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  Barcelona & Modernity > About the Exhibition > Exhibition Highlights > Salvador Dali
The Accommodations of Desire, 1929
 
 
Image of Salvador Dali<br><I>The Accommodations of Desire</I>, 1929 <br>Oil and cut-and-pasted printed paper on cardboard <br>22.2 x 34.9 cm <br>The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection, <br>1998 (1999.363.16) <br>© 2006 Salvador Dali, Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Salvador Dali
The Accommodations of Desire, 1929
Oil and cut-and-pasted printed paper on cardboard
22.2 x 34.9 cm
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection,
1998 (1999.363.16)
© 2006 Salvador Dali, Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Salvador Dali
The Accommodations of Desire, 1929

In 1927 Dalí entered into a brief period of exploring semi-abstract, biomorphic forms influenced by Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso. In 1929 he dramatically changed course and abandoned abstraction in favor of a new method of rendering objects with meticulous realism, while at the same time presenting them in situations that defy the logic of the rational world.

Influenced by psychoanalytic theory, Dalí began to explore the workings of the unconscious mind through shocking dream imagery. Interpreting this painting in Freudian terms, the lion suggests the censoring power of the superego or father, and the naked figure embracing a bearded man the suppression of sexual desire.

This painting had already been acquired by André Breton when it appeared in Dalís first one-man exhibition in Paris in 1929.

Page 14 of 21 | On the next page: Salvador Dalí
The Dream (Le Rêve), 1931