- Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening
-
Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee
around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening
Artist Salvador Dalí Year 1944 Type Oil on canvas Dimensions 51 cm × 40.5 cm (20 in × 15.9 in) Location Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening (1944) is a surrealist painting by Salvador Dali. A short, alternate title for the painting is Sting Caused by the Flight of a Bee.[1] It was painted in 1944, while Dalí and his wife, Gala, were living in America.[1]
Description
In this “hand-painted dream photograph” — as Dalí generally called his paintings — we find a seascape of distant horizons and calm waters, perhaps Port Lligat, amidst which Gala is the subject of the scene. Next to the naked body of the sleeping woman, which levitates above a flat rock that floats above the sea, Dalí depicts two suspended droplets of water and a pomegranate, a Christian symbol of fertility and resurrection[2] . Above the pomegranate flies a bee, an insect that traditionally symbolizes the Virgin.[3]
In the upper left of the painting a fish bursts out of the pomegranate, and in turn spews out a tiger who then spews out another tiger and a bayonet. A second later the bayonet will sting Gala in the arm. Above them an elephant with long flamingo legs, found in other compositions of the period such as Dali's The Temptations of St. Anthony, carries on its back an obelisk — like Bernini’s Elephant and Obelisk in the Piazza Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome.[4][5]Themes and symbolism
The bayonet, as a symbol of the stinging bee, may thus represent the woman's abrupt awakening from her otherwise peaceful dream. This is an example of Sigmund Freud's influence on surrealist art and Dali's attempts to explore the world of dreams in a dreamscape.[1]
The bee around the smaller pomegranate is repeated symbolically. The two tigers represent the body of the bee (yellow with black stripes) and the bayonet its stinger. The fish may represent the bee's eyes, because of similarity of the fish's scaly skin with the scaly complex eyes of bees.[citation needed]
The elephant is a distorted version of the "Pulcino della Minerva" sculpture by Gian Lorenzo Bernini facing the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome.[6] The smaller pomegranate floating between two droplets of water may symbolize Venus, especially because of the heart-shaped shadow it casts.[6] It may also be used as a Christian symbol of fertility and resurrection.[7] This female symbolism may contrast with the phallic symbolism of the threatening creatures.[6]
It has also been suggested that the painting is "a surrealist interpretation of the Theory of Evolution."[8]
In 1962, Dalí said his painting was intended "to express for the first time in images Freud's discovery of the typical dream with a lengthy narrative, the consequence of the instantaneousness of a chance event which causes the sleeper to wake up. Thus, as a bar might fall on the neck of a sleeping person, causing them to wake up and for a long dream to end with the guillotine blade falling on them, the noise of the bee here provokes the sensation of the sting which will awaken Gala."[7] The guillotine anecdote refers to a dream reported by Alfred Maury in Le sommeil et les rêves and related by Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams.
References
- ^ a b c "Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate, A Second Before Awakening". Fulcrum Gallery. http://www.fulcrumgallery.com/Salvador-Dali/Dream-Caused-by-the-Flight-of-a-Bee-Around-a-Pomegranate-A-Second-Before-Awakening_24430.htm. Retrieved 2008-01-07.
- ^ Murray, Peter (2004). A Dictionary Of Christian Art (Oxford Paperback Reference). "Pomegranate": Oxford University Press.
- ^ Crane, Eva (1999). The World History OF Beekeeping And Honey Hunting. Routledge. pp. 600–610. ISBN 978-0415924672. http://books.google.com/books?id=ANTSvKj1AZEC&pg=PA605&dq=bee+christian+virginity&hl=en&ei=fMa5TdLvFtS_gQe63eET&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=bee%20christian%20virginity&f=false.
- ^ Dahlberg, Kristina. "Bernini's Little Chick". http://honorsaharchive.blogspot.com/2007/02/berninis-elephant-obelisk-pulcino-della.html. Retrieved April 28, 2011.
- ^ Thyssen, Museo. "Permanent Collection". Museo Thyssen Permanent Collection. Museo Thyssen. http://www.museothyssen.org/en/thyssen/ficha_obra/352. Retrieved April 28, 2011.
- ^ a b c Cathrin Klingsöhr-Leroy (2004). Google books Surrealism. Taschen. ISBN 9783822822159. http://books.google.com/books?id=IBZbhP3rW-YC&pg=RA1-PA44&lpg=RA1-cioooo Google books. Retrieved 2008-01-08.
- ^ a b Paloma Alarcó. "Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second before Waking up". Museo de Arte Thyssen-Bornemisza. http://www.museothyssen.org/thyssen_ing/coleccion/obras_ficha_texto388.html. Retrieved 2008-01-07.
- ^ Jaume Baguñà and Jordi García-Fernández (2003). "Evolution & Development". The International Journal of Developmental Biology. http://www.ijdb.ehu.es/03078contents.htm. Retrieved 2008-01-07.
Salvador Dalí Selected
paintingsLandscape Near Figueras (1910) • Vilabertran (1913) • Fiesta in Figueres (1914–16) • Port of Cadaqués (Night) (1918–19) • The Artist's Father at Llane Beach (1920) • The Garden of Llaner (Cadaqués) (1920–21) • Cabaret Scene (1922) • Cubist Self-Portrait with "La Publicitat" (1923) • Self-portrait with L'Humanitie (1923) • Portrait of Luis Buñuel (1924) • Siphon and Small Bottle of Rum (1924) • The Basket of Bread (1926) • Honey Is Sweeter Than Blood (1927) • The Lugubrious Game (1929) • The First Days of Spring (1929) • The Great Masturbator (1929) • The Persistence of Memory (1931) • The Ghost of Vermeer of Delft Which Can Be Used As a Table (1934) • Morphological Echo (1934–36) • Archaeological Reminiscence of Millet's Angelus (1935) • Autumn Cannibalism (1936) • Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War) (1936) • The Burning Giraffe (1937) • Metamorphosis of Narcissus (1937) • Swans Reflecting Elephants (1937) • Apparition of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach (1938) • The Sublime Moment (1938) • Shirley Temple, The Youngest, Most Sacred Monster of the Cinema in Her Time (1939) • The Face of War (1940) • Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire (1940) • Honey is Sweeter than Blood (1941) • Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man (1943) • Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening (1944) • Galarina (1944–45) • Basket of Bread (1945) • The Temptation of St. Anthony (1946) • The Elephants (1948) • Leda Atomica (1949) • The Madonna of Port Lligat (1949) • Christ of Saint John of the Cross (1951) • Galatea of the Spheres (1952) • The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory (1952–54) • Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) (1954) • Young Virgin Auto-Sodomized by the Horns of Her Own Chastity (1954) • The Sacrament of the Last Supper (1955) • Living Still Life (1956) • The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus (1958–59) • The Ecumenical Council (1959–60) • Galacidalacidesoxyribonucleicacid (1963) • Tuna Fishing (1966–67) • The Hallucinogenic Toreador (1968–70) • La Toile Daligram (1972) • The Swallow's Tail (1983)Other works Writings: Un Chien Andalou (1929) • L'Age d'Or (1930) • Giraffes on Horseback Salad (1937) • Libretto for Bacchanale (1939) • The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí (1942, autobiography)
Films: Un Chien Andalou (1929) • L'Age d'Or (1930) • Spellbound (1945, dream sequence) • Impressions of Upper Mongolia (1975, narration)
Animated films: Destino (1946, completed 2003)
Logos: Chupa Chups
Opera: Être Dieu (1985)
Sculpture: Lobster Telephone (1936) • Mae West Lips Sofa (1937)
Costumes: costumes for García Lorca's play Mariana Pineda (1927)
Novels: Hidden Faces (1944)Related articles Categories:- Salvador Dalí paintings
- Surrealist paintings
- 1944 paintings
- Collections of the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza
Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.
