Among Salvador Dalí’s many memorable works, perhaps none is more deeply embedded in the popular imagination than Venus de Milo with Drawers, a half-size plaster reproduction of the famous marble statue (130 /120 BC; Musée du Louvre, Paris), altered with pom-pom-decorated drawers in the figure’s forehead, breasts, stomach, abdomen, and left knee. The combination of cool painted plaster and silky mink tufts illustrates the Surrealist interest in uniting different elements to spark a new reality. For the Surrealists, the best means of provoking this revolution of consciousness was a special kind of sculpture that, as Dalí explained in a 1931 essay, was “absolutely useless … and created wholly for the purpose of materializing in a fetishistic way, with maximum tangible reality, ideas and fantasies of a delirious character.” Dalí’s essay, which drew upon the ideas of Marcel Duchamp’s readymades, inaugurated object making as an integral part of Surrealist activities.
Influenced by the work of Sigmund Freud, Dalì envisioned the idea of a cabinet transformed into a female figure, which he called an “anthropomorphic cabinet.” Venus de Milo with Drawers is the culmination of his explorations into the deep, psychological mysteries of sexual desire, which are symbolized in the figure of the ancient goddess of love.
Date
Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.
Robert Descharnes, Salvador Dalí (London: Thames and Hudson, 1988), 122 (ill.).
Robert Descharnes, Salvador Dalí: The Work, the Man (New York: Henry N. Abrams, 1989), 199, 451 (ill.).
Carlton Lake, In Quest of Dali (New York: Paragon House, 1990), 72-74.
Paul Mariah, Salvador Dalí, Dances with Dalí / Minotaur 25/26 (Felton, CA: Minotaur Press, 1991), 26.
Franco Passioni, “Dalí dans la troisième dimension,” in Salvador Dalí: Illustrateur et Sculpteur, exh. cat. (Geneva, 1992), 93.
Robert Descharnes and Gilles Néret, Salvador Dalí, 1904–1989, vol. I: Das malerische Werk (Cologne: Benedikt Taschen, 1993), 279, no. 628 (ill.).
André Bouguenec, Salvador Dalí: philosophe et esotériste incompris (Nantes, France: Opéra, 1994), 28-29, (ill.).
Marco Di Capua, Dalí (Paris: Librairie Gründ, 1994), 187, 271, (ill.).
Haim Finkelstein, Salvador Dalí’s Art and Writing, 1927-1942: The Metamorphoses of Narcissus (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 167, 226.
Robert Descharnes, “Dalí, la Vénus de Milo, et la persistence de la mémoire antique,” in D’après l’antique, exh. cat. (Paris: Musée du Louvre, 2000), 462, cat. 259, 465 (color ill.).
William Jeffett, “An Obscure Object of Desire: The Venus de Milo, Surrealism and Beyond,” in Disarming Beauty: The Venus de Milo in 20th-Century Art, exh. cat. (St. Petersburg, FL: Salvador Dalí Museum, 2001), 61-67, 83, fig. 29.
Lewis Kachur, Displaying the Marvelous: Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dalí, and Surrealist Exhibition Installations (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001), 130.
Jennifer Mundy, ed., Surrealism: Desire Unbound (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 97, fig. 72 (color ill.).
Llorenç Bonet, Cristina Montes, et al., Antoni Gaudí Salvador Dalí (Barcelona: Loft, 2002), 84, (ill.).
El Surrealismo y sus imágenes (Madrid: Fundación Cultural Mapfre Vida, 2002), 202.
Salvador Dalí, Obra completa: Textos autobiogràfics 2 (Barcelona: Destino, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, 2003), 356, 545.
Robert and Nicolas Descharnes, Dalí: Le dur et le mou, Sortilège et magie des formes (Paris: ACCART, 2003), 32-33 (ill.), no. 61.
Salvador Dalí, Obra completa: Assaigs 1 (Barcelona: Destino, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, 2005), 806.
Charles Stuckey, “Dalì in Duchamp-Land,” Art In America (May 2005), 153–54, (ill.).
Carol Vogel, “Chicago Gets Dali’s Venus,” New York Times (November 25, 2005).
Salvador Dalí, Obra completa: Entrevistes (Barcelona: Destino, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, 2006), 838.
Stephanie D’Alessandro, “Venus de Milo with Drawers,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 32, no. 1 (2006), 64-65 (ill.).
Salvador Dalí: An Illustrated life (London: Tate Publishing, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Sociedad Estatal de Conmemoraciones Culturales - Ministerio de Cultura, 2007), p. 110.
Guillermo Carnero, Salvador Dalí y otros estudios sobre arte y vanguardia (València: Institució Alfons el Magnànim - Diputació de València, 2007), 43.
L’Objecte català a la llum del surrealisme (Barcelona: Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, 2007), p. 69.
Pilar Parcerisas, Duchamp en España: las claves ocultas de sus estancias en Cadaqués (Madrid: Siruela, 2009), 32.
Anthony Grafton, Glenn W. Most, and Salvatore Settis, ed. The Classical Tradition (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard Belknap Press, 2010), cat. 163 (ill.).
James D. Herbert, “New Wine in Old Bottles: French Art Following World War I,” in Kenneth E. Silver, Vivien Greene, Helen Hsu, and Karole Vail, Chaos and Classicism: Art in France, Italy, and Germany, 1918-1936 exh. cat. (New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2010), 142, cat. 38 (ill.), 143.
Dalia Judovitz, Drawing on Art: Duchamp and Company (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010), 161-64, cat. 31 (ill.), 261.
Michael Squire, The Art of the Body: Antiquity and Its Legacy (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 28, 32, cat. 15 (ill.).
John Yau, Marjorie Strider (New York: Hollis Taggart Galleries, 2011), 33, cat. 16 (ill.).
Becky E. Conekin, Lee Miller in Fashion (London: Thames & Hudson, 2013), 164.
Stephen Fuller, Eudora Welty and Surrealism (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2013), 53, 249.
Patricia Volk, Shocked: My Mother, Schiaparelli, and Me (New York: Alfred A. Knopf 2013), 77, 82 (ill.), 280.
Stephen Fuller, Eudora Welty and Surrealism (University Press of Mississippi, 2013), 53, 249.
Alyce Mahon, “The Assembly Line Goddess: Modern Art and the Mannequin,” in Jane Munro, ed. Silent Partners: Artist and Mannequin from Function to Fetish, exh. cat. (Yale University Press, 2014), 210, cat. 237 (ill.), 211.
Jane Munro, Silent Partners : Artist and Mannequin from Function to Fetish, exh. cat. (Cambridge, New Haven, London: Fitzwilliam Museum, Yale University Press, 2014), 210-11, (ill.).
Johannes Siapkas and Lena Sjögren, Displaying the Ideals of Antiquity: The Petrified Gaze (New York: Routledge, 2014), 138.
Peter Saenger, “How Salvador Dalí Built His Brand,” The Wall Street Journal, Feb. 10, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-salvador-dali-built-his-brand-beedd978?st=8oe69h9sd0y63jj&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Possibly Paris, 101 bis rue de la Tombe-Issoire, June 19, 1936, no cat.
Possibly Paris, 88 rue de l’Université, Feb. 2, 1939, no cat.
Possibly New York, Julien Levy Gallery, Salvador Dalí, Mar. 21–Apr. 17, 1939, no cat. no.
Paris, Galerie du Dragon, Objet surréaliste 1931–1937, Oct. 20–Dec. 20, 1979, cat. 10. Reproduced with same image from Descharnes 1962.
St. Petersburg, FL, The Dalí Museum, A Disarming Beauty: The Venus de Milo in 20th-Century Art, Apr. 28–Sept. 9, 2001, cat. 29..
Venice, Palazzo Grassi, Dalí, Sept. 12, 2004–Jan. 16, 2005; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Feb. 16–May 15, 2005, cat. 156.
The Art Institute of Chicago, Salvador Dalí: The Image Disappears, Feb. 18–June 12, 2023, no cat.
The artist; with Private Collection (possibly Cécile Eluard), Paris, 1962 [Descharnes 1962; Descharnes 2000]; with Robert Descharnes, 1962 [Descharnes 2000]; sold to Max Clarac-Sérou, Paris, by 1964 [Tokyo 1964]; sold to Patrick Derom, Brussels, c. 1990; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 2005.
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