, conscious realm. That, indeed, probes that Freudian world of the subconscious, where delirious phenomena become the order of the day.

When people ask what surrealism “means” – especially what a surrealist painting by Dali means – the answer might best be addressed with another question: What do your dreams mean? The answer, usually, is “I don’t know.” Indeed, Salvador Dali often reminded us that he himself didn’t necessarily understand the images that sprang up in his paintings.

How many of our dreams are neat, orderly, sensible? Few, if any. Have you noticed how insanely crazy, incomprehensible, and seemingly senseless most of our dreams are – the ones we remember, that is? Imagine if you had the capability of transcribing those nocturnal visions to canvas – what would they reveal? Chances are they would be bizarre.

In some ways, “Little Ashes” is a quintessential example of Dalinian surrealism in its purest form: dreamlike, painstakingly executed, and irresistibly strange.

Footnote: It’s interesting that a feature film was made in 2008 of the same title, “Little Ashes,” a Spanish-British drama about Dali’s early life, starring Robert Pattinson.

Salvador Dali Knew How to Make a Bread Loaf Penis-like!

By Paul Chimera

Salvador Dali Historian

Sometimes I believe scholars of the life and art of Salvador Dali overthink his surrealism. They ascribe profound meanings and esoteric psychoanalytic interpretations to aspects of his work that may or may not be plausible or necessary.

Me? I sometimes think Dali simply liked to shock. And, often, to be overtly sexual in the erotic and suggestive images that arose from many of his canvases – especially the purely surrealistic works that characterized most of his oeuvre from the decade of the ‘30s.

Case in point – today’s object of my riffing: “Catalan Bread,” painted by a 28-year-old single male with a predominant obsession commanding his thoughts: good old-fashion sex.

Bread loaf? Penis? Both?

In this small, 9-1/2 inch by 13 inch canvas, lovingly executed, we find no ordinary loaf of bread, which was and is a staple on most dining tables – and became a frequently seen element in a disparate array of Dali paintings, watercolors, drawings and prints.

No ordinary Catalan bread loaf, that is, because this one is unabashedly phallic: erect and prophylactically ready for action! A white condom has been rolled into place on Dali’s pan-cum-penis (“pan” is “bread” in Spanish).

The string around the suggestive tip of the bread serves to keep the form up, perhaps suggesting that some people need a little assistance to get and keep it that way when it’s time for romance.

As our eye moves to the right, the loaf now becomes breast-like: rounded and with a quite prominent nipple-like protuberance. Seated on top is a bit of classic Freudian symbolism that appeared in many works by Dali from this period: the phallic pen inserted into the breast-like ink well. Some writers have also suggested that the appearance of ink wells was a reference to Dali’s notary father’s office, which may be – but the more sexual intonation makes more sense in the present picture.

The wonderfully elongated soft watch draped over the bread may be one of the earliest examples of Dalinian Continuity, a term I believe was coined by Dali patron and scholar A. Reynolds Morse, benefactor of the Salvador Dali Museum of St. Petersburg, Florida.

The Catalan artist carried the iconic timepiece over from a year earlier – from a tiny little oil painting (virtually the same dimensions as “Catalan Bread”) known as “The Persistence of Memory,” which was destined to become the most universally recognized of all works by Salvador Dali – and unquestionably the most popular surrealist picture ever created.

While Salvador Dali would go on to produce several more classic and reverent paintings featuring a basket of bread, “Catalan Bread” is without question a nod to this ubiquitous food staple but, more significantly, another expression of the artist’s irrepressible focus on things sexual.

Unlikely Painting was Favorite of Dali’s Leading Patron

By Paul Chimera

Salvador Dali Historian

When I was director of publicity for the world’s first Salvador Dali Museum – then located in Beachwood, Ohio, near Cleveland and since relocated (in 1982) to St. Petersburg, Florida – one question was probably posed more often than any other to the collection’s owners, A. Reynolds and Eleanor Morse: which work in the collection is your favorite?

Mine is and always has been “The Hallucinogenic Toreador.” Mrs. Morse’s was “Velasquez Painting the Infanta Margarita with the Lights and Shadow of His Own Glory.”

I would have guessed Mr. Morse’s pick would have been one of the large-scale masterworks. Or perhaps one of the most famous double-image works ever created in the realm of surrealism and visual perception: “Slave Market with Disappearing Bust of Voltaire.”

So it came as quite a surprise to me – and I’m betting to most others – when the answer was “The Javanese Mannequin,” a 25 in. by 21 in. oil on canvas.

Reynolds Morse’s favorite Dali

The work is at once both obscure and fascinating. When you take in the whole of the incomparable Dali Museum collection in Florida, “Javanese Mannequin” is not exactly a picture that jumps out at you, that screams “Hey, look at me!” It doesn’t have the electric color scheme of the huge “Lincoln” painting or the brilliant “Hallucinogenic Toreador.” Nor the impact of the sheer size of “Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus,” or the photographic quality of “Nature Morte Vivante.”

But “Javanese Mannequin” is nevertheless a remarkable little work. Its essential imagery of decomposition relates to the quintessentially surrealist etchings Dali did to illustrate Les Chants de Maldoror, the 1869 novel by Isidore Ducasse.

Dali’s etching for Chants de Maldoror.

The upper “body” of this bizarre human-like kneeling figure recalls the hull of a boat, with its ribs doubling as human and wooden parts of the ruined vessel. Something hangs from the curved top – appearing to be a worm or maggot (yuck!).

The reconfiguration of a human body gets perhaps even more bizarre as we consider the legs of this…creature! Its right, grossly elongated buttock recalls that seen in Dali’s more famous “The Enigma of William Tell,” and like the very large earlier painting, a crutch is employed to prop up the unwieldy phallic protrusion.

Dali’s Enigma of William Tell.

The left leg, meanwhile, seems to become bone and flesh as our eye moves downward toward where his foot would be. Several birds appear to be pecking at crumbs of the decomposing figure.

A remarkable use of dark and light here lends intrigue and technical brilliance to this Dali painting. A light source creates an eerie illumination of parts of the figure and leaves a ribbon of light on the ground below him. It is unclear from the dark palette of the background whether this curiosity is in a room or outside in a haunting darkness.

Why it is called “Javanese Mannequin,” and why it was the favorite of Dali patron Reynolds Morse, remains a mystery to this Dali historian. What’s clear is that you’re not likely to just pass this work by the next time you tour the Dali Museum in St. Pete. It’s definitely worth a much closer look.

Think Sex: Dali’s ‘Morning Ossification of the Cypress’

By Paul Chimera

Salvador Dali Historian

There’s something quintessentially surrealist – and perhaps quintessentially Dalinian – about “Morning Ossification of the Cypress,” which a 30-year-old Salvador Dali painted in 1934. Ironically, the work is at once both strange and a bit eerie, yet also rather peaceful, devoid of a lot of elemental details that sometimes crowd confined spaces in Dali’s pictures.

Morning arousal?

At first blush, the painting certainly has a dream-like quality to it. An uneventful view of a cloud-suffused sky as backdrop to a pair of cypress trees is brazenly interrupted by a bizarre-looking horse which, though wingless (unlike Pegasus) seems to be flying through the air – apparently out of the dark recesses of a large cypress tree.

As the title of the 32 in. x 26 in. canvas (private collection) reveals, the horse is in the process of being hardened like bone (ossifying); cracks can be seen at various points on its stone-like form.

It occurs to me that, with surrealism, efforts at interpretation and analysis must almost necessarily be bifurcated: we can ascribe Freudian and personal Dalinian symbolism to much of what we see in Dali’s work, but we can also allow for another possibility: perhaps there is simply no explanation at all!

Author Eric Shanes, who’s written several books on Salvador Dali, commented in one of them that we shouldn’t necessarily expect any specific – or at least no “rational, symbolic or mythical meaning” – to certain of Dali’s images. Wrote Shanes: “…Dali could clearly string things together as in a dream, just as we all occasionally do when either asleep or awake.”

He’s right. If surrealism as a pictorial expression of the subconscious was just that – a reflection of the human subconscious and, in particular, the dream world – it makes sense that in many cases nothing seems to make sense!

Dali, of course – ever determined to further confound us – was eager to declare that he himself didn’t understand the images he created.

But I have the belief that “Morning Ossification of the Cypress” heavily revolves around a subject that both fascinated and gave Dali reason for a lot of personal neurosis: S-E-X! Here’s what I mean…

First, consider the cypress tree. A common fixture in the Spanish countryside with which Dali lived all his life. While symbolists note quite plausibly that cypress trees are often associated with graveyards, they are also inexorably seen as phallic symbols. That point seems hard to deny – pun intended.

Now let’s look at two other elements in the painting that support where I’m going with this. The two poles or rods of shafts or whatever they are, jutting out from the hole in the tree: clearly phallic (while, correspondingly, the hole might be seen as vaginal).

And, finally, the horse itself – hardening. “Morning” ossification. A time of day when testosterone levels tend to surge (in both genders, actually).

Alas, “Morning Ossification of the Cypress” may be Dali’s way of expressing something that can be unabashedly stated in far simpler terms: a morning erection.

Early Dali Watercolor of Daily Scenes Includes a (Soft?) Clock

By Paul Chimera

Salvador Dali Historian

We recently considered in this space from the Salvador Dali Society, Inc., Dali’s 1929 oil painting, “First Days of Spring.” Today’s work – also known as “The First Days of Spring,” was created around 1922-’23, is wash on paper – and may be one of the most delightful works ever created by the scion of Surrealism.

As a Dali historian and writer, I admit that I tend to focus perhaps too disproportionately on later works by the artist. And, unlike so many art critics and scholars, I consider Dali’s post-surrealist works of the mid-1940s and beyond to be every bit as important and intriguing as his surrealist heyday of the 1930s.

Early sign of lasting genius.

But Dali’s pre-surrealist works, such as the present work when Dali was about 18 years old, are also enormously important – and “The First Days of Spring” wash painting is a true gem.

The privately owned work presents charming cameos depicting the young artist’s thoughts and observations, while, taken as a whole, exudes a Klee- or Chagall-like kaleidoscope of colors and forms and disparate imagery that seems to anticipate the surrealism by which Dali would eventually be seduced.

Ironically, a clock can be seen a little below middle right, and while it does not appear to be “soft,” it also doesn’t look scrupulously rigid. Could this have been – consciously or unconsciously – the very first indication that timepieces and Salvador Dali would be inextricably linked?

What a dazzling and delightful admixture of images in this watercolor! We see leaves and birds, a rooster and an airplane, children dancing and playing – including two images of a girl skipping rope. That image was to appear later in Dali’s surrealist paintings, often presented as a double-image not only of the girl skipping rope, but, at the same time, a bell in a bell tower.

Notice girl skipping rope in middle distance of this Dali painting, and how it looks like the bell in the tower behind her.

Take note of the woman sewing at the bottom of the picture. Was this an early nod by the teen artist to his beloved Vermeer, the Dutch painter whom Dali passionately admired and paid homage to in a host of paintings? Dali did a “paranoiac-critical” version of Vermeer’s “The Lacemaker,” and later fulfilled a remarkable commission in copying almost exactly the same Vermeer masterpiece.

And notice the adult and child strolling and holding hands. This motif was to appear later in many Dali works, generally understood to have been Salvador as a young boy walking and holding hands with his father. Children playing with hoops in the present work also found echo in later Dali canvases, while the girl leaning on a balcony railing in the middle suggests the front view of the various rear views Dali later produced of his sister, Ana Maria, gazing out of a window onto the Mediterranean Sea that was part of the glorious views with which Dali was blessed at his villa in Port Lligat, Spain.

Is this Dali Painting the Most Unusually Titled of His Prodigious Output?

By Paul Chimera

Salvador Dali Historian

I don’t mean to dwell on so-called “war pictures”; I’ve written about several of them in recent blog posts. But today’s entry confronts a 1938 Dali painting that puts an exceptionally unusual twist on one’s anxiety over impending war – in this case the Spanish Civil War – and lays claim to one of the strangest titles of any Salvador Dali painting.

I’m talking about “Debris of an Automobile Giving Birth to a Blind Horse Biting a Telephone.” When the late, popular TV talk show host Merv Griffin had Dali as a guest on his show one time, Griffin read this painting’s title to the audience to illustrate the bizarre nature of Dali’s work in general.

A Dali war picture.

While Dali mined the endless imagination with which the genius was blessed, he also seized opportunities to make social commentary through is art. This was especially evident when it came to his apprehensions over war and, specifically, to the civil war that was so devastating to his native Espana.

In “Debris of an Automobile Giving Birth to a Blind Horse Biting a Telephone,” Dali employed a dark, somber palette in which perhaps a Model-T car is suggested – we see a wheel and fender – as it morphs into, or, rather, “gives birth” to a horse. The anguished animal’s eye socket is horribly carved out to reveal a deep, dark, empty space.

The telephone has widely been regarded in Dali’s various World War II-related paintings as symbolic of the pivotal telephonic conversations between Britain (primarily Chamberlain) and Hitler. Although the year this canvas was painted (1938) puts the historical locus on Spain and its bloody civil war, Dali author Robert Descharnes noted in his book, Dali – The Paintings, co-authored by Gilles Neret, that, while the telephone may have represented such momentous conversations, “the telephone must have seemed an emblem of menace.”

It’s simply one of several elements in “Debris of an Automobile…” that contribute to the forlorn impression Dali set out to evoke in this remarkable painting. Without question an important inspiration for Dali in creating this work was the famous large-scale black & white painting, “Guernica,” by Pablo Picasso, a fellow Spaniard whom Dali greatly admired. Both a horse whose head and neck are similarly posed, and a naked light fixture hanging from the ceiling, are found in the large Picasso picture.

Guernica by Picasso helped inspire Dali’s work.

It might also be noted that Dali had a distaste for what we might call mechanical things, such as the symbolic nature of watches and clocks (perhaps they reminded him too frequently of the inexorable passage of time and thus his own mortality?), and the ubiquitous automobile. In the present painting, then, might the dilapidated vehicle becoming a horse signal Dali’s wish that we might return to a simpler time, when on-horseback was the standard mode of transportation?

It’s fun to speculate and interpret – that’s part of what great art is all about – but one thing’s for certain: “Debris of an Automobile Giving Birth to a Blind Horse Biting a Telephone” will forever been held as one of Salvador Dali’s most important, intriguing, and curiously titled masterpieces.

‘First Days of Spring’ one of Dali’s Great Early Surrealist Gems!

By Paul Chimera

Salvador Dali Historian

Salvador Dali’s “First Days of Spring,” painted when he was 25, seems to be “seasonally correct” (as opposed to politically correct) as we enjoy spring while on the cusp of the first days of of summer. It’s one of the rare Dali paintings that does NOT feature the mountains, cypress trees and rock formations from his beloved Spanish countryside, which populated so many of Dali’s works.

Instead, “First Days of Spring” (collection Salvador Dali Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida, USA) is more of a dreamscape than a landscape or seascape, where objects, events, and space and time are distorted, if not completely upended.

Which parts are painted and which are collage??

I saw this important, early example of Dalinian surrealism many times when I was publicity director of the Salvador Dali Museum, back in the day when the renowned Morse Collection was displayed (in part) in a one-room provisional museum in Beachwood, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. What always struck me about the work were two key things, and we’ll take a brief look at both here.

One is the vast empty space of this curious composition, whose title defies explanation, at least for me. As I noted earlier, the picture is devoid of the Spanish countryside that more typically appeared in so many Dali paintings from this period and especially the decade of the 1930s. Instead, we’re presented with a kind of vast open stage, with the illusion of a deep distance, thanks to the steps that extend to the horizon line and two far-off figures.

My other key observation is Dali’s clever and confounding use of collage in this work – namely the ship’s deck behind the two strange figures at lower left, and the black & white photo of Dali as a baby, positioned on the steps just below center.

What’s a bit confounding about this approach is that, because of Dali’s sharp and exacting technique, it’s difficult to be sure which aspects of the painting are collage and which are painted. Sometimes the collage looks painted, sometimes the painted looks like collage! Because Salvador Dali was capable of painting a portrait of himself as a baby with exceptional realism, it all gets us to wondering what is “real” and what is not.

Of course, the bigger picture here is what Dali might have been trying to convey in this important surrealist canvas, which appeared in his first one-man European show. Clearly the work is punctuated with Freudian symbols and psychoanalytic themes.

I noted the collage photo of a young Dali, and that autobiographical nature of the painting continues with the well-known Great Masturbator head (a different kind of Dalinian self-portrait), on whose face a dreaded grasshopper (a genuine fear of Dali’s) clings.

A read of Sigmund Freud’s seminal book, “Interpretation of Dreams,” reveals that stairs are a symbolic representation of sexual intercourse (stairs take you higher…higher…closer…), while a fish has been seen in several Dali paintings and drawings to be a phallic symbol.

Throughout “The First Days of Spring” we find other sexual references – vaginal orifices, suggestions of homosexuality, as well as themes of aggression, isolation and other disquieting associations that make this painting one of the quintessential examples of surrealism – Salvador Dali style.

Dali Symbolized War through Giraffes on Fire!

By Paul Chimera

Salvador Dali Historian

One of the saddest realities of life is that history shows us there were very few if any times when war wasn’t a reality somewhere on our planet. Salvador Dali reflected this disquieting fact in a host of important works of art, beginning with his iconic oil on panel of 1935, “Flaming Giraffe” (Kuntsmuseum, Basel, Switzerland).

It’s funny how certain Dali paintings sometimes transport us back to a precise time and place when we first encountered the work, or when it somehow triggered a particular thought or experience. Whenever I see a reproduction of “Flaming Giraffe,” for instance, it takes me back to a public speaking class I took in undergraduate school at Ohio University. We had to riff in front of fellow students on a favorite piece of artwork. I chose Dali’s “Flaming Giraffe” and the class seemed spellbound (I ace’d the assignment).

Detail highlighting giraffe in flames!

“Spellbound” is certainly not an uncommon result when we contemplate Salvador Dali’s strange but compelling images, born of his inimitable imagination. In the present case, it was all inspired by the grip of impending war – specifically the Spanish Civil War.

The haunting surrealist masterpiece shows a woman against an ethereal aquamarine background. Her flayed arms are disturbing enough, but perhaps pale in comparison to what could be seen as her head consumed in blood. Freudian symbolism riddles her form: seven drawers emerge from her left leg; crutches prop up phallic appendages curiously growing out of her back and legs.

Seen at right is another figure – more elaborately festooned with phallic protuberances – from whose hand a piece of raw meat dangles. And, of course, the giraffe on fire! This shocking, paradoxical, counterintuitive image came to represent war or the specter of war, and made its foreboding symbolic appearance in a good number of Dali paintings, prints and drawings. Among them, “Inventions of the Monsters” in the Chicago Art Institute, Chicago, Illinois, USA.

A burning giraffe also appears in “Inventions of the Monsters.”

The monstrous image – the tallest animal we know, its body engulfed in flames – symbolizes the cruelty and futility of war, and has become synonymous with the Dali mystique itself, joining such other Dalinian symbols as flies, ants, soft watches, and crutches.

While “Flaming Giraffe” is one of the most significant war pictures created by Salvador Dali, there’s little debate that the single most important Dali painting embracing the impact of war was his “Soft Construction with Boiled Beans; Premonition of Civil War” (Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA). The late, iconic TIME magazine critic Robert Hughes proclaimed “Soft Construction” the single most important war picture of the 20^th century, even overshadowing Picasso’s “Guernica.”