Desire

Salvador Dali was officially associated with Surrealism from 1929 to 1941. But even after that, his work reflected the influence of surrealist thought and methodology. His flamboyance, penchant for dramatic effects and talent for self-promotion, as well as hyperactive imagination, revived the artistic movement itself and contributed to its popularity. Dali, who was prone to hallucinations and paranoid visions, developed these strange subjects for his paintings. He recreated them so thoroughly that they caused concern for their clinical prosaicity. Such works reflect the surrealists' obsession with dreams and the unconscious.

"The manifestation of desires", written in the summer of 1929, is a little gem about Dali's sexual anxiety over a love affair with a married woman 10 years older than him. This woman, Gala - then the wife of the surrealist poet Paul Eluard - later became the artist's muse and companion for the rest of her life. He painted the picture after a walk alone with his beloved.

Dali included seven enlarged pebbles in the composition, on which he presented what awaits him ahead: "fearful" lion heads (not very "manifesting his desires", as the title of the picture suggests), as well as the crown of a wig and a colony of ants (symbol decomposition). In addition, there are various vessels (one in the shape of a woman's head) and three hugging figures on a pedestal. Dali did not draw lion heads, but cut them out of, most likely, a children's book. In doing so, he cleverly juxtaposed the detailed style of book illustrations with his own. These collage elements are virtually indistinguishable from the oversaturated colors and painstaking realism of the rest of the composition.

"The Phenomenon of Desires" is part of the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.