From a stage set to setting the stage : the sources and the evolution of motifs in Dali’s early surrealist oeuvre, by Dmitriy Soliterman

A sustained, penetrating and profound study of the forms in Dali’s early work and informed deduction and speculation on their provenance by art critic Dmitriy Soliterman.

[…] in Dalí’s work there is never anything unjustified, however absurd and unusual it may seem 

Rafael Santos Torroella  (quoted by Josep Playà Maset) 

Vasari […] saw the invention of the means of representation as a great collective enterprise 

Ernst Gombrich, Art and Illusion 

   Salvador Dalí did not particularly like the word “iconography”. In the most voluminous piece of literature dealing with his life and work that he ever written or collaborated on – Secret Life of Salvador Dalí – this word and the word “iconographic” are used only once each, and on neither occasion are related to his own oeuvre. Apart from a brief mention of it in one of the essays from early 1940s, the artist used this word several times in interviews he gave between 1948 and 1952, specifically when talking about his “iconography of modern physics”, and in 1960s – once in Unspeakable Confessions and once in Bosquet’s Conversations with Dalí. Nonetheless, from 1930s on, Dalí constantly wrote and talked about the motifs, images and types featured in his art (milk nurses, ants, crutches, grasshoppers, rhinoceros’ horns – to name just a few).  

   But there were other motifs which he drew and painted during his transition to surrealism in the late 1920s. Some of them disappeared from his oeuvre for various reasons, others were used for decades but were not written or talked about by the artist himself. This essay is about them. It is also about the images that Dalí saw or could have seen, and how they – some morphed or merged with other images, some transformed – may have found their way into his paintings of 1927. 

*  * * 

   On February 1, 1927, Salvador Dalí started his military service¹ which lasted, according to Dalí himself², nine months (not including a three-month leave for summer³). Indeed, in a letter to Lorca⁴ datable to ca. January 15, 1928, Dalí writes “Soon I’ll be out of the army”. Although service was not hard, ‘generally referred to as “per-diem” – with permission […] to sleep at home’⁵, it nonetheless was a nuisance, occupying most days and not allowing him to travel freely or use precious daylight hours to draw and paint. Nevertheless, he managed to find the time during early months of 1927 to design⁶ a backdrop for a stage set for The Harlequin Family in Teatre Íntim in Barcelona. 

   From the stage set only a black-and-white photograph has survived with a backdrop partially obstructed by actors (Figure 1), and none of Dalí’s studies or paintings of its design are extant. This design, however, takes a very important place in the artist’s work because it is a connecting link between his past and his future⁷, and as such it deserves a thorough analysis. 

*  * * 

   In September 1922, Dalí writes to his uncle, Anselm Domènech, “the Barcelona bookseller”⁸, asking him “to take out a subscription on his behalf to the Parisian art journal L’Esprit Nouveau, the mouthpiece of Amédée Ozenfant and Le Corbusier’s Purism”⁹.  

   Volume 13 of L’Esprit Nouveau, published in 1921, featured an article, titled Russian Theater During the Revolution¹⁰ penned by a Soviet writer and journalist Ilya Ehrenburg. Author cannot prove that Dalí was familiar with the issues of L’Esprit Nouveau published prior to 1922, including this particular one, but it is highly likely that he was, as the magazine was copiously illustrated and, among other subjects, extensively covered various “isms” of avant-garde art that Dalí was exploring between 1922 and 1926. Additionally, Dalí was interested in Soviet Russia and Communism¹¹. Indeed, his first “real” publication (not counting the six short pieces on classic painters in 1919 school magazine), in Figueres’ Renovació Social, under pseudonym “Jak” and attributed to Dalí by Fanés¹², was titled On the Russia of the Soviets: A Museum of Impressionist Painting in Moscow¹³.  

Figure 1 

   Ehrenburg’s article is illustrated by two photos of theater stagings, both of which, according to Popov and Frezinsky¹⁴, were taken at the Moscow Kamernii Theater. When we look at the first of the photos (Figure 2), we cannot help noticing how similar the atmosphere it captures is to the staging photo taken in Teatre Íntim in Barcelona. The only perceivable difference is the backdrop: at Kamernii it is designed in expressionist style, reminiscent of movie sets for Metropolis and Doctor Caligari. And a closer look at the actors – their postures, their costumes, the spirit of the acting – finds these so similar that, were the actors of Kamernii to swap stages with Teatre Íntim, or, for that matter, with the Bauhaus theater circa 1926 (Figure 3), the audience probably would have been none the wiser. 

*  * * 

    In the cited article Ehrenburg states that, “in the new theater one notices two different directions”. He proceeds with a Cubism analogy, and defines the first direction in terms of “the affirmation of pure painting, or abstract composition”, and continues:  

The best achievement of the first group is the Kamernii Theater¹⁵ in Moscow. Its director, Tairoff, understood that theater is based on organized movement. He is done with anarchy, where the individuality of the actor was predominant. The actors in this theater are only elements that must be disciplined; all gestures, all words, are calculated, as one calculates the movements of a modern machine. 

   The Intimate Theater in Barcelona “was born with the intention of renewing the theatrical scene of the time, influenced by Maeterlinck’s ideas, and the regenerating idea of Art Nouveau”¹⁶ in 1898. It “aimed to combat the dominant theatrical habits of the time, which followed repetitive schemes and presented topical situations, with a certain moralizing intention”. This is close to Tairoff’s spirit. Indeed, Tairoff himself was familiar with Maeterlink’s ideas, and at the beginning of his theater career acted in his play Sister Beatrice¹⁷. 

   Ehrenburg writes further that Tairoff  

also completely changed the role of the painter in the theater. He eliminated the painted backdrops that made the scene look like a harem. The actors who represent a three-dimensional form require a three-dimensional set. The architect replaces the painter, and it is curious to note that the costumes and the decorations of the Announcement Made to Marie are carried by Vassnine, an architect by trade. The latter […] found mathematical forms which correspond to modern conceptions. They construct the scene in such a way that the action unfolds, not horizontally, but vertically.¹⁸ 

Figure 2 

   Per Magdalena Droste,  

Although not included in the original curriculum, the [Bauhaus] theatre workshop was seen as an inseparable element of the Bauhaus whole, and in particular as a conceptual counterpart to ‘building’. ‘Building and theater’, ‘work and play’ were to mutually enrich each other.¹⁹ 

   It is not without reason that Oskar Schlemmer who created costumes and stage sets for the Bauhaus theater workshop was himself not only a painter but also a sculptor and a designer. Bauhaus²⁰ as a school was not only about architecture, but about building in general. The opening line of Gropius’s Bauhaus manifesto of 1919²¹ was “The ultimate aim of all visual arts is the complete building!”, and in the closing paragraph we read: “Together let us desire, conceive, and create the new structure of the future”. 

   Even if Dalí hadn’t read the article in L’Esprit Nouveau, his stage design fitted very well to the spirit and the idiom of modern theater as it was understood in mid-1920s²². Let us take a closer look at how Dalí “constructed the scene” and with it the future.   

Figure 3  (see https://1drv.ms/i/c/0a61455c603daf0b/IQA02aEBDxCWTLoc_rRFfcBNAXDQ4qrqtinPeh7Xz7oX1Ls and https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/costums-by-oskar-schlemmer-for-ballet-triadique-at-metropol-news-photo/89858230?adppopup=true )

*  * * 

   The backdrop designed by Dalí, as far as it can be discerned from the only photograph available to us, was composed of five rectangles of different aspect ratios (Figure 4). The “metro” sign in the left upper corner overlaps three of the larger rectangles and is partially obstructed by the fourth, tying all four of them together. The majority of the images are placed in the rectangle that features several diagonal lines converging at the vanishing point. It does not appear from the photo that the vanishing point was meant to be in the geometric center of the entire backdrop. 

   If we ignore the two dark rectangles and a rectangle with clouds which, apart from the clouds and a “Metro” sign do not contain images and concentrate on the larger rectangle in the lower center, we see that four of the lines converging in the vanishing point divide this rectangle into four distinct segments of unequal size (Figure 5). Three of them could be characterized as an “urbanistic”, an “abstract” and a “constructivist” segment. From the bottom segment we can only discern a shadow which appears to be the shadow cast by an “aparato²³”, a frequent motif in Dalí work in 1926-1928, the aparato itself may have been also painted but this part of the backdrop on the photograph is obscured by one of the actors. 

   Finally, there is a small rectangle in the lower middle, a “painting-within-painting” in which we see several columns and a part of a sculpted head. 

   Overall, the design scheme of the backdrop is obviously quite architectonic, even though the content of some of the segments is not. So, it would be fitting to start analysis from the “urbanistic” segment. 

Figure 4 

Figure 5 

   This segment (Figure 6-1) features only two motifs: what appears to be a façade of an “endless” glass-and-concrete building and multiple strange objects that are placed at equal intervals and likewise disappear into the “infinity” at the vanishing point. 

   As far as the building façade goes, it is very reminiscent of the symmetric motifs on Dalí painting Still Life (Invitation to Sleep) from 1926 (detail is shown on Figure 6-2) and author respectfully disagrees with Gibson who believed them to be “parallel railings”²⁴. These look much more like building façades and were possibly inspired by photographs in Towards a New Architecture by Le Corbusier (on Figure 6 two examples are shown: number 3 is on p.37 and number 4 – on page 39 of the American edition²⁵). Windows on Still Life are reminiscent of the more elongated windows on the side wall on 3 and on the façade on 4. Many of the illustrations in this book, originally published in 1923, previously appeared in L’Esprit Nouveau in 1921 and 1922, as the book itself was a collection of previously published magazine articles²⁶. 

Figure 6 

   The façade on the backdrop has six floors. Incidentally, so does a drawing – with caption “The modern times (reinforced concrete)” – that was featured on page 13 of issue 21 of L’Esprit Nouveau (Figure 7 left). It appears that window rectangles, given the foreshortening, may have a very similar aspect ratio on Dalí backdrop (shown approximately to scale with Le Corbusier drawing on Figure 7, right. 

   Dalí very well could have been familiar with these and similar pictures because Le Corbusier was very much on his mind during 1920s. Dalí refers to Le Corbusier in his 1926 letter to Lorca²⁷ and in his essay San Sebastian (“Post-mechanistic avenues, Florida, Le Corbusier, Los Angeles”²⁸). He demonstratively carried L’Esprit Nouveau issues around during his Madrid Academy years²⁹. In the Anti-Art Manifesto (aka Yellow Manifesto), published in March 1928, which Dalí worked on already in 1927³⁰ and co-signed with Gasch and Montanyà, Le Corbusier is listed among “the great artists of today”³¹.   

Figure 7 

   Before we continue with the second motif on the “urbanistic” segment, it seems appropriate to make a small detour and discuss use of “found images” and evolution of motifs in Dalí’s work. 

*  * * 

   Some painters depict both what they see around them and what they hear or read about. Same is true for writers. Dalí, during 1920s and 1930s, was usually writing about what he has read and painting what he has seen. 

   The fact that Dalí utilized “found” images in his art and collages is well known, and he has been accused of “plagiarism” on multiple occasions. A recently published meticulously researched article by Vicent Santamaria de Mingo³² which was primarily dedicated to just one source of these images, the French magazine La Nature, offers dozens of examples of images from this magazine used by Dalí with or without modifications, or copied manually into paintings. 

   Significantly, Dalí himself uses word “find” rather than “imagine”, “create” or “come up with”. In his letter to Lorca from early December 1927 he writes: ‘[…] I’m finding things that move me deeply’³³; in another letter to Lorca (ca. January 15, 1928): ‘[…] I’m now firmly installed in a considerable technique that has allowed me to find things that are undoubtedly joyous and poetical.’³⁴ 

   The legal definitions of plagiarism necessarily include an intent by the perpetrator to conceal both the fact of a presence or use of an image (or text, or melody etc.) of someone else’s authorship in perpetrator’s work, and the original source of the above motif. A plagiarist does not want to get caught. Dalí however rarely tried to conceal the “found” nature of those images. For example, many illustrations were reproduced in Secret Life with their original captions, clearly showing that these were not Dalí’s own work, nor did he intend them to be thought of as such. It is true that he never credited the sources — not that he didn’t want to, in most cases he just didn’t care to. But some of the images he used in his art were very well known. For example, the John F. Herrings’ painting Pharaoh’s Horses from 1848 which Dalí utilized in a stage set for Tristan³⁵, has been a part of pop-art since mid-19th century, when engravings of it were being sold by thousands starting from just a year after the painting was created, and the image was so well known by 1940s that had Dalí actually attempted to “plagiarize” this image, he would have been about as successful as somebody trying to publish today a theater play about a Dutch duke named Helmet or Hamelt who is revenging an alleged murder of his father. 

   It is author’s opinion that Dalí treated all images — his own or those owned by others — as some modern artists did “found objects“. He freely incorporated them, modified or not, into his work, and often they got combined with his own images as their appearance and use kept evolving. 

   In his conversations with Louis Pauwels, recorded, edited, authorized and originally published in 1968, Dalí said: 

Now I must explain that my amorous passion is, in its mental color, of a Proustian type, that is to say that it contains in each full instant an accumulation of images and of sensations of an acuteness known only to a privileged few. I have the gift, now become a habit and steadily growing up being able to see images like snapshots. I cannot experience intense pleasure if my mind is not curtained with a kind of material on which precise luminous images of what I have already lived are superimposed and played one upon the other.³⁶                     

   It is not our purpose here to explore legal or moral aspects of perusing other artists’ work. We are going to look at how images — “found” or not — evolved in Dalí’s art into motifs, and how these motifs themselves evolved — combining, splitting, changing, being transposed. 

   Let us briefly consider two examples of such evolution.  

   We will first address Arnold Böcklin’s Isle of the Dead, a painting Dalí was fascinated with and based several of his 1930s paintings on, including some of their titles. 

   In the central part of Böcklin’s painting (detail shown on Figure 8-1, enlarged on 8-2) there is a rowboat with two human figures, one of which (a male, judging by the anatomy) is standing and is wrapped in white drapes (a funeral shroud?) head to feet. On the background there are several giant cypress trees. Dalí uses the draped figure (3) in his 1933 Ambivalent image (it is painted — possibly deliberately — so that the sex of the figure is hard to determine). Dalí subsequently takes three motifs — that of the boat (which he transformed into a typical fisherman’s boat from Port Lligat), that of a figure draped in white (here it is transformed from a male figure in a shroud, standing in the boat, into a female in a white dress standing next to the boat), and that of the cypress tree — and combines them in 1934 Apparition of my Cousin Carolineta on the Beach into one tight group placed away from water directly on the sand (4)³⁷. In yet another version of the same painting, also from 1934, Dalí separates the female figure from the cypress tree, loses the boat entirely, and places the figure and the tree even further away from water (5). He uses these two motifs again in similar fashion in 1935 The Echo of the Void (not shown here). In Morphological Echo (painted between 1934 and 1936) the figure of a skipping girl with a jump rope, in long white dress, first appears (6). It is used again as a self-quote in 1936 Landscape with a girl skipping (not shown here) — the whole painting is now based around this motif, including the title. Then in 1936 Suburbs of a Paranoiac Critical Town the female in a white dress with arms raised becomes a dual image of a girl-bell (7), this motif is subsequently used in 1947 in sketches for then unrealized Disney animation Destino (8) which finally is realized into an animation in 2003 (9). 

Figure 8 

   Our second example (Figure 9) again involves a cypress tree, as well as a motif of a very tall round tower which may have originated from de Chirico’s 1914 painting The Anguish of Departure (1). Dalí uses the tower in The Invisible Sleeping Woman, 1931 (2), then the same tower — this time with a lonely window close to its top — appears in 1931 The Dream Approaches (with several cypress trees which may echo Böcklin — note also an island on the background to the left, shape of which is reminiscent to the one on Isle of The Dead, minus the cypress trees) and 1932 The Knight at the Tower (4 and 3 respectively).  

Figure 9 

   Then in 1934 in Eclipse and Vegetable Osmosis a cypress tree appears, from which protrudes a wooden stick with a piece of white rag attached to its end (5). This motif originated from Dalí’s childhood memories: ‘the shadow of the right-hand cypress must have reached that burnt hole with a dry branch coming out of it, from which hangs a bit of white rag’.³⁸ In Enigmatic Elements in a Landscape, 1934 (6), the motif of a stick with a white rag is separated from the cypress tree (cypresses are still present on the painting) and instead is combined with a motif of the tower; the same combined motif is repeated again in 1935 The Horseman of Death (7). In 1936 Morphological Echo the stick with a rag is placed into a lonely window of a small turret which forms part of an arch’s pier (8). The cypress tree with a hole here has been replaced by a turret with an embrasure. Finally, in The Alert (aka The Warner, undated, but likely painted after 1936) we find only the top part of the tower with stick and rag protruding out of the window (9). 

   There is an interesting self-characteristic in Dalí’s conversations with Alain Bosquet which author originally found in Ramírez:³⁹ 

I am a supreme swine. The symbol of perfection is a pig. Charles V himself adopted it to replace all the other symbols of perfection. The pig makes his way with Jesuit cunning, but he never balks in the middle of the crap in our era. […] I am horribly stingy, and I get more out of them than they get out of me.⁴⁰ 

   The context was dealing with “upstarts” which besieged the “divine Dalí”. But in author’s opinion, this could be understood in a wider sense. Consider this Bosquet quote: 

A.B.: […] Are you open to the notion of historical concentration? Do you have, within you, an imaginary museum? 

S.D.: The only thing that counts is images. I only care for the sum of information contained in old masters, just as an IBM machine functions solely by the sum of the elements that feed it.⁴¹ 

   A pig is an omnivore. So was Dalí when it came to many things, including images and shapes. 

*  * * 

   Automobile for Dalí, as for many others, was, together with airplane, one of the definitive symbols of the modern era. Dalí was clearly influenced by Le Corbusier’s book Towards an Architecture that came out in 1923. He even used a paraphrase of one of its chapter titles⁴² (Pure creation of the mind⁴³) for his article Photography, Pure Creation of the Mind published in September 1927. The Le Corbusier book featured a chapter called Automobile and included no less than eleven illustrations of passenger and racing cars, as well as a cut-out drawing of a front brake (there was a chapter on airplanes as well, with over a dozen illustrations).  

   We read in the Le Corbusier’s book, in the introduction to part one: ‘We claim, in the name of the steamship, of the airplane, and of the motor-car, the right to health, logic, daring, harmony, perfection’⁴⁴. Dalí never acquired a taste for aviation but very much appreciated ocean liners and automobiles throughout his life. He painted a rather accurate copy of a Peugeot featured in the issue 24 of L’Esprit Nouveau⁴⁵ on Bather exhibited in 1925. According to Juan Jose Lahuerta, ‘Dali was the author of the advertisement for  Isotta cars that appeared on the back cover of Residencia magazine, the first issue of which was published in 1926.’⁴⁶

Nonetheless, and despite the ‘modern’ and possibly ‘futuristic spirit of the backdrop, it does not appear to feature an automobile (unless the image is covered by actors). However, the ‘urbajistic’ segment includes something directly related to automobiles. It is enough to look at several photographs of gas stations from the 1920s to realise that the strange bottle-like objects crowned by circles that tower above the actors are none other than the gas pumps (figure 10) including the company logo at the top (made by Dali as we find a wide open eye on a stalk looking very similar on a drawing from 1926, detail shown on Figure 10-4) Dali would never let a good image go to waste.

Apparently such pumps where the level of gasoline could be observed in the glass cylinder were called ‘visible pumps’.⁴⁷ The one shown on figure 10-2, photographed at an American gas station of the 1920s, looks especially like those Dali drew. The figure 10-3 photograph was taken in Spain. These pumps are also very tall but the cylinder is located under the logo. At the bottom of the second pump on the backdrop (figure 10-1 on the right) something resembling a hose can be seen, and if there was anything depicted on the other end of the hose, its image is obstructed by figures of actors.

Figure 10 

   Those “visible pumps” of the 1920s had a truly imposing appearance. The ones pictured here seem to have been at least three meters high, so it is no wonder that they caught Dalí’s attention. They would have caught our attention today, even though many of us are frequent drivers. In Spain of 1920s automobiles were not nearly as common as in America at the time, and this was one of the reasons for them to be identified with progress, with movement forward, which Dalí wanted to project with his backdrop, choosing, rather than images of cars, a “stranger” image of the gas pump columns. 

   He of course made them stranger yet by adding giant bifurcating “veins”. Pipes on “visible pumps” could be seen through the glass cylinder which may have given Dalí the idea. The veins however may have come from a different source. 

*  * * 

   Through his Madrid Residencia de Estudiantes circle Dalí was likely familiar with La Révolucion Surréaliste magazine at least since 1925⁴⁸. The first issue of this magazine appeared in December 1924 and was probably still in circulation at the Residencia a year after. This issue featured two graphic works of André Masson, first one of them, on page 14⁴⁹, included two images of a cut-off hand, one of them with a thick zigzagging bifurcated vein drawn in double lines (shown rotated on Figure 11-1, for ease of comparison). Very similar veins were featured on Dalí’s drawing The Beach published in Verso y Prosa in April 1927⁵⁰ (Figure 11-2), the only difference being that Dalí turned the bifurcated part towards the wrist, while Masson had it pointed in the opposite direction. Some other drawings by Dalí from the period featured veins drawn in double lines, such as The Poet at the Beach at Empúries published also in 1927 (Figure 11-3), and some, like those on San Sebastian published in L’Amic de les Arts, also in 1927 (Figure 11-4), feature a third line drawn in the middle, ostensibly denoting the flow of blood, and a similar line was also painted on the gas pump “veins” on the theater backdrop (Figure 11-5).  

Figure 11 

   One of the reasons this author believes that veins in Dalí drawings were inspired by Masson is that the drawing style of Dalí in 1926-1927 resembles Masson’s. As will be shown later, Dalí may have borrowed other motifs from this artist as well. 

   Dalí not only drew veins but wrote about them. He mentions them in his essay Saint Sebastian: “In certain parts of the body the veins appeared on the surface, with the intense blue of a storm by Patinir”⁵¹. So, incidentally did Lorca in his essay St. Lucy and St. Lazarus (which was in polemic with Dalí’s Saint Sebastian⁵²): “rich little veins of water”⁵³, “the veins in the foot soles slumbered”⁵⁴. Lorca incidentally mentions “the huge cut hand of the glove maker’s shop” in the same essay⁵⁵. 

   Where could Dalí have read about veins? For example, in the writings of Paul Eluard and Max Ernst “in which the mutilated bodies, severed hands, swollen veins or ‘blood clots’ are common”⁵⁶. 

   To wrap up analysis of the “urbanistic” segment, it should be mentioned that it includes other surrealist elements apart from “veins”: the modern building continues into the horizon (which, for a human standing on a flat plane, translates into a three miles’ distance); the “pumps” are depicted to be as high as the fifth floor. 

*  * * 

   The “abstract” segment contains essentially only one image (Figure 12-1), and in fact there exists a related image in the “constructivist” segment (Figure 12-2, circled), so we will consider them together. Dalí sketched in 1926 images that were very similar to these (Figure 12 shows detail of one drawing on 3 – the same drawing also contains the “eye” discussed above – and the second drawing is shown in its entirety on 4). These abstract motifs most likely came from fellow Catalan Joan Miró whose paintings were reproduced in several issues of La Révolucion Surréaliste, for example La Chasseur featured in issue 4, July 1925, on p.15 (Figure 12, -5 and -6) and Le Piège in issue 5, October 1925, p.25 (Figure 12, -7 and -8). Dalí may have seen these and other works by Miró in better reproductions or at art exhibits⁵⁷. 

Figure 12 

   The remaining content of the “constructivist” segment is however quite remarkable. And the name of one particular artist comes to mind. 

*  * * 

   A detailed discussion of Lazar (El) Lissitzky’s role in the international constructivist movement is beyond the scope of this article, and the author apologizes for a rather concise narrative that follows. 

   The term “constructivism” was coined in Moscow, Russia in March 1921 when the Working Group of Constructivists was formed there. The group “rejected the traditional notion of the work of art as a product of individual genius and a marketable commodity”, seeking to replace it with “a new form of creative activity, one that would fuse utilitarian, ideological, and formal objectives”⁵⁸. Lissitzky was not a founding member of the group and never joined it because he did not share their views on art. Nonetheless, ironically, he spearheaded constructivism’s “migration westward⁵⁹” in 1922.  

   Germany, “a country of advanced science and technology with a class of intellectuals and industrialists who believed strongly in modernity” and Berlin, “one of Europe’s most cosmopolitan art centers”, “had become a fertile ground for […] avant-garde movements”⁶⁰. Lissitzky traveled to Berlin in December 1921 and “rapidly established himself as the most influential and authoritative spokesman for the new Russian art”⁶¹. His fluent knowledge of German and his European experience (he studied architectural engineering in Darmstadt and traveled around Europe between 1909 and 1914⁶²) certainly were crucial for this activity.  

   In May 1922, Lissitzky becomes a founding member of Internationale Faktion der Konstruktivisten, together with Theo van Doesburg and Hans Richter⁶³. Two years later Richter will write that  

[…] the name Constructivism was taken up […] as the Opposition, in a broader sense. […] borrowed as a slogan which was applied both against the legitimacy of artistic expressions [present at the 1922 International Congress of Progressive Artists in Düsseldorf] and as an efficient temporary communication […]⁶⁴ 

   Lissitzky stayed in Europe until June 1925⁶⁵ and during this period much of his work was in the field of typography (what he himself called typographics) including page, cover, magazine and book designs. This included design of Mayakovsky’s book of poetry For the Voice, printed in 1922 in Berlin (where Soviet State Publishing conveniently had a branch office); photographs of these designs “were reproduced in various German and French newspapers”⁶⁶. Another book published in Berlin the same year, was created – this time entirely by Lissitzky – already in 1920 and titled Two Squares. It was also widely reproduced, including its entire reprint, diligently translated to Dutch, by van Doesburg’s magazine De Stijl (vol.5 1922). Lissitzky’s so-called “puppet portfolio” – twelve lithographs of theater costumes for Russian theater play Victory over the Sun, published in 1923, – “was in demand by many collectors and museums”⁶⁷.  

   In September 1922 we find Lissitzky in Weimar at International Congress of Constructivists and Dadaists. A group photo (Figure 13, left), with Lissitzky in the center, features also Tristan Tzara and Jean Arp⁶⁸, both having been associated with Dada movement at the time. Eight years later Dalí will be photographed at Tzara’s house, sitting next to Breton, surrounded by other members of Surrealist group including Tzara and Arp (Figure 13, right). 

Figure 13 

   The international constructivist project’s peak years were short – 1922 and 1923⁶⁹. In The Isms 1914-1924, a book Lissitzky created together with Jean Arp, published in 1925 with German, French and English text in three parallel columns, which covered sixteen directions in avant-garde, constructivism was represented solely by artists from Soviet Russia, while Lissitzky himself was included in the book under his own ‘proun’⁷⁰ movement. Nonetheless, Lissitzky’s “architectonic” book pages, covers and posters, as well as his groundbreaking experiments with photography, influenced a whole generation of artists and designers. 

   To quote Christina Lodder, “Lissitzky’s idea of constructivism found a receptive audience in the West precisely because it associated innovative developments in avant-garde art and design with the wider progress of culture and society”⁷¹. In his lecture on Russian art delivered during winter of 1922-1923 Lissitzky said “the new form is the lever that sets life in motion⁷²”. This “lever” may well have moved Dalí when he was designing the “constructivist” segment of the backdrop for The Harlequin Family (Figure 14, 1).   

Figure 14 

   Van Doesburg brought into Bauhaus expression principles of De Stijl group, which among others included use of only six colors: red, yellow and blue “primary colors, supplemented by black, white and grey”⁷³. Lissitzky preferred only four: red, black, grey and white. Dalí may have used either of the two color schemes in his backdrop. Author deliberately has reproduced Lissitzky’s designs on Figure 14 in black and white, to facilitate the comparison. 

   One of the first motifs a viewer may notice when comparing images 1 and 2 on Figure 14 (2 being Lissitzky’s design for the cover of issue 11, 1921 of Wendingen magazine⁷⁴) is the dark circle. It is black in Lissitzky’s original, and very likely was also black on the backdrop as it appears to be darker than the trapezoid. Significantly, it is also of the same relative size if we reproduce the “constructivist” segment within its loose bounds, as has been done here. The Wendingen cover design is square but all constructivist elements on Dalí’s segment (between the “fletching” of the arrow and the right boundary) also would fit into exactly same square. Finally, the circle in both cases is positioned in the middle right. In Lissitzky’s design it touches a rectangle and overlaps another, narrower, rectangle, both of those diagonally positioned. In Dalí’s case the circle is overlapped by a rectangle containing word BAR which in turn is parallel to the trapezoid, once again both are diagonally positioned. Either design also features a thin diagonal line (in Dalí’s case it is the segment boundary) which is drawn from top middle to bottom right, at about the same angle. Dalí has a second diagonal line (also the boundary) to which the trapezoid and the BAR rectangle are parallel.  Lissitzky’s design includes several vertical elements (lines and a rectangle), Dalí has one vertical line on the extreme left which largely is in the “abstract” segment but still counterpoints the diagonals in the “constructivist” segment. So do the two verticals of the rectangle with the arrow, the vertical side of the “picture-within-picture” boundary, as well as parts of D and N letters in the word DAN. 

   Lissitzky often used groups of parallel rectangles in his typographic designs and posters, be it a geometric abstraction or a symbol that already contained multiple parallel lines in it (such as Roman numerals II and III – in this particular design III had to do with the Third International⁷⁵ – , letters E and H or Russian letters И, П, Ш and Щ. Example shown on Figure 14-3 is taken from a 1920 design of Mayakovsky’s book of poetry already mentioned above; this small book of 61 pages contains about 24 “designed” pages, of which 17 feature parallel rectangles. Note that Dalí accentuates rectangles in the fonts utilized for both short words included in the segment, and in the word BAR these rectangles are in fact drawn to be parallel to each other. Incidentally, Lissitzky does the same with some of the straight lines of XYZ letters on The Constructor (Figure 14-5). 

   Let us next consider the arrow. It may have come about as follows. Dalí, to avoid a direct quote, likely decided to transform the four parallel right trapezoids of the hammerhead design into a single right trapezoid (he also mirror-flipped it and changed the angle of its leg to make it horizontal), but in order to keep the “signature” constructivist parallel rectangles in his design he constructed an arrow symbol by drawing in parallel two right trapezoids and a rectangle for fletching, a single rectangle for shaft and two overlapping triangles for the tip. Placement of the arrow in a rectangular frame (Figure 14-4) may have been inspired by the famous and much reproduced Lissitzky 1924 self-portrait he called The Constructor (detail shown on Figure 14-5) in which the arrow was a part of his logo. Note that the position of the arrow in both rectangles is slightly above the horizontal axis of symmetry. 

   It is quite ironic that in the Soviet hammer-and-sickle worker-and-peasant emblem Dalí may have borrowed the hammerhead from, there was no place left for intelligentsia to which both Lissitzky and Dalí belonged – just like there was no place for intelligentsia in the post-revolution Soviet society⁷⁶. 

   Dalí’s composition is much simpler in comparison to Lissitzky’s compositions cited here. It features: one right trapezoid, one circle, two short words in large font (one framed), an arrow symbol, also framed, and two thin diagonal lines (which form the boundary of the “segment”). For comparison, Wendingen cover contains two squares, three rectangles, one circle, two lines dividing the composition into unequal quadrants, one long word in large font shaped in a circular arc, and two diagonal lines of unequal thickness. And The Constructor portrait (if we count overlaps of rectangles in various shades of grey as separate entities) contains twice as many elements as Wendingen cover. But Dalí, literally in few strokes of pen, clearly conveys which – very particular – style he used here. Well, after all, the third principle of Lissitzky’s “topography of typographics” was “economy of expression”⁷⁷.  

   Never mind the abstract Miróesque motif Dalí introduced into the segment, this was a deliberate disruption of constructivist idiom which acknowledged only regular shapes. If anything, it can be considered Dalí’s “I have been here”, his “signature”. What Dalí created is not a plagiarism, not a parody and not, strictly speaking, even a quote. He tells Lissitzky: “I know what you did, I understand your language, and here is how I can speak it”. 

*  * * 

   We now continue our analysis with the “painting-within-painting” segment (Figure 15-1). Dalí makes it obvious to us that this is a rectangular “painting” superimposed onto the rest of the backdrop: it obstructs the segments it overlaps, its background is lighter, the clouds are painted on it, and the shadow of an “aparato” (Figure 15-3) is “broken” or “refracted” as it would be when part of it falls on a horizontal surface of the “ground” and its other part – on the vertical surface of the “painting”. That shadow suggests the painting is “standing” on the “ground”. 

Figure 15 

      “Severed heads” and “columns” Fanés identifies⁷⁸ with “Dalí’s most recent phase” and dedicates several pages to discussion of these motifs, so it would be redundant to cover them in the present paper. What the author would like to concentrate on is the “painting within a painting” aspect itself.  

   Rafael Santos Torroella dedicated to the relationship between de Chirico and Dalí an entire chapter (appendix D) in his Honey is Sweeter than Blood, in which he states⁷⁹ that “Chirico’s influence on Dalí […] came about via the magazine Valori Plastici”. Indeed, in the online scans of Valori Plastici which were available to author⁸⁰, 14 reproductions of de Chirico can be found, of which at least four (five if we include de Chirico’s self-portrait) feature a painting-within-painting motif, three of them (plus self-portrait) in the same issue (v.2 1920). Moreover, another Italian painter, Carlo Carrá, who became a metaphysician after meeting de Chirico, has been reproduced at least 17 times in Valori Plastici, and five of those reproductions also feature the motif in question.  

   The theater backdrop is not the first time Dalí used “painting within painting”. A closer look at his Neo-cubist Academy⁸¹ from 1926 (specifically at its upper half, shown on Figure 16 left) yields no less than four frames, and possibly part of the fifth on lower right. The first from the left, a strange double frame with cut-out corners, is transparent. The second, from which only a corner is painted, appears to delineate a long rectangular “painting”, the upper half of which is with a lighter background, and from the lower half only a part is visible. The third, almost square, frame is again transparent, from the fourth only a corner is visible, no painting inside, and the fifth is likewise empty. Geometry based on such overlapping frames or rectangles Dalí subsequently used in the theater backdrop, as was shown earlier, but on the backdrop these rectangles are more “material”, none of them are transparent. 

   If we look closely at the upper left corner of the “painting-within-painting” segment (Figure 15-4) we will see a familiar to us – by now – frame corner and a part of a “painting” with a lonely cloud: Dalí went two levels deep, it is an insert within an insert. He tells us “Yes, it is a painting within a painting you are looking at, and to make sure, here is yet another one for you”. In fact, a clearly painted corner of a picture frame first appears on a still life from 1924 (Figure 16 right). But here it is exactly that: a half of a disassembled picture frame laying around an artist’s studio. It has a very different function in the Neo-cubist Academy and the stage backdrop, where it in fact frames a “picture”, be it imaginary or not. Dalí once again takes a motif and turns it into something different. 

Figure 16 

   There is one more detail worth mentioning. The “painting within painting” segment includes five straight lines that converge in the vanishing point which happens to coincide with the vanishing point of the main rectangle and which this segment in fact touches with its upper edge (see Figure 4 and Figure 5). Two of these lines continue down beyond the frame of “picture within picture” (pointed by arrows on Figure 15-2). The line on the left side is the one on which the “gas pumps” of the “urbanistic” segment are standing, the line on the right is the boundary of the “constructivist” segment. The fact that the line from a “street” (which is “real” because “gas pumps” stand on it) continues into a “picture”, and that the vanishing points coincide, makes this segment an incipient trompe l’oeil with a Dalínian twist. It seems to be a part of the same “plane” the “urbanistic” segment is based on – but it isn’t. The position of the clouds relative to the “plane”, or rather a “path”, inside “picture within picture”, clearly tells us that the “path” must be hanging in space. It is a trompe l’oeil which at the same time tells us “No, I am not!”. 

   What also comes to mind here is the fascination with mimesis and double images that will characterize Dalí art in 1930s, notably the 1933 Phantom Cart, especially that version of it where stones, pebbles and sand play the role of the lines on a flat plain converging in the vanishing point. The omega-shaped opening formed by frame and fabric of the cart’s bonnet serves as an improvised “frame” of a “picture” in which a tower with a cupola and the driver’s silhouette are one and the same. 

   As far as the converging lines themselves, they have been used (either to signify floorboards or pavement slabs) by both de Chirico and Carrá, including some reproductions published in Valori Plastici, for example Carrá’s La Figlia dell’Ovest and Il Figlio del Construttore and de Chrico’s Natura Morta⁸². Dali, however, was familiar with such lines from long before that, namely from Gowan’s art books he owned for over a decade. The booklet on Perugino (Gowan’s #24) on page 38 features Christ Giving the Keys to St. Peter (Figure 17-2), has influenced Raphael’s Marriage of the Virgin (Gowan’s #4, 1910, p.25)⁸³ (Figure 17-1). Both paintings utilize pavement slabs forming perceived or actual straight lines converging in the vanishing point located behind the centrally placed pavilion. Soby’s claim⁸⁴ of “De Chirico’s pioneer use of deep perspective” may in fact not be entirely correct, at least as far as Dalí was concerned. 

   Dalí will use the same motif of the narrow path hanging in space in his 1928 Inaugural Gooseflesh, the converging lines included (Figure 17-3). And starting from 1929 he will repeatedly utilize in his paintings and graphic works (illustrations for Songs of Maldoror, for example, Figure 17-4) such thin lines, typically drawn on a wide-open plain, to accentuate its depth (often to the horizon) and its flatness (Figure 17-6). He will also use highways or railroad tracks for the same purpose (Figure 17-5). 

Figure 17 

   Torroella quotes⁸⁵ an art critic Maurizio Fagiolo who believed that “All the paintings that Dalí executed in 1929 are inspired by Chirico’s metaphysical painting, and particularly by Tobias’s Dream” which was owned by Paul Éluard at the time when, in 1929, Dalí was first introduced to the poet, and which Dalí likely has seen. If true, this indeed may have reignited Dalí’s interest towards “painting within painting” motif because two years after the Neo-cubist Academy and the stage backdrop we find it again in his canvases: on The First Days of Spring and, more notably, Illuminated Pleasures (where no less than three are featured), both from 1929; on 1930 William Tell, and some other works from 1930s. 

   The most interesting derivative of the “painting within painting” motif may be found in 1936 Morphological Echo, where neither the frame nor the surface of the “painting” are even visible (Figure 18-1). 

Figure 18 

   All we can see of the “plane” are shadows of objects ostensibly cast to its surface. Three of the objects are standing on the table and do belong there (they are: a wine glass, pieces of bread loaf and a bunch of grapes), but since they suggest a loose rectangle or grid together with the other six objects that are hanging in space above (or, as viewer’s perception dictates, beyond) the table (Figure 18-2), we tend to perceive these first three as part of that invisible grid and hence a part of the imaginary “painting”. 

   The next three objects are human figures, much larger in life than the objects on the tabletop but are depicted to be of comparable size. The next three objects — a four-story tower, a cliff and what appears to be a part of a wall — are in life much larger yet but again are painted to be of the size comparable to the other six. There is another contradiction there: the tower is painted to be taller than the cliff while our brain expects the opposite. But that isn’t all. The wall foreshortening suggests a very low horizon but the overall horizon of the imaginary plane we perceive to be higher. 

   The fact that objects are depicted conforming to a loose rectangular grid plays tricks with our perception because the plane is clearly not vertical (the shadows cast on it tell us that) and as such would have a vanishing point which our brain is looking for but cannot find, instead concentrating on the imaginary grid. To add to the confusion of our senses, the objects are casting shadows that are contradicting each other as far as the angle of the light source is concerned. 

   Interestingly, the preparatory sketches for this painting (Figure 18-3) show a more realistic plane (which appears to almost be a continuation of the tabletop surface, or at least parallel to it), with a clearly visible horizon line, and objects on it appear to be more realistically sized. 

*  * * 

   If we take one more look at the entire backdrop design (Figure 19), we will recall that there are four rectangles which overlap or encompass each other. The METRO sign overlaps two of them and is itself overlapped by the third.  But on the largest rectangle that encompasses all those we have so far been discussing, we see clouds and sky painted, and the clouds – assuming they are “real” – are so low that the rest of the images must be hanging in space, high above the ground. That is, where they do not belong. They themselves are “paintings within a painting”. 

Figure 19 

*  * * 

   We have so far left out of our discussion the object from which we see but the shadow in the bottom segment of the theater backdrop (Figure 15-3). However, this object and others like it loom large, and their shadows stretch long over the “Lorca period” in the life and work of the young Dalí⁸⁶.  These objects gave the original name, The Forest of Aparatos, to the painting we will be discussing next. 

*  * * 

   The painting which was presented to the public in 1927 as Honey Is Sweeter Than Blood is not easy to research or write about. It most likely no longer exists, only its black-and-white photo survived and even the size of the work and media used⁸⁷ are unknown. Last time it has been exhibited was in Madrid in 1928⁸⁸. Its title changed in the process of its creation and the final title has been repeatedly erroneously cited as Blood Is Sweeter Than Honey⁸⁹.  

   There exists a work officially known as a study for it (Figure 20) which, at closer scrutiny, poses a few questions. Firstly, it looks suspiciously like a finished painting. Composition is sparse but balanced and does not seem to have apparent “holes” in it. Dalí himself even signed and dated it “Salvador Dalí 1926” (visible in the bottom right corner). The webpage for this piece⁹⁰ on the website of Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí additionally states that there is an inscription in French in the lower left corner (it is visible on the reproductions but is not legible): ‘Etude pour “Le miel est plus douce [sic] que la [sic] sang”’. It is not very common for an artist to write on their own study to indicate for which painting the study was made, especially when the painting in question takes a very special place in his work, as we will see below.  

Figure 20  (see  https://www.wikiart.org/en/salvador-dali/honey-is-sweeter-than-blood )

   Secondly, Dalí never exhibited this work himself but must have very much cared about it, judging by the fact that the painting remained in his possession after he was expelled from his family – which occurred not in 1930, as Dalí wrote in his 1949 Memorandum⁹¹, but “shortly before Christmas of 1929”⁹², and as a result he no longer had control over any of his possessions, including artwork, that were left in the family apartment in Figueras⁹³ – indeed, he claimed his sister subsequently sold some of his works without his permission⁹⁴. This meant that Dalí had the study transported to France in 1929, prior to the family quarrel. It is unlikely that he brought it personally at the time of his first prolonged stay in Paris, as its purpose was, according to Miró’s advice, “to prepare the ground”⁹⁵ and he would not have brought a study for an already sold painting as a showcase of his work. Nor is it likely that he brought it after expulsion, because he traveled from Cadaques alone, taking a taxi to the train station⁹⁶. It is more plausible that this painting, and some others (“two other unspecified works” according to Gibson⁹⁷) together with Lugubrious Game (which Paul Éluard, after visiting Dalí in Cadaques, specifically instructed his wife to bring) was delivered to Paris by Gala in the end of September 1929⁹⁸. Gala would also play an important role in the sale of this painting, as we will see shortly. 

   The first owner of the study, according to the provenance section on the cited Fundació webpage, was a French poet and art collector Joë Bousquet (1897-1950), who counted several surrealists among his friends. The author decided to investigate further and found out that the study, contrary to the cited Fundació webpage, was exhibited for the first time not in 1956 in a Belgian casino in Knokke le Zoute, but in 1946 in Centre des Intellectuels à Toulouse, at an exhibition organized by Bousquet himself, for which even a catalog had been printed⁹⁹. To quote Yolande Lamarain, 

The 1946 exhibition featured three works by Salvador Dali: Honey is Sweeter Than Blood, Tower Painting [sic] and a drawing. The first work acquired is only a study of the lost painting entitled Honey is sweeter than blood. This painting is considered by art historians to be Dali’s first surrealist work. Joë Bousquet describes the purchase of this work in a letter to Ginette Augier: 

Did Estève tell you that I was expecting a magnificent painting by Salvador Dali? I’ve been trying to get it for six months…I’ve just verified that it’s enough to introduce a woman into a business for it to work out wonderfully. Gala Éluard (Paul’s wife), a young Russian who came to Carcassonne last year and who is the best of friends, spending a month by the sea with Dali, took it upon herself to seduce the painter in my favor, and to sell me directly, outside of his contract¹⁰⁰, a beautiful canvas… Gala described it to me in a letter: I won’t have it until the beginning of next month. It’s called Honey is Sweeter Than Blood. Imagine a sky and a ground, with a woman’s body, a rotten donkey covered in flies, winged breasts in the clouds, a real marvel.¹⁰¹ 

   This author did not have access to the Bousquet’s letter quoted in above work¹⁰² and does not have the date for the cited excerpt. However, from the introduction to the publication of the letters Lamarain cites, of which a PDF has been located online¹⁰³, it follows that Bousquet stayed in Carcassonne until 1930 and in Toulouse between 1930 and 1934. As he was paralyzed and rarely traveled, Bousquet must have seen Gala in Carcassonne in 1930. Furthermore, according to René Piniès, director of the Center Joë Bousquet, the painting “is mentioned by name in the Letters to Ginette, which date from the period between 1928 and 1930”¹⁰⁴. Dalí and Gala resided near Marseille between January and March 1930¹⁰⁵, so the “spending a month by the sea” Bousquet refers to may have related to this time period. 

   Bousquet may have gotten interested in Dalí after seeing the 12^th issue of La Révolution Surréaliste (which happened to be the last issue of that magazine) that came out December 15, 1929, right after the first Dalí solo exhibition in Paris (November 25 to December 5 of that year); the issue featured a script of Un Chien Andalou (on the title page it bears names of both Buñuel and Dalí) and four illustrations of Dalí paintings: two full reproductions and two details. Bousquet may have also seen the catalog for above-mentioned Dalí exhibition for which Breton himself wrote the prologue¹⁰⁶. In any case, Bousquet in his letter writes of Dalí as of a celebrity, he apparently wanted to own “a Dalí” which is why he bought a painting he himself hadn’t even seen. Dalí may have written the title in the bottom left corner simply for Bousquet’s benefit, before shipping the painting to him. He may have even signed and dated the painting at that time which might explain the year 1926 while in fact it more likely was 1927, as will be discussed below. 

   The fact that Gala had to “seduce” Dalí into selling this work also speaks in favor of it being very special for him.  

   There is yet another argument in favor of author’s opinion that this work was not in fact a “study”. If we look at known extant studies by young Dali, until 1930 they were mostly drawings, gouaches or watercolors done on paper or cardboard. The reason may have been quite simple: Dalí could not afford using oil paints, canvases and especially panels for studies. The “study” for Honey is Sweeter than Blood was indeed done on a wooden panel, which is more expensive than canvas because large panels had to be ordered from a carpenter. The Taschen edition, considered to be the most comprehensive collection of Dali reproductions, includes 38 studies made prior to the one done in oils, from 1933¹⁰⁷, and only two of the 38 were also done in oil: one datable to 1925 (illustration 203 on p.94 of Taschen) and the 1927 “study” we are discussing. Only after 1940 studies in oil become somewhat more common for Dalí (his works for theater from American years, for example).  

   Nor did Dalí paint on panels often. Only 15 reproductions out of 262, dated or datable prior to the “study” in question, are listed as reproductions of “oil on panel” in the cited Taschen edition. Only two other paintings were done on panels in 1927: Las Cenicitas and Apparatus and Hand. The final version of Honey is Sweeter than Blood was likely painted on canvas¹⁰⁸. Was it because Dalí could not afford paying for another panel or had no time to wait for its delivery? Whatever the case may have been, two of Dalí’s three most important paintings of 1927 were done on panels, and it is very possible that the third one was originally supposed to be done likewise. 

   If we consider the study and the final painting side by side (Figure 21), we cannot fail to notice how much busier the composition of the final painting is. There are virtually no areas on it where at least some minuscule objects are not present. We also notice that the spike-with-ears objects are organized in five neat rows converging in a vanishing point placed in the very corner of the painting. Many of the aparatos seem to be loosely lined up in the same rows. While the majority of motifs present on the study are also found on the final work, their quantity in Honey is Sweeter than Blood is much greater. A handful of spikes becomes many dozens (including those in the air, likely in the process of “landing” onto the tilted plain); two aparatos on the study turn into almost two dozen, and so it goes. At the same time, composition of the study, as was already mentioned, does not appear to have any “holes” in it. It could have worked the way it was painted. Because no matter how many objects we find on the final version, only one of them was likely noticed by every viewer, and probably was the only one guaranteed to be remembered from the experience. It is the naked mutilated female body next to a pool of blood¹⁰⁹. 

Figure 21  see ( Honey Is Sweeter Than Blood, 1927 – Salvador Dali – WikiArt.org and https://www.wikiart.org/en/salvador-dali/honey-is-sweeter-than-blood )

   Indeed, if we compare the schematically drawn outlines (Figure 22 left and center) of the only two main motifs that survived in the final work (the mutilated body and the rotting donkey), it is obvious that their position relative to the rectangle of the paintings also did not change much (the donkey was moved to the left due to the shift of the diagonal of the plain). These two motifs, in the author’s opinion, were the “seed” from which the painting started. These were the motifs Gala used to describe the study to Bousquet (adding the flying breasts that do not appear on the final work). Moreover, apart from those three there was not much else to the study that can be appreciated by an average viewer, except the gigantic severed head which had facial features – not of Lorca as Gibson¹¹⁰ claimed but rather of Dalí –, and the oversized head did not end up on the final version either, but Dalí decided to reuse this motif on Las Cenicitas where this head assumed features of both Dalí and Lorca. 

Figure 22 

   From the famous caricature published in La Veu de Catalunya on October 20, 1927 (Figure 22-3) it is obvious that the mutilated bodies were the talk of the town because this was what viewers’ takeaway from Dalí paintings boiled down to. The caption, translated from Catalan, reads: “And what is your opinion of these pictures? – They show that cars are on the increase – more road accidents every day¹¹¹.” The painting in the middle spoofs Honey is Sweeter Than Blood. For “décor” one spike and one aparato are added, and a strange box-like object in front which cannot really be identified with the painting. What is curious is the remaining object of “décor”: a tree with some guts and a heart hanging on it. There are no large trees on the painting, only some rather small dry shrubs which are not even on the foreground. In author’s opinion, this tree on the caricature may have been a hint at one of the most gruesome caprichos by Goya: Grande hazaña. Con muertos (Figure 23-1). Dalí most likely was familiar with it as well, may have seen prints in Madrid museums, if not in art books. This gravure may have been one of the sources for the idea of featuring a mutilated body on the painting (Figure 23-6). What may have been the other sources? 

Figure 23 

   Very possibly the inspiration came from La Révolution Surréaliste, issue 3, April 1925, where graphic works of already familiar to us André Masson were reproduced. The one on page 10 of the magazine featured several mutilated female bodies and body parts (Figure 23-2 rotated 90 degrees here, -3, -4), including cut-off breasts on Figure 23-4. The one on page 23 (Figure 23-5, rotated 90 degrees here) shows dramatic hashing used by Masson for modeling of the torso and breasts which may have affected the modeling used by Dalí on the painting. 

   There may have been one more source, however: a photo of a plaster cast from Pompeii, one of those made by pouring liquid plaster into cavities left by decayed bodies of volcano eruption victims (Figure 24-2). This photo was published in the magazine edited by Jeanneret and Ozenfant, L’Esprit nouveau number 20, 1924. As has been already mentioned, Dalí regularly read this magazine, and the photo could have attracted his attention as a source of inspiration because not only it was a cast made from a “genuine” dead body, but of one belonging to a person who has died a violent death, and which was cast in situ. Apart from police artists (a profession which virtually disappeared after photography started being used in forensics in the second half of 19^th century), what painter could use a victim of violent death in situ for a model? 

Figure 24 

   If we compare the mutilated body from the study (Figure 24-1) with the one from the final painting (Figure 24-3), we may notice several changes. The right arm, which was above the breasts on the study, is now below the breasts, as on the Pompeii figure. On the study the torso was turned more down, with left breast touching the ground, and now it is turned close to 90 degrees relative to the ground (it is rotated even more on the Pompeii figure). The angle of the bent left leg is now close to 90 degrees, again matching the Pompeii figure. The shading on the large fig leaf covering the genitals on Pompeii photo may have contributed to the modeling of the pubic area and the stomach by Dalí. The belly button is painted somewhat low by Dalí, its position possibly influenced by the dark spot on the fig leaf. Note also that the deep shading on the final painting resembles shading on the photo (Figure 24-4 and -5). We do not know whether Dalí had seen the Pompeii photo first time after the study was painted or before that, but it does appear that it influenced the final version of the figure. 

   The severed head that did make it to the final painting deserves another mention (Figure 25-1). It has features of Lorca, but is casting a shadow of Dalí’s profile, as Torroella duly noted¹¹². However, what Torroella and some other art historians may have missed is the size of this head as related to the size of the mutilated female body. Given its placement closer to the foreground, this head could well have been severed from the body of this size. Also, if we look at where the head was cut off from the female body – which is right above the shoulders – and at the length of the neck still attached to the severed male head (which is the full length of the neck, to the shoulders), we well may conclude that Dalí intended to show Lorca’s (and in a way his own) head was cut off from a body of a woman. If we remember the above-mentioned Grande hazaña by Goya (Figure 25-2), on it the severed head is hanging on the same tree in close proximity to the mutilated body. Whether or not this combination of female body with male head with features of both friends is related to the episode involving Dalí, Lorca and Margarita Manso¹¹³ is beyond the scope of this paper. 

Figure 25 

*  * * 

   We have established that there is not much in common between the “study” and the final painting as far as motifs and number of objects depicted are concerned. But compositionally the two works are quite different as well. The “study” had a tilted boundary between “land” and “sky”, on the painting the boundary line is exactly diagonal, corner to corner, and additionally a hemispherical hill is visible on the background. The aparatos are very few on the “study” and are not organized in their placement. On the final painting, the spiked objects appear which are neatly organized into rows, are equidistant within those rows, and the rows are placed on five straight and parallel lines, also equidistant and converging in the upper left corner, and most of the smaller aparatos in their placement are loosely following the same five lines. 

   To find an explanation, we will now look at the timeline of both works and the titles of the final painting. 

*  * * 

   Could Dalí in fact have painted this “study” in 1926? In his La Miel es Mas Dulce que la Sangre, published in 1984, large part of which is dedicated to the namesake painting, Torroella hypothesized¹¹⁴ that the study may have been “from the final months” of 1926. In his catalogue raisonné published in 2005 however the study is dated 1927¹¹⁵. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí also dates it 1926, ostensibly based on the date Dalí wrote on the panel¹¹⁶. The fact is, that Dalí was very busy in the fall of 1926, as he himself testified to Lorca in September of that year: 

Visit you in Granada? I won’t kid you, I can’t. Sometime around Christmas I have to put on my exhibition in Barcelona, which is going to be really special. Child, I have to work hard between now and then, just as I am now, the whole day without thinking of anything else. You can’t imagine how I’ve given myself to my paintings, with what affection I paint my windows open to the sea with rocks, my breadbaskets, my girls sewing, my fish, my skies like sculptures¹¹⁷. 

   The subjects mentioned by Dalí in the letter were far from those depicted on the study. The exhibition in Dalmau Galleries in Barcelona was Dalí’s second personal show, with 23 paintings and seven drawings “distributed in two sections of the gallery according to whether they belonged to the artist’s ‘Cubist’ or ‘objective’ tendency”¹¹⁸. It is not very likely that Dalí would spend time – even if he had any time to spend – on the study in style and with motifs and subject so different from those he worked on for the exhibition. Furthermore, the exhibition opened on December 31, 1926, and ran until January 14, 1927, but Dalí must have arrived in Barcelona before or around Christmas, because in the letter to Lorca datable to January 18 and 20, 1927 he writes: “I spent almost a month in Barcelona because of my exhibition and I’m glad now to be back at Figueras”¹¹⁹. On February 1 of that year, as we previously mentioned, Dalí already reported for his military service. Hence, given his other commitments, including the theater backdrop, it could even be supposed that the “study” wasn’t started until mid- or late spring of 1927. 

   But even during mid-spring the time was still a problem. In another letter to Lorca datable to early April 1927 Dalí writes regarding designs for Lorca’s play Mariana Pineda: “I’m very sorry to be tied up in the army. If the premiere were to be very soon it would be materially impossible for me to do the stage settings”¹²⁰. He does not mention in this letter what else he is working on. Nor in the letter from early May 1927¹²¹, or one from early June¹²² (this one was written several days before his army leave was to begin). 

   It is rather strange that Dalí would not mention working on a painting so novel compared to his preceding oeuvre – his first “surrealist” work, no less – for months, especially given the macabre character of its main motif, and given Lorca’s known predilection for everything macabre. We find first mention of this work in Lorca’s letter to Dalí from late July 1927, written after the poet’s return from Cadaques, and this is where the title is mentioned for the first time:  

Even here I can hear the gentle woosh of blood from the bleeding beauty in the Forest of Apparatuses […] The woman cut to pieces is the loveliest possible poem about blood. There is more blood there than was spilt in the Great War, for that was warm blood, and its only use was to water the earth and quench a symbolic thirst, all eroticism and faith. Your painterly blood and the whole plastic conception of your physiological aesthetics has such a tangible, well-proportioned, logical air, and such true, pure poetry, that it reaches the category of what we cannot live without.¹²³ 

   Note that word “blood” is used five times in as many lines. This is all Lorca chooses to write about as related to the painting, which may be another argument in favor of our thesis regarding the mutilated body being the main idea the painting came from. But what about the “forest” and “apparatuses”? And do we really need to be concerned with the title? Does a title really matter that much? 

*  * * 

   Once again, the nature of the present paper precludes the author from a more detailed discussion of a topic on which much has been written in the last four decades: titles of works of art, and more specifically titles of paintings. 

   One of the early papers on this topic,¹²⁴ by Jerrold Levinson, was concerned with the titles of musical works. Nonetheless, it provided important definitions and theses that relate to other works of art as well. Levinson defines “an artwork part” as “any element fixed, determined, or generated by the artist which is to be perceived or apprehended in the process of appreciating the work in question”, and an artwork “component” as “an element attaching to a work in an ontologically integral way, one that enters into or qualifies the sort of entity the work is” and a “constituent” of a work of art as “something which is both a part and a component”¹²⁵. Levinson further clarifies that “distinguishable regions of a painting” (basically, motifs) are its constituents. Furthermore, “anything which is either a part or a component” of an artwork will be “aesthetically or appreciatively relevant factor”.¹²⁶ 

   Speaking specifically of paintings, Levinson posits that “titles of paintings are parts without being components” (which means they are not constituents, per his definition), and concludes that “the title of an artwork cannot help being an […] aesthetically relevant factor”.¹²⁷ 

   The statement by Levinson that titles of paintings are not constituent to such works of art can be disagreed with. His argument is that “with a literary work, […] a title is […] very readily seen as of a piece with the rest of the work, since title and text share a medium, i.e. words”¹²⁸. However, as Virve Sarapik argues,¹²⁹ “Besides the direct verbal components of a painting – its title or script elements – the depicted narrative should also be considered as a verbal component. […] The story depicted on the picture, the source of its plot, can be seen as a part of the painting that can be verbalized”.¹³⁰ So can, obviously, most motifs, maybe except certain abstract ones. Hence, the title of a painting, to a degree, “shares the medium” with it, at least from the perception point of view. 

   Moreover, there is a synthesis that occurs. Ernst Gombrich in his lecture at Guggenheim Museum¹³¹ said:  

Perception is always a transaction between us and the world, and the idea that we could or should ever perceive an image without the preconceptions or expectations we derive from prior knowledge and experience resemble the demand that we should make electric current flow from the positive pole without connecting the wire with the negative one. The image is one pole, the title often provides the other, and if the setup works, something new will emerge which is neither the image nor the word, but the product of that interaction. 

   Levinson states in his article that he is concerned only with “true titles – those given by the artist at roughly the time of creation or constitution of the work”, and notes below that “A title has a certain force, and contributes to the reading of the work”.¹³² This is an important point because the “true title” must necessarily deal with the intent of the artist. To quote Gombrich again, “[…] I would contend that neither the Courts of Law nor the Courts of Criticism could continue to function if we really let go of the notion of an intended meaning”.¹³³ 

   Titles influence not only how paintings are perceived but also how they are described by viewers. A study¹³⁴ offered to the same viewers two paintings (one impressionistic and one abstract), “first with their original titles, and on another occasion with fabricated titles”. The conclusion states that while “the change of title does not affect where viewers look or, by implication, how they organize the visual array”, it has been found that “images are described differently when presented with different titles”¹³⁵. 

*  * * 

   Let us return to the subject of the titles of the final painting. We know that a Forest of Apparatuses was first mentioned by Lorca in July 1927, after he spent several weeks in Cadaques and has seen the painting in question, likely also seen Dalí working on it. Indeed, the quantity of objects depicted on the canvas (forty-four spikes with round ears that are discernible on the ground, not counting those in the air, and close to two dozen aparatos) which are literally “planted” there, taking up the entire plane to the left of the corner-to-corner dividing line, so the word “forest” appears to be aptly used. As we already mentioned, the “study” looks nothing of the kind. Why such a change of intent? Where does the idea of the “forest” come from? 

   A more useful question to ask may in fact be: what came first, the idea of filling the entire plain with objects or a title that gave birth to the composition?  

   In Lorca’s Ode to Salvador Dali which was published in April 1926 there is a line: ‘Huyes la oscura selva¹³⁶ de formas increibles’ (‘You flee the dark jungle of incredible forms’). Fanés does not believe that this line was related to Surrealist movement, and author was not able to locate the article by C. Castro Lee who made that claim¹³⁷ and hence author is not aware whether C. Castro Lee drew any parallels between this line and the “working” title of the painting we are discussing. The timeline suggests that this title may have appeared during Lorca’s visit to Cadaques. We do not know whether Dalí was already working on the final version of the painting by the time of Lorca’s visit. There is a good chance that it was Lorca who obviously remembered his ode and may have suggested adding many more aparatos to the painting. Dalí then may have decided to create a new painting rather than trying to overpaint the first version (which he himself eventually called a “study”). 

   Dalí mentions a Catalan version of the title, El bosc d’aparells, on a postcard which him and Lorca sent to Gasch on July 16 1927¹³⁸. Dalí writes that he is ‘also preparing a long letter talking about my “forest of aparatos” […] which have already begun’. This “already begun” is yet another argument in favor of the fact that Dalí most likely started working on the painting only in summer. Lorca mentions the painting twice in his letters to Gasch, datable to first half of August 1927, both times as “forest”.¹³⁹ 

   Given that Dalí most likely did not have time to paint before June, as was mentioned before, it is very possible that the “study” was painted in June and Lorca saw it in the same state we can see it today. Then the idea of the “forest” comes up, and work on the new painting starts, likely in July. 

   The new and final title is first mentioned by Dalí in a letter to Sebastia Gasch, dated September 7, but – and this is significant – Dalí still calls the painting by both names: ‘[…] my last two canvases: Forest of gadgets [that is Honey Is Sweeter than Blood] and Apparatus and Hand.’¹⁴⁰ Torroella dedicates a whole chapter¹⁴¹ to the titles and it is beyond the scope of the present paper. However, author posits that the change of the name occurred due to the motif that likely gave birth to this work: that of a mutilated body. It was to be the central motif of the entire work, but after the composition turned into the “forest”, it became cluttered and was no longer dominated by the beheaded body. Injecting “blood” into the title, given what has been mentioned above regarding how titles of paintings may change the way they are seen and described, ensured that the macabre object remained the main “attraction”. We could also posit that Honey Is Sweeter than Blood cannot be considered a true title in Levinson’s definition of it, unless it was what Dalí already had in mind when he was painting the “study”. In any case, change of title likely has to do with the true intent of the artist to promote a specific “reading” of his work. Given that The Autumn Salon exhibition where Honey Is Sweeter than Blood was first shown opened on October 8, the final change of title happened literally in the last days before exhibiting. The second painting shown at the Salon, Apparatus and Hand, also featured a mutilated female body (although not as the main motif). 

   What may have been Dalí’s intent? 

   Replying to his critics, Dalí published a short article My Paintings in the Autumn Salon, (L’Amic de les Arts, October 31, 1927)¹⁴², where he wrote: 

Hilarious is the attitude of distrust that, in general, the critics have adopted towards my two paintings, representative of my most recent producton. For my part, I can say that I intend to paint as naturally as possible, in the most normal way that I know how. […]  

Personally, so called artistic painting does not tell me anything, and it does not excite healthy people, disinfected with art. […]  

My things, on the other hand, are anti-artistic and direct, emotional and understood instantly, without the slightest technical preparation. […] 

The truth is that people stuck to my paintings like flies to Tanglefoot paper, despite finding laughable and stupid what they couldn’t stop looking at. Why? Because they were kept there by the poetic fact, which moved them subconsciously, despite the energetic protests of their culture and their intelligence. 

   Compare the above with what Joan Miró says ‘of his solo exhibition which had taken place at the Galerie Pierre in June 1925¹⁴³’ in his letter to Sebastià Gasch, written in Catalan: he is ‘very happy with the storm it provoked – that’s our speciality [sic]’ and adds in French: ‘Annoying the stupid idiots, that’s what interests me most’¹⁴⁴. 

   It appears that Dalí has made the tectonic shift from trying to impress the public with his accomplishments as an artist to annoying and shocking that same public. He will continue doing it on and off for decades after. Whether he made this shift based on what he read about the Surrealist movement or for other reasons (in the cited article he actually intended to “show the distance that separates me from surrealism, despite the intervention in the fact that we could call poetic transposition, of the purest subconsciousness and the freest instinct”¹⁴⁵), Dalí will say the following about Honey Is Sweeter Than Blood in his 1950 interview, when asked to name the pictures he considers “essential to follow the process” of his “evolution”:  it “contains all the obsessions of my entry into surrealism”¹⁴⁶. 

*  * * 

   The original title El bosc d’aparells obviously represents three notions: that of a “forest”, that of aparatos, and that of a “forest of aparatos”. As we have seen, the original version of the painting (the so called “study”) featured several aparatos but hardly any “forest”, be it a “forest of aparatos” or a “forest” in general. On the second version we suddenly find the entire tilted plane (border of which forms the diagonal dividing the composition) literally “planted” with a “forest” of objects. However, less than half of the “trees” in this “forest” are aparatos, the rest being some strange long stake-like objects with round ears on top, placed (or, as we more fittingly said above, “planted”) in neat geometric rows.  

   Artists have been fascinated with perspectival views of equidistant objects of equal height at least since 17^th century (see, for example, Meindert Hobbema’s The Avenue at Middelharnis from 1689, shown on Figure 26-1). Van Gough, a fellow Dutch, was likely inspired by this or other similar works in his landscape drawings (Figure 26-2). Dalí himself painted a line of trees on his 1924 Portrait of Luis Buñuel (Figure 26-3). Three years later, he includes into the above-discussed stage backdrop a lineup of gas station pumps¹⁴⁷, which incidentally feature circular logos framed by dark “rings” (Figure 26-4, shown here in red). It is quite possible that this image served as an inspiration for the objects in the second version of El bosc d’aparells. Decades later, in 1969, Dalí self-quoted it on one of his etchings (Figure 26-5), with a typical Dalínian sleight of hand replacing eared stakes with crutches, and in a 1975 color print he added a couple of aparatos reminiscent of those on the El Bosco, for a good measure (Figure 26-6). 

   There have been attempts to explain the “meaning” of the eared spikes. For example, Iván Moure-Pazos suggested¹⁴⁸ that they are “sewing needles” (which they look nothing like) and tried to tie them to a passage from Chants of Maldoror that mentions a sewing machine (and these objects look even less like sewing machine needles). 

Figure 26 

   In fact, apart from the gas pump columns on the stage backdrop there were many other objects that could have inspired Dalí, for example the very familiar to every painter eared screws used to fix wire or cord to the painting frames for hanging them (Figure 27-1), dressmaker pins (so called “eye pins”, Figure 27-2) or even – why not? – the oar brackets on Catalan fishing boats (Figure 27-3, -4 , the photos were taken by author in Port Lligat in 2022). But looking for the “meaning” of these spikes would be the same as – remembering the well-known Zen koan – looking at the finger pointing at the Moon instead of looking at the Moon itself. 

Figure 27 

   In the author’s opinion, while painting these rows of eared spikes (Figure 28-1), Dalí stumbled across a gimmick which he himself subsequently used in a few of his early surrealist works in 1920s and 1930s (Figure 28-2 to -7) and occasionally utilized or self-quoted in later oeuvre (Figure 28-8, -9), but most importantly, this artifice was rediscovered in 1950s and 1960s and actively exploited by many avant-garde artists. It is the tediously repetitive depiction of identical or almost identical objects, arranged in a regular or semi-regular fashion. 

   While author cannot claim that Dalí was indeed the first artist to exploit this gimmick, similar examples in other artists’ work that author so far has stumbled across were created decades after 1927. The phenomenon likely was known to those psychiatrists who were interested in the art created by mentally ill patients, but such art, apart from Prinzhorn’s book, first published in 1922¹⁴⁹, was very little known. While the 1923 edition does include some illustrations featuring certain repetitive patterns,¹⁵⁰ none feature identical objects or are organized, and thus it does not appear that they could have been a direct inspiration. 

   Dalí used various images in such layouts: fully abstract (Figure 28-2, -6), inanimate objects (Figure 28-4, -7, -9), human figures (Figure 28-3), quotes from art (Figure 28-8).  

   Some of these images occupied a relatively small area of the main painting (examples 2, 3, 7 on Figure 28) and sometimes the entire painting was based around this artifice (examples 6, 8, 9). 

Figure 28 

   Dalí probably never analyzed in detail the effect that such repeated images may have produced in a viewer. In fact, research in the field of psychology of vision is still ongoing and much of the literature on the subject appeared after Dalí’s death. What we learn from, for example, Robert L. Solso, is that “the visual system is distressed when viewing highly redundant figures”¹⁵¹, and that “when one experiences a disparity between what one expects to see and what one actually sees”, a “visual dissonance”, “a state of psychological tension” occurs, and “most of us try to overcome the dissonance through cognitive means”.¹⁵² It is explained further¹⁵³ that a viewer has three choices: walk away from the disturbing image, attempt to find the meaning in the image, or change the dissonant image in one’s head (admitting, for example, that yes, in some place or some other universe these rows of eared spikes may in fact exist and be normal). Whichever of the three choices the viewer makes, the psychological reaction to the image would have had to be strong, the mental processing triggered by it – intense. If that was one of the artist’s goals, mission had been accomplished.  

   Furthermore, “the process of seeing involves a feedback loop between the eye and the brain”¹⁵⁴, and traffic in that “loop” will be quite intense. The process also will involve multiple eye movements, depending on how large the depicted scene is that is being analyzed. We will be scanning these rows of spikes up and down, up and down. This tension may or may not be acknowledged by the viewer, but it will be there, nonetheless. Humans are programmed to make sense out of what the eyes see, and when there is none to be found… The process is further exacerbated by the fact that the eared spikes 3-4 foot long (if we compare their size to that of the nearby female corpse), while looking somewhat familiar to us, cannot be “placed” by our brain because the objects they resemble are much smaller in real life. As Gombrich put it, “We can read the image because we recognize it as an imitation of reality within the medium”¹⁵⁵. Which is exactly why this image we cannot “read” because “reality” that it comes from – if it exists, that is – is unknown to us. 

   Note that ornaments, many of which are by nature repetitive (as often are patterns on textile fabric), do not have any disturbing effect on most of us because we know what ornaments are and what they are for. We mentally register them but don’t waste too much time on analyzing. 

   In addition to the described effect, many viewers would perceive these spikes as “advancing” on the aparatos at the foreground, because in the background more spikes are seen in the air, ostensibly “landing” and “planting themselves” in – for were they indeed “retreating” (i.e. taking off and “flying away” due to advancing aparatos), this retreat would have occurred at or near the point of contact between the two “armies”, not in the rear. Do such groups of advancing objects, even inanimate, trigger in humans a primordial fear, on which “our survival often depends”, the objects “we must seek or avoid”, and in search of which “we are programmed to scan the world”?¹⁵⁶ 

   Twenty-six years later René Magritte painted his Golconde (Figure 29-1), and nine years after that Andy Warhol for the first time exhibited his Campbell Soup (Figure 29-2) and many other similar collections of identical images or those of identical size with color variations (such as his Marylyn Monroe). Fast-forward another quarter century, and we see Christian Boltanski creating multiple installations featuring dozens or even hundreds of metallic archive drawers (several of those installations were called Reserve of Dead Swiss, like the one from 1990 which author recently photographed in the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, Virginia, Figure 29-3). Compare the Chrysler Museum version with those catalog drawers Dalí painted in 1938 on his design for Tristan Insane (Figure 29-4). Ironically, there are 18 rows of drawers on both of the works. 

Figure 29 

   Two decades after using the motif of “cloned” bicyclists in Illuminated Pleasures (1929) Dalí considers utilizing it in cinematography, in motion: 

In another scene, the Place de la Concorde will be shown at daybreak, slowly being traversed in all directions by two thousand priests on bicycles carrying placards with the very vague but still recognizable effigy of Malenkov.¹⁵⁷ 

   The effect produced by the moving images of bicyclists, riding simultaneously in different directions, is quite strong, as can be seen in the animation Destino released in 2003 as a tribute to Dalí for his upcoming centennial, and based on his sketches made for Disney studios circa 1947 for then-unrealized animation film project. 

   Over half a century passes since 1947, and Matrix Reloaded film is released, quickly followed by Matrix Revolutions. The many dozens or even hundreds and thousands of Neos or mister Smiths, sometimes stationary, sometimes in movement, make some of the strongest impressions on many viewers (Figure 29-5). Do we, even while sitting in a movie theater with a bag of popcorn on our lap, feel a threat to our survival of which Gombrich was speaking? 

Figure 30: Matrix (1999) and Chien Andalou (1929) 

*  * * 

   We cannot fail to notice that both paintings Dalí presented in the Autumn Salon in 1927 featured aparatos not only among the motifs but indeed also in their titles (one in its original title and the other one, Apparatus and Hand, in the final one). Indeed, aparato on the latter painting in its size as related to that of human and animal figures is by far the largest ever depicted by the artist. From what has been said of works of art’ titles above, Dalí intended for his audience to pay heed. It is time to take a closer look at these objects. 

   Apart from the paintings’ titles and brief mentions in correspondence, Dalí wrote about aparatos only in his essay Saint Sebastian, introducing them as follows: 

On the sand covered with shells and mica, the exact instruments of an unknown physics were projecting their explicative shadows, and offered their crystals and aluminiums [sic] to the disinfected light. Some letters drawn by Giorgio Morandi read: “Distilled apparatuses”.¹⁵⁸ 

   Dalí further described one of the aparatos, a “Heliometer for Deaf-Mures”, in detail: 

The name hinted at its relation to astronomy, and this was borne out by its construction. It was an instrument of high physical poetry formed by distances and by the relations of those distances and those relations were expressed geometrically in some parts and arithmetically in others. In the center, a simple gauge served to measure the agony of the saint. This mechanism was formed by a small dial of graduated plaster […] 

   Do the images of aparatos also “bear out” their descriptions? Most of those dating between 1926 and 1927 are shown together on Figure 31, with the one on Figure 31-20, from 1928, being the only exception. The following points may be outlined upon their visual analysis: 

• All of them, in their entirety or in some of their parts, are based on shapes that are either triangular or derive from triangles (i.e. pyramids and cones); 

• Most of those triangular, conical or pyramidal shapes are positioned so that their narrow end or apex is pointing down; 

• Many of them have round holes; 

• Many of them are anthropomorphic; 

• Some stand firmly on “legs”, and some are propped up from falling; 

• Some are ambiguous (e.g. detail 13 may be showing an aparato or a martini glass, detail 11 may be a pendant) 

• None of them feature “dials” or “gauges” described in San Sebastian 

   As will be the case with many images Dalí utilized over the years, the images of aparatos had multiple sources. We will start with the triangles. 

   A few of the aparatos or their elements are pure triangles or appear to be so, namely are two-dimensional figures or are composed of such (Figure 31 details 5, 6, 11, 18). Some of aparatos include pyramids, and a pyramid, as we know from geometry, consists of a base (which in a simplest pyramid is triangular, and in more complex pyramids is a polygon) and laterals which are always triangular. If we were to rotate a triangle around an axis perpendicular to its base and traversing its apex, a conus will result. 

Figure 31 

   One of the sources for the triangular shapes with round holes appears to be the metaphysical paintings by de Chirico and Carrá which Dalí has seen reproduced in Valori Plastici and other publications. De Chirico often drew those triangles accompanied with such drafting tools as T-squares and L-squares (Figure 32 detail 1 and 3, shown here in a version repainted by de Chirico decades later), which suggests that these triangles with circular holes are none other than drafting tools. Indeed, many drafting triangles from late 19^th-early 20^th century had circular holes, some rather large ones (Figure 32-4 and -5). Both de Chirico and Carrá (Figure 32-2) usually depicted triangles with small holes. These holes likely were used for hanging the tool on the wall, unless drilled in a specific position, for example to mark a vertex for a square. Larger circular holes may have also served as a template to draw circles.  

   Any artist concerned with geometry – and Dalí most certainly was one – would have drafting triangles in the workshop. Indeed, Dalí is pictured with one hanging on the wall on a photo from 1952 (Figure 32-6).  

   The first time Dalí featured triangles with circular holes in his art may have been on a drawing known as The Grandfather Clock, signed and dated 1923 (detail shown on Figure 32-7). He may have painted one of his own drafting triangles on the 1924 Still Life (detail shown on Figure 32-8). The hole in this particular triangle is of a rather complex shape which could have been a stylized depiction of a template for drawing curves. 

Figure 32 

   Occasionally de Chirico painted triangles with larger round holes. Dalí could have seen such images, for example, in 1925 and 1926 issues of Bulletin de L’effort Moderne magazine (Figure 33).  

Figure 33 

   There were however other images known to Dalí from Cubism. One of the common techniques utilized by cubists was to show an object as seen from several points of view, overlapping or projecting these views one on top of the other. One of such images was a wine or cocktail glass depicted as viewed from the side, on which a circle or ellipse, often of a different color, was superimposed, showing how that glass would look from above. Picasso used this technique since 1914 and Juan Gris since at least 1917 (Figure 34, 1 and 2 respectively). Both Picasso and Gris also painted smoker pipes in that manner (Figure 34, 3 and 4 respectively). The proof that Dalí was familiar with such technique at least since his first trip to Paris (where – if we trust his narrative – he spent hours in Picasso’s studio¹⁵⁹) is a photo of Dalí taken in April 1926 on which a poster with inscription “Viva Picaso” [sic] is clearly visible. Incidentally, Picasso apparently did not himself smoke pipe. Neither did Dalí, but he made sure to have stuck “a habitual pipe (which he never lit)”¹⁶⁰ in his mouth during his outings in Madrid in 1920s (as can be seen on a 1924 photo¹⁶¹). This was the pipe he drew on the “viva Picaso” poster. 

   Multiple triangular or trapezoid shapes with circular holes and circles on or nearby can be found in the cubist works of Picasso (Figure 34, 6-8). 

Figure 34 

   Triangles were featured in Dalí’s cubist works before 1925, but now they also are combined with large circles. All that was left to transform them into aparatos was to turn them apex down. 

*  * * 

   Diagonal or sawtooth-like patterns crossed by longer straight lines forming triangular-like designs are the earliest images made by human hand that are known to the archeology today. The oldest of them discovered so far, scratched on a mollusk shell found in Indonesia (Figure 35-1), may be between 430,000 and 540,000 years old¹⁶², and similar patterns, like the one on Figure 35-2, estimated to be 73,000 old, engraved on a piece of ocher, found in a cave in South Africa,¹⁶³ are known from rock art of the past 100,000 years. Human figures appeared in ancient drawings later on, and we find many examples of an inverted triangle serving as a defining shape of the human figure, such as in petroglyphs from China, dated to 2,000 BC (Figure 35-3), innumerable examples from Egyptian art from the same time period (Figure 35-4), or more recent pictographs used by Plains nations of native Americans (Figure 35-5¹⁶⁴). Compare it with the drawings of putrefactos scribbled by Dalí and Lorca (Figure 35-6 and -7). A triangle or trapeze drawn with its apex or its short base pointed down appears to be almost anthropomorphic by default, when a pair of “legs” is added to it (Figure 35-8 and -9). 

Figure 35 

   It is quite possible that this image of a triangle apex down constituted a part of homo sapiens’s “mental set”, and perception of such shape as that of a “human” constitutes what Gombrich called “inborn response” which “may be biologically conditioned”, one of the “clues of expression […] that […] may transform almost any shape into the semblance of a living being”¹⁶⁵. 

   There may be yet another consideration concerning this shape. A triangular (or conic, or pyramidal) object standing on its apex on a flat plane is obviously not stable and cannot keep itself upright on its own. It would need either props of some kind, or some kind of “legs” accompanied by a certain internal “intelligence” which would help it to “balance itself”. When we look at an image of such shape standing upright on a flat plane, we almost add “legs” to it mentally even if none are drawn. Many (majority) of Dalí’s aparatos he provided with props or “legs” and even walking sticks, while others have none (Figure 31-5, -15, -17). But a viewer “accepts” such shapes as “capable” of standing upright “on their own” due to their anthropomorphic nature and context. 

*  * * 

Obviously the three-dimensional aparatos would look even more anthropomorphic. Modernist painters exploited this motif years before Dalí. Sometimes certain human-related details (such as goggles) were added to strengthen the effect. Several works are shown on Figure 36. The first two illustrations are facsimile, reproduced the way how Dalí likely saw them himself: in the periodicals which he was very familiar with, as has been mentioned above. The author has no proof that Dalí was acquainted with the third work, by Max Ernst, prior to 1927, but it is likely. The resemblance of these and similar works with the giant (ten meters tall, if we compare it with the female figure next to it) aparato on 1927 Apparatus and Hand is especially evident if we compare outline drawings of these shapes made in similar scale. All four are multi-tier, incorporate cones and/or pyramids, are precariously balanced, and most have or appear to have “legs”. 

Figure 36 

   Dalí in fact went one step further. The already mentioned human figure standing behind the giant construct on Apparatus and Hand is in fact turning into an aparato (Figure 37). Across her¹⁶⁶ shoulders is affixed a stick with a “pendant”, Dalí’s “trademark” perforated triangle, on its end, above her lifted shoulder and another, unclear, shape on the opposite end of the stick. Another triangle, looking almost like a jib sail of a boat, is behind her upper arm, and out of her thigh a strange shape is growing, on which her left foot is placed. A larger triangle with a round hole is behind her right foot. She is propped with another stick that seems to be glued to her left thigh. She does still have legs, and the prop would seem unnecessary, but an aparato would require one, and she is half-way transformed into it already. Or is it an aparato that is transforming into a human being? 

Figure 37 

*  * * 

   We may never know what exactly aparatos meant for Dalí and Lorca, or for their relationship. But we have some photographic evidence that may attest to the connection. Both photographs most likely were taken during Lorca’s visit to Cadaques in summer of 1927. The first one (Figure 38-1) shows Lorca “playing dead”, which was one of his favorite pranks. A small round table laying behind him appears to have a dark triangle with a small hole superimposed on it (with a corner cut off by the tabletop edge), which may be a cast shadow (it is about as dark as the other shadows seen next to it). On the second photo where Lorca sits on a chair next to likely the same round table while Dalí half-sits on the table, supporting an actual triangle with a small round hole standing on the tabletop surface. Judging by the position of the round hole on that photo (being asymmetrically situated within the triangle), it may indeed be the same triangle casting a shadow over the tabletop on the first photograph. 

Figure 38 

*  * * 

   Torroella defines Dalí’s “Lorquian era” as having lasted from 1925 to 1929¹⁶⁷. But in fact, him and Lorca didn’t see each other much after 1927. Lorca moved to Granada and tried to get Dalí to visit him there but the painter preferred rather to work in his studio¹⁶⁸. In summer of 1929 Lorca leaves Spain for the United States.  

   In the author’s opinion, the year of 1929 for Dalí was not as much as the end of the Lorquian era (Lorca hardly was on his mind for over a year) as it was a beginning. What began in early August of that year was Dalí’s relationship with Gala which will last until her death. In his memoir Luis Buñuel writes: “Overnight Dalí was no longer the same. […] He spoke only of Gala, repeating everything she said. A total transformation”¹⁶⁹. This relationship also was the start of the conflict between the painter and his family. His father who especially disliked Gala decided to humiliate his son and made changes to his will which “in practice, if not technically” disinherited Dalí¹⁷⁰. And in December 1929, as has been mentioned above, Dalí is thrown out of his apartment in Figueras, goes to Cadaques and soon leaves for Paris. 

   1929 was also the year when Dalí’s style, starting with Lugubrious Games, underwent the final transformation to what for many is associated with the name of Dalí. One of those paintings, created for the first Dalí solo exhibition in Paris that opened on November 20, was Portrait of Paul Éluard (Figure 39-1). It is on this painting that, after two years, the last aparato Dalí ever painted makes its appearance.  

   Or, to be more correct, its disappearance. Barely noticeable in the lower right, are two men walking out, as it were, of the picture frame (Figure 39-2). The first of them is carrying, with his arms stretched forward, the familiar triangle with a round hole. The second man, mimicking the posture of the first, and almost “touching” with his hands the shadow of the triangle, is walking just behind. Both figures are leaning forward with what appears to be an effort – for the first one to carry the aparato out, and for the second – either to chase him away or to try preventing him from leaving. They are – significantly? – walking out of step. What the intended meaning of these figures was we will never know. But clearly, they are in process of carrying out the last image of the “embryonic” aparato Dalí ever painted, a triangle with a round hole. It is not leaving – it is being forced out. And if there truly was a strong connection between the triangles and the two friends, they indeed used to walk together and in step (Figure 39-3), but no more. 

Figure 39 

   It is not a coincidence that Dalí says farewell to aparatos on the Portrait of Paul Eluard: Gala was still Eluard’s wife when the canvas was being created, and it was Gala who changed Dalí “overnight”¹⁷¹. And several months after first having met her, just like these men walked out of the painting, Dalí walked out of his former life, and, like these men, he never looked back. 

Notes:

1 Ian Gibson, The Shameful Life of Salvador Dalí, W.W. Norton & Co, 1998, p.198, quoting Salvador Dalí Cusí entry in his book of cuttings dedicated to his son’s career.

2  Salvador Dalí, The Unspeakable Confessions of Salvador Dali, Elektron Ebooks, 2013, Kindle location 799.  

 3  Christopher Maurer, Sebastian’s Arrows, Swan Isle Press, 2004, p.72. It is quoted from a letter Dalí sent to Lorca in the beginning of June 1927 (“In about four days I will get three months of leave”).  

 4  Ibid. p.94

5  Unspeakable Confessions, Kindle loc.799  

6  Fèlix Fanés, Salvador Dalí: The construction of the image 1925-1930, Yale University Press 2007, p.55. According to a 1927 interview with the theater founder Adrià Gual quoted by Fanés, “a painting by Salvador Dalí” was “scenically recreated by Joan Morales”.                                                     

7  Fanés, p.55

 8  Gibson, p.51                                                                                 

9  Ibid., p.130                                                                                                                                     

10  Scan pages 108-112, last accessed April 11, 2023, at: http://arti.sba.uniroma3.it/esprit/viewer/web/viewer.html?&file=Li4vLi4vcGRmL0VzcHJpdE5vdXZlYXUtRlRfMTMucGR m                                                                                                                                           

11  Gibson, pp.104, 105                                                                                                                                

12 Salvador Dalí, Obra Completa, Barcelona, 2005, vol.iv, p.912, note 2 by Lahuerta             

13  Fanés, p.188                                                                                                                                         

14  Vyacheslav Popov, Boris Frezinsky, Ilya Ehrenburg, Chronicle of life and work, Lina, St.Petersburg, 1993, p.245                                                                                                                                                

15  Chamber Theater                                                                                                                                

16  https://www.institutdelteatre.cat/publicacions/ca/enciclopedia-arts-esceniques/id2802/teatre-intim.htm, last accessed 04-04 2023.                                                                                                    

17  Yurii Golovashenko, Director’s art of Tairov, Moscow, Iskusstvo, 1970, http://teatr lib.ru/Library/Golovashenko/Rezhisserskoe_iskusstvo_tairova/, last accessed April 11, 2023

18 Italics by author                                                                                                                                     

19 Magdalena Droste, Bauhaus 1919-1933, Taschen, 2020, p.44                                                             

20 The word Bauhaus can be translated from German as “building house” or “house of building”.            

21 https://gropius.house/location/bauhaus-manifesto/, last accessed April 11, 2023               

22 Another source for theater stage design photographs could have been Bulletin de L’Effort Moderne (issues from 1925 and 1926), an important art periodical which Dalí was familiar with, according to Fanés (pp.23, 66).                                                                                                                      

23 Author will be using the Spanish spelling of the word “apparatus/apparatuses”, aparato/aparatos, because using plural “apparatuses” as is done in Dalí-related literature in English would be incorrect from the point of view of Latin grammar, just as would be confusing to have used “apparatus” as a singular form of the noun because in Latin the same spelling is used in certain declensions in plural form of this noun.                                                                                                                                     

24 Gibson, p.186                                                                                                                                      

25 Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, Dover Publications, New York 1986                  

26 Fanés also saw Le Corbusier influence, see p.52                                                               

27 Maurer, p.58                                                                                                                                

28 Ibid, p.147                                                                                                                        

29 Gibson, p.130                                                                                                                   

30 Gibson, p.229                                                                                                                           

31 Dalí, catalog, Rizzoli, 2004, p.549                                                                                       

32 Vicent Santamaria de Mingo, Salvador Dalí entre el surrealismo y la naturaleza. El reciclaje de lo ajeno como proceso de creación, Locus Amoenus vol.18, 2020, p.153-179, h ps://revistes.uab.cat/locus/ar cle/view/v18-santamaria, last accessed February 13, 2021        

33 Maurer, p.91                                                                                                                                   

34 Ibid., p.94                                                                                                                                              

35 De Mingo, p.154                                                                                                                              

36 Louis Pauwels, The Passions According To Dalí, The Salvador Dalí Museum, 1985, p.30       

37 Decades later a cypress tree was planted and let grow through a hole in an old fisherman’s boat near Dalí’s house in Port Lligat, and it can still be seen there today, much grown compared to how it was seen by author in 1994 when it resembled Figure 8-4. M                                                         

38 Salvador Dalí, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, Dover Publications, 1993, p.65                      

39 Juan Antonio Ramírez, Dalí: Lo Crudo y lo Podrido, Kindle loc.160                                     

40 Alain Bosquet, Conversations with Salvador Dali, Dutton, 1969, 2000, p.15                      

41 Bosquet, pp.39-40, italics by Bosquet                                                                                     

42 Salvador Dalí, OC, vol.4 p.931, note 40 by Juan José Lahuerta                                                

43 Or “of the spirit” — this word is translated either way throughout the English edition.      

44 Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, Dover Publications, New York, 1986, p.19       

45 Page is sixth from the end of the issue, is not numbered on the scan, https://portaildocumentaire.citedelarchitecture.fr/pdfjs/web/viewer.html?file=/Infodoc/ged/viewPortalPublished.ashx?eid%3 DFRAPN02_ESPR_1924_024_PDF_1 last accessed April 12, 2023    

46 Salvador Dalí, OC, vol.4, p.924, note 22 by Juan José Lahuerta                                              

47 https://wsmag.net/blog/auto-talk/2020-09-22/filler-up-the-fascinating-history-of-gas-pumps/ last accessed April 12, 2023                                                                                                                  

48 Gibson, pp.162,197.                                                                                                                    

49 https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5844543r/f26.item last accessed April 13, 2023           

50 Gibson, 180                                                                                                                                           

51 Maurer, p.142                                                                                                                                   

52 Ibid., p.10                                                                                                                                              

53 Ibid., p.128                                                                                                                         

54 Ibid., p.131                                                                                                           

55 Ibid., p.130                                                                                                                       

56 Obra Completa, vol.4, note 17 by Lahuerta, p.923                                                        

57 Gibson, p.198                                                                                                                  

58 Nancy Perloff, Brian Reed (editors), Situating El Lissitzky, Getty Research Institute, 2003, p.27. Unless otherwise noted, Christina Lodder’s essay El Lissitzky and the Export of Constructivism will be quoted from this edition.                                                                                                             

59 Perloff, p.28.                                                                                                                           

60 Victor Margolin, Struggle for Utopia, University of Chicago Press, 1997, p.46                

61 Perloff, pp.27, 28                                                                                                                 

62 Sophie Lissitzky-Küppers, El Lissitzky; Life, Letters, Texts, Thames and Hudson, 1967,

63 Perloff, p.30                                                                                                                                         

64 Ibid., p.31                                                                                                                             

65 Lissitzky-Küppers, p.62                                                                                                              

66 Lissitzky-Küppers, p.25                                                                                                               

67 Ibid., p.36                                                                                                                                      

68 Droste, p.120                                                                                                                                     

69 Margolin, p.45                                                                                                               

70 ProUN is a contraction of Russian “Project for the Affirmation of the New”, an English equivalent would be ProAN.                                                                                                                                 

71 Perloff, p.36                                                                                                                                

72 Ibid., p.32                                                                                                                                 

73 Droste, p.108. Piet Mondrian was one of the group’s founders. Dalí will mercilessly tease Mondrian in his writings decades later.                                                                                         

74 https://www.lib.tudelft.nl/tijdschriften/architectuurtijdschriften/Wendingen_1921-small.pdf, last accessed April 17, 2023. Incidentally, the previous, double, issue of Wendingen, 1921 9-10, was dedicated to theater and included multiple photographs of costumes and stage designs, including a staging photo of a cubist ballet by Fernand Léger. The magazine issues were copiously illustrated, and text was in several languages including French in which Dalí read freely, so it is quite possible that Dalí was familiar with the publication and has seen the Lissitzky’s cover in the original, in color.

75 A.k.a. Communist International, or Comintern.                                                                       

76 The famous Lenin’s phrase from his 1919 letter to Gorky – both correspondents in fact being part of intelligentsia – comes to mind: “[…] intelligentniks (sic), lackeys of capital, deeming themselves the brain of the nation. In fact, it is not the brain but [its] excrement” (Lenin used a ruder word which author will not utter here).                                                                                                

77 Merz, issue 4, p.47, http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/dada/merz/4/pages/47.htm, last accessed April 14, 2023                                                                                                                                                    

78 Fanés, p.55                                                                                                                                       

79 Rafael Santos Torroella, La Miel es más Dulce que la Sangre, Seix Barral, 1984, p.273    

80 http://periodici.librari.beniculturali.it/PeriodicoScheda.aspx?id_testata=69&Start=113 last accessed April 19, 2023                                                                                                                      

81 The title more correctly should be understood as Neo-cubist Academic Painting (see Gibson p.186). Dalí likely painted it already after his expulsion from San Fernando Academy in Madrid, so the title may have indeed been ironic.                                                                           

82 Valori Plastici vol.1 n.4-5, 1919, title page, plate between pp. 22 and 23 and plate between pp.18 and 19 respectively                                                                                                  

83 In fact, Raphael’s work is very similar in format and composition to Perugino’s own Marriage of the Virgin which may have been completed in 1504, the year when Raphael also painted his. However, the higher horizon, the pronounced slab grid, a relatively smaller size of the temple and placement of the figures in the foreground so that they (unlike those on Perugino’s 1504 work) do not obstruct the slab lines, suggests that Raphael must have seen in Perugino’s workshop studies or sketches for the Christ Giving the Keys, the fresco itself having been finished in 1482, a year before Raphael was born, and located in Vatican, so Raphael could not have seen it in 1504. The same fresco has also inspired Pinturicchio’s fresco The Funerals of Bernardino (1484-1486), also in Rome.

84 James Thrall Soby, Salvador Dali: paintings, drawings, prints, catalog, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1941, p.13 (caption to de Chirico’s reproduction).         

85 Torroella, La Miel, p.273                                 

86 To quote Torroella, “This […] stage goes from 1926 to 1929, and perhaps the best way to call it […] “Lorca period”, referring to something that has an important biographical meaning, but does not point to a specific stylistic orientation” (La Miel, p.18)    

87 It is listed as “oil on canvas” in several publications author is familiar with, including Torroella’s Catalogo Razonado (p.326). Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí web page lists it as “Óleo sobre soporte desconicido”.                  

88 Torroella, La Miel, p.76                                                                                      

89 Ibid., pp.72-73                                                                               

90 Last accessed May 18, 2023 at: https://www.salvador-dali.org/es/obra/catalogo-razonado-pinturas/obra/185/estudio-para-la miel-es-mas-dulce-que-la-sangre      

91 OC, vol.4, p.610            

92 Josep Playà Maset, Dalí Esencial, Libros de Vanguardia, Kindle edition, Kindle loc.711           

93 Gibson, p.293                                                                            

94 OC, vol.4, p.610                                       

95 Dalí 2004 Catalog, p.478           

96 Gibson, p.292                                                                                                  

97 Ibid., p.280                                                                                                    

98 Dalí 2004 catalog, p.479       

99 Lamarain, Y. (2001). Joë Bousquet et la Peinture Surréaliste: L’exposition De Toulouse, Un Bilan. Francofonia, 40, 151 166. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43016144, pp.153, 157  

100 Author is not aware of the terms of the contract Dalí may have worked under at the time, but his first contract with Goemans (Gibson p.259) covered only newly created works painted between May 15 and November 15, 1929. If the new contract (likely with Keller and Colier – see Secret Live p.308) covered “all” works, it may have been a ruse to have called this painting a “study” to avoid complications. At the same time, it could have also been a ploy on part of Dalí or Gala to raise the sale price, to make Bousquet believe Dalí was taking a legal and financial risk selling him the painting “outside of his contract”.     

101 Lamarain, Y. (2001). Joë Bousquet et la Peinture Surréaliste: L’exposition De Toulouse, Un Bilan. Francofonia, 40, 151–166. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43016144, p.157 [1] Lamarain, Y. (2001). Joë Bousquet et la Peinture Surréaliste: L’exposition De Toulouse, Un Bilan. Francofonia, 40, 151–166. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43016144, p.157

102 The source for the letter was cited by Lamarain as: J. Bousquet, Lettres à Ginette, Paris, Albin Michel, 1980, pp.71-72

103 http://excerpts.numilog.com/books/9782226010094.pdf, last accessed June 6, 2023

104 Last accessed June 7 2023 at:

https://www.lindependant.fr/2011/04/14/le-dali-a-5-millions-d-euros-avait-appartenu-a-joe-bousquet,6177.php

105 Dali 2004 Catalog, pp.479-480

106 Ibid., p.479

107 R. Descharnes, G. Neret, Salvador Dalí, The Paintings, Taschen 2002, illustration 603, p.269

108 In authors opinion, a painting on canvas is more likely to end up “lost” than a one on a wooden panel, simply because it could be easily ripped off the stretcher or cut out, rolled in a tube, smuggled under another painting etc.

109 On the “study” it actually does resemble a miniature swimming pool, neatly cut into the ground. On Honey is Sweeter than Blood it appears to be an ordinary shallow pool. Just like in English, in both Catalan and Spanish language word piscina describes both the swimming pool and a rain pool. Was it Lorca’s idea to have the pool of blood depicted as a swimming pool?                                                                                                                                              110Gibson, p.197. Gibson agrees with Torroella in that the head is Lorca’s, however he does not provide any citation as to which Torroella’s text he agrees to. Torroella refers to the similar head on Las Cenicitas as Lorca’s in his El Primer Dalí, p.338

111 As translated in Gibson, p.213

112 Torroella, La Miel, p.226

113 Ian Gibson, Lorca – Dalí. El Amor Que No Pudo Ser. Debolsillo, Kindle location 2765

114 Torroella, La Miel, pp.76-77

115Rafael Santos Torroella, El Primer Dalí, 1918-1929 Catálogo Razonado, Publicaciones de la Residencia de Estudiantes, Madrid, 2005, p.330

116 https://www.salvador-dali.org/en/artwork/catalogue-raisonne-paintings/1926/185/study-for-honey-is-sweeter-than-blood, last accessed July 2, 2023

117 Maurer, p.63

118 Gibson, p.194

119 Maurer, p.65

120 Ibid., p.68

121 Ibid., pp 70-71

122 Ibid., pp.72-73

123 Ibid., pp.74-75

124 Jerrold Levinson, Titles, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 44, no. 1, 1985, pp. 29–39. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/430537. Last accessed 6 July 2023.

125 Levinson, p.32

126 Ibid., pp.32-33

127 Ibid., p.33

128 Ibid., p.30

129 Sarapik, V. (1999). The problem of titles in painting. Sign Systems Studies, 27, 148–167.

https://doi.org/10.12697/SSS.1999.27.08, PDF at https://ojs.utlib.ee/index.php/sss/article/view/SSS.1999.27.08/12599 last accessed July 6, 2023

130 Sarapik, p.150

131 https://www.guggenheim.org/audio/track/image-and-word-in-twentieth-century-art-by-ernst-gombrich-1980 last accessed July 6, 2023, quote transcribed by author from the audio recording

132 Levinson, p.33

133 Ernst Gombrich, Symbolic Images, University of Chicago Press, 1972, p.4

134 Margery B. Franklin et al., The Influence of Titles on How Paintings Are Seen, Leonardo, vol. 26, no. 2, 1993, pp. 103–08. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1575894. Last accessed 6 July 2023.

135 Franklin, p.108

136 Word selva primarily means ‘jungle’ both in Spanish and Catalan, but also could be translated as ‘forest’. Obviously European audience would relate to ‘forest’ more than to ‘jungle’, which may be yet another reason for the word used in the first title.

137 Referred to by Fanés, p.207 note 92

138 Lorca, Epistolario, p.492

139 Federico García Lorca, Epistolario Completo, Cátedra, Madrid, 1997, pp.499, 502

140 Fanés, p.76

141 Torroella, La Miel, pp.72-78

142 OC, vol.4, pp.50-52

143 Eric Robertson, Arp Painter, Poet, Sculptor, Yale University Press, 2006, p.80

144 Quoted by Robertson from unpublished letter, see ibid. note 66 on p.229

145 OC vol.4 p.52

146 OC vol.7 pp.180-181

147 Dalí may have been in a hurry because perspectival distance between the first and second pumps is too large compared to the ratio used for the rest of the pumps, assuming that all these pumps are equidistant, unless he deliberately spaced them wider.

148 Iván Moure-Pazos, Algunas Reflexiones sobre el método iconológico paranoico de Juan Antonio Ramirez para el estudio de la obra de Dalí, pp.65-66,  https://www.redalyc.org/pdf/5135/513554408004.pdf, last accessed April 17, 2024.

149 Author had access to the second edition of this book: Hans Prinzhorn, Bildnerei der Geisteskranken, Berlin, 1923 (at https://archive.org/details/b29816476/mode/2up) last accessed April 18, 2024

150 Prinzhorn, Fall 216 on p.60 or Fall 114 on p.66, for example.

151 Robert L. Solso, Cognition and the Visual Arts, The MIT Press, 1994, p.61

152 Ibid., p. 122

153 Ibid., pp.122-124

154 Ibid., p.139

155 Ernst Gombrich, The Image & the Eye, Phaidon, 2002, p.278

156 Ibid., p.285

157 Salvador Dalí, Diary of a Genius, Creation Books, 1998, p.82

158 Maurer, p.143

159 Secret Life, p.206

160 Gibson, p.146

161 Reproduced in Gibson, p.147

162 https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/homo-erectus-engraved-shell-is-about-half-a-million-years-old-1.2856379, last accessed 02-07-2024

163 https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/oldest-drawing-1.4820509, last accessed 02-07-2024

164 William Tomkins, Universal Indian Sign Language, Frye & Smith, San Diego, 1936, pp.76, 78-80

165 Ernst Gombrich, Art and Illusion, Princeton University Press, 1961, pp.341-342

166 This figure looks female from the breasts down, but its shoulders and head with a very short haircut seem to have more of a male aspect to them.

167 La Miel, p.18

168 Gibson, El Amor, Kindle location 3928

169 Ibid., Kindle location 4630

170 Gibson, p.282

171 If we were to heed Torroella’s interpretation of aparatos as “an expressive resource of a possible solution to the intimate problems” [La Miel, p.99], as well as Gibson’s linking the triangular object with round hole to “female genitalia” [Gibson (p.280)], this motif on the Portrait of Paul Eluard may indeed signify the end of Dalí’s fear of intimate relationship with a woman of which he speaks in Secret Life, and this would explain why the man carrying the aparato “out of the canvas” was, of all the works from 1929, specifically painted on Eluard’s portrait. At the same time, after 1927 the aparato only appears once in Dalí oeuvre (on 1928 Las Cenicitas, see Figure 31-20), is very small, placed close to the “horizon line” to appear further back, and looks more like a quote from de Chirico than a typical “Dalinian” aparato. Gala was not the reason of this change. Hence, the virtual abandonment of the aparato motif after 1927 may have to do with personal contacts between Dalí and Lorca having practically ceased.