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 pompon-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.
Simon Wilson, “Salvador Dali,” Salvador Dali, exh. cat. (London, 1980), p. 17.
Picasso/Miró/Dalí: Evocations d’Espagne (Madrid, 1985), no. 23, p. 230 (ill.).
Carlton Lake, In Quest of Dali (New York, 1990), pp. 72-74.
Franco Passioni, “Dalí dans la troisième dimension,” Salvador Dalí: Illustrateur et Sculpteur, exh. cat. (Geneva, 1992), p. 93.
Robert Descharnes and Gilles Néret, Salvador Dalí, 1904–1989, vol. I: Das malerische Werk, (Cologne, 1993), p. 279, no. 628 (ill.).
Marco di Capua, Dalí (New York, 1994)
Robert Descharnes, “Dalì, la Vénus de Milo, et la persistence de la mémoire antique,” D’après l’antique (Paris, 2000), pp. 462–65 (ill.).
William Jeffett, “An Obscure Object of Desire: The Venus de Milo, Surrealism and Beyond,” Disarming Beauty: The Venus de Milo in 20th-Century Art (St. Petersburg, Florida, 2001), pp. 61-67, 83, fig. 29.
Jennifer Mundy, ed., Surrealism: Desire Unbound (Princeton, New Jersey, 2001), p. 97 (ill. only).
Robert and Nicolas Descharnes, Dalí: Le dur et le mou, Sortilège et magie des formes (Paris, 2003), no. 61, pp. 32-33 (ill.).
Dalí, exh. cat. (New York, 2004), pp.258–59, no. 156 (ill.).
Bruce Boucher, "Notable Acquisitions at the Art Institute of Chicago," Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 32, no. 1 (2006), p. 64, ill. p. 65.
Charles Stuckey, “Dalì in Duchamp-Land,” Art In America (May 2005), pp. 153–54, ill.
Paris, 101 bis rue de la Tombe-Issoire, 19 June 1936.
Paris, 88 rue de l’Université, 2 February 1939.
Paris, Galerie du Dragon, Objet surréaliste 1931–1937, 20 October–20 December 1979, no. 10.
Paris, Musée du Louvre, D’après l’antique, 16 October 2000–15 January 2001, no. 259.
St. Petersburg, Florida, The Salvador Dali Museum, A Disarming Beauty. The Venus de Milo in 20th-Century Art, 28 April–9 September 2001, fig. 29.
London, Tate Modern, Surrealism: Desire Unbound, 20 September 2001–1 January 2002; traveled to: New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 6 February–12 May 2002, fig. 72.
Venice, Palazzo Grassi, Dalì, 12 September 2004–16 January 2005; traveled to: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 16 February–15 May 2005, cat. 156 (ill.),
Salvador Dalí, Paris, 1936–c. 1964; sold to Max Clarac-Sérou, Paris, c. 1964–1990; sold to Patrick Derom, Brussels, c. 1990.
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