Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate One ...

Salvador DalíOil on wood panel51 x 41 cmMuseo Thyssen-Bornemisza, MadridDream Caused by the Flight of a Bee arounda Pomegranate One Second Before Awakening.(One Second Before the Awakening from a Dream Provoked01by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate) 1Assessment by: Antoni Pitxot, director of the Dalí Theatre-Museum,and Montse Aguer, director of the Centre for Dalinian StudiesText by: Anna Otero, Centre for Dalinian Studies[…] And the sting of this wasp was a precursor of that of the loveof Gala-the-bee, the honey of my life as a man [...] 2Torre GalateaPujada del Castell, 28E-17600 FigueresTel. 34 972 677 505Fax 34 972 501 666www.salvador-dali.org1. DALÍ, S. (1947-1948). New Paintings by Salvador Dalí (25 November 1947 – 3 January 1948). Bignou Gallery, New York2. DALÍ, S. (1948), 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship. The Dial Press, New York, pp. 181-186., p. 161

INTRODUCTIONThanks to the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí’s policy of active cooperation with other institutionswhose collections include works by Salvador Dalí, visitors to the Dalí Theatre-Museum inFigueres have recently been able to see a number of the artist’s major pictures on temporaryloan, such as Metamorphosis of Narcissus and The Persistence of Memory. In 2010 we are pleased topresent the oil painting Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate One Second BeforeAwakening, from 1944, generously loaned by the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid. Thework will be on show at the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres, from 9 February to 2 May 2010.For the occasion, the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí has prepared a dossier and a number ofinformative materials in order to present and analyse a significant picture from Dalí’s oeuvre.1. WORKDescriptionWhen Gala described to Dalí the strange images she had seen in a dream that was somehowrelated to the flight of a bee around a pomegranate, the artist lost no time in painting DreamCaused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate One Second Before Awakening, of 1944. 3 Thesetting for the picture is once again a landscape of Portlligat, which Gala shares with twopomegranates, a large scorpionfish, two tigers, a rifle with a bayonet, a bee and an elephant withlong, insect-like legs. All of these elements, presented in a manner that could be regarded as acinematic sequence, are part of the dream of a voluptuous reclining Gala who seems obliviousto the strange events going on around her. The reading of the painting, as its title makes clear,starts with the bee hovering over the small pomegranate in the foreground. This pomegranate02is also the origin and source of Gala’s dream, depicted on the left side of the picture.Looking a little more closely, we see that none of the objects that appear in the picture istouching any of the others: everything floats, everything hangs suspended. The dream-imageis the snapshot of a precise moment, frozen and perfectly painted by hand.The Context of the WorkDalí painted Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee… at a time of historical impasse and a stylisticcrossroads: World War II was drawing to an end and a distinctively American art was emerging.The year was 1944: Dalí’s creativity was burgeoning, coinciding with the mid point in his stayin America (1940-1948). When Dalí arrived in the United States in 1940 he declared that hisintention was to become rich and famous. During his stay in the New World, Dalí consolidatedhis persona, involved himself in various projects (sets for the theatre, ballet and opera, filmscripts, illustrations for books, designs for jewellery and clothes, photographic projects…)and socialized with rich and influential people, ensuring his social standing.3. TAYLOR, M. (2004). “Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate, One Second beforeAwakening” In: Dalí, Bompiani, Milan, p. 334

Painting for the ballet Sentimental ColloquyPoster advertising the book Hidden FacesThe year 1944 was a very productive one for Dalí. He designed advertising images for thestocking manufacturer Bryans, for perfume, lipstick and other products for Elsa Schiaparelli,and for McCurrach ties; he contributed articles and illustrations to a number of magazines, andin June published his only novel, Hidden Faces. At the end of the summer he signed the contractthat resulted in his creating the dream sequence for Alfred Hitchcock’s film Spellbound, whichpremiered in 1945. During the last three months of 1944 he designed the sets for the stage playSentimental Colloquy and created the libretto, the costumes and the sets for the ballet Mad Tristan.2. SALVADOR DALÍThe Historical Context in Europe and the United States03With the outbreak of World War II, the art scene in both Europe and America underwent asudden drastic change, and among the artists who fled a Europe at war many sought refuge inthe United States. This migration left Europe relatively bereft of artists while America gainedsignificantly in artistic importance. The new continent’s absorption of transatlantic émigréintellectuals coincided with the advent of a specifically American form of modern art: AbstractExpressionism. Dalí painted Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee… at a time when the Surrealismof the exiled coexisted with the newly emerging Abstract Expressionism. This was a period ofgreat upheaval in art, a moment of synthesis between abstraction and surrealism, marked bythe emergence of what would come to be known as the New York School, whose prominentfigures included Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, William Baziotes and Robert Motherwell. Dalítook no part in this pictorial transition at the artistic level, in the sense that he was not a memberof any movement and instead remained faithful to his own style. There was to be no stylisticbreak in his work, no move towards Abstract Expressionism; nor did he form strong personalties with any of the émigré artists. Maintaining his provocative, rebellious spirit, Dalí baptisedhis painting anew, calling for a return to classicism and turning to photographic realism. Aswe can see in Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee… this was bound up with an evident pictorialpreciosity, and indeed Dalí described painting as ‘“photography” done by hand and in coloursof the “concrete irrationality” and of the imaginative world in general’. 44. DALÍ, S. (1934), ‘The Latest Modes of Intellectual Stimulation for the Summer of 1934’. In: Finkelstein, H.The Collected Writings of Salvador Dalí, Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 254

In the midst of this turmoil of tendencies and changes, Dalí engaged in a dialogue with ‘theAmerican way of life’, making use of the techniques of promotion and advertising that hadended up defining so much of American culture. Dalí took advantage of his stay in Americato put the finishing touches to the persona of Salvador Dalí that was to gain him universalrecognition.Artistic InfluencesAt an opening in the Julien Levy Gallery in New York in April 1941, three years before hepainted Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee…, Dalí announced that his painting was to bringabout a return to ‘the classical era’. Only a few months after his arrival in the United States,Dalí was looking for inspiration and a new pictorial model in the proportion and harmony ofthe Italian Renaissance, marking not so much a radical stylistic break as a departure from theSurrealist fold:‘My surrealist glory was worthless. I must incorporate surrealism in tradition. Myimagination must become classic again. I had before me a work to accomplish forwhich the rest of my life would not suffice. Gala made me believe in this mission.’ 5Visually, we find not a break in the style of his work but a reutilizing and exploiting of certainelements, of which the landscape is the most striking example. Associations with the worldof mass culture are manifestly present in Dalí’s paintings of the nineteen forties. In everydaythings, used and demanded by the public at large, he found a rich source of inspiration. Hehad previously depicted a Coca-Cola bottle in the 1943 painting The Poetry of America, severalyears in advance of the iconography of Pop Art, and the tigers in Dream Caused by the Flight of aBee… were taken from the posters advertising the popular Ringling Bros. and Barnum & BaileyCircus. These borrowings exemplify the working method of a great artist-observer, filteringand absorbing the world around him and painting his pictures as if they were hand-colouredphotographs, effectively assimilating painting to the photographic image.04Ringling Barnun Bailey Circus posterDalí took advantage of this mediatic moment to seize the attention of the media whileworking with and exploring the potential of supports other than the traditional canvas. Themultitude of options Dalí tested out — new supports, the artistic function of popular imagery,the championing of an anachronistic classicism… — looked forward to many aspects ofcontemporary art: certain Dalinian connotations can be seen in the work of artists such as AndyWarhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Jeff Koons.5. DALÍ, S. (1942). The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí. The Dial Press, New Press, p. 350

3. INTERPRETATIONThe LandscapeThe landscape in Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee… is perhaps the most recognizable elementin the picture, in that it corresponds to Dalí’s immediate and omnipresent surroundings. Forall their realism, the landscapes that Dalí painted in the nineteen forties are products of theimagination, of dreams and memories: the artist lived in the United States continuously for aperiod of eight years (1940-1948), a long way from the Empordà.The figure of Gala lies stretched out on a rocky platform that floats above the sea. The cliff onthe right is reminiscent of those Dalí painted during the thirties and, indeed, continued to paint.A few olive branches adorning the summit of the cliff are the only vegetation on the painting.The blue of the sea and the sky is divided by the first light of day, coinciding with the momentof ‘one second before awakening’; the time is dawn and the moon still lingers in the sky.In many of the pictures from Dalí’s American period (1940-1948) the landscape takes ona predominant presence. The close personal relationship that Dalí establishes with theMediterranean setting can be seen as an extension of himself; the landscape of Cadaqués /Portlligat / Cap de Creus and Dalí are inseparable. In his writings, Dalí acknowledged theprimacy of the landscape in his art:‘[…] I need only to close my eyes in order to recapture landscapes and scenes intact,but at the time I established the strangest kind of dialogue with myself. Everyrock, every promontory of Cape Creus is in permanent metamorphosis. Each is asuggestion that prompts spontaneous visualization of an eagle, a camel, a rooster, alion, a woman – but if you approach from the sea, the nearer you get, the more thesymbolism develops and changes. It is a continual simulacrum. The bird becomesa wild animal and then a barnyard fowl. Like living in a constant mirage… and yet,when we land, the granite beneath our feet is hard, compact, clear, implacable – afterhaving double-dealt us so constantly.’ 605The PomegranateGala’s dream, which is ‘caused by the flight of a bee around a pomegranate’, commences withthe broken-open pomegranate, two seeds of which are falling into the sea and will become thepomegranate trees that Gala will plant next to the house at Portlligat. The pomegranate is anPomegranate of PortlligatJewel The Pomegranate Heart made of gold, rubies and diamonds6. DALÍ, S. (1976). The Unspeakable Confessions of Salvador Dalí. William Morrow and Company, Inc., new York, p. 129

autumn fruit with a very ancient tradition in the Mediterranean: in the Christian religion itsymbolizes love, resurrection, eternal life and fertility, and it figures prominently in Greek andother mythologies. It is a fruit of evil sweetness with a variety of meanings and associations,and is both the origin and the cause of what is happening in the picture.A scorpionfish has emerged from the heart-shaped opening in the skin of fruit. In 1949, whenDalí turned to designing jewellery, he took the heart-like form of an opened pomegranate as thebasis for a ‘pomegranate heart’ of gold, rubies and diamonds.The ScorpionfishThe fish being expelled from the pomegranate is a scorpionfish, of a species found in theMediterranean. The scorpionfish habitually remains motionless among the rocks during theday, and feeds at night. The mimicry of its colouration makes it difficult to spot, but despitethis invisibility the large-eyed scorpionfish takes in everything that goes on around it. Thescorpionfish raises it poisonous dorsal fin when it senses danger, as we see it doing here, andhas a very large mouth with which to swallow its prey. The scorpionfish is a predator whoseapparent stillness deceives its victims, preventing them from reacting in time to its attack. Wesee Dalí’s aggressive scorpionfish in the act of swallowing a tiger, which in turn is expelling asecond tiger from its mouth, as if it were an echo of itself.The TigersIn the central part of the dream, two snarling tigers spring at Gala. These animals remain verysimilar to the tigers on the posters of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, the biggestAmerica. If we bear in mind that the merged circus already had been performing up and downthe country for many years when Dalí arrives in the United States in 1940, it is more than likelythat he would have seen this image on posters announcing forthcoming shows. In this respectDalí draws on the popular imagery of the circus to awaken Gala from her sleep. However, it isnot the roar of the tiger but the rifle with its bayonet, a simulacrum of the bee’s sting, that willrouse her from her slumber.06The ElephantThe theme of the dream is also apparent in the figure of the elephant with greatly elongatedlegs, an animal that Dalí incorporated into his iconography in the early forties. The aestheticinspiration for the elephant-cum-insect with an obelisk on its back was the Pulcino della Minerva,a sculpture of an elephant designed by Bernini in the seventeenth century, which standsoutside the basilica of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome. Bernini’s Pulcino della Minerva isa recreation of an elephant bearing a 6 th -century BCE Egyptian obelisk on its back. Curiously,the Bernini sculpture has similarities with the woodcut of an elephant in the Renaissance novelHypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499). Dreams play a very important part in the novel, and the imageof the elephant bearing the obelisk we see in Dalí’s painting effectively bestrides the dream.Dalí thus takes the Bernini elephant, which derives in its turn from a Renaissance dream, andDalífies it, stretching its legs. In a sense, with this elephant Dalí is inviting us to share in one ofthe many metamorphoses that occur in his works.

‘[…] flying about like a bee, which is also one of the names which I have given her,for like a bee she brings me all the oils, all the media, and it is thus that I find thepentagonal hive of my studio filled with all the pollens which the painter, at everymoment of the day, needs to be able to spin the integral honey of his work.’ 7DreamsThe precise moment painted by Dalí in Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee… is exactly onesecond before Gala awakes to find herself attacked by a dream in the form of a rifle witha bayonet and two tigers, one being swallowed by a scorpionfish which in turn has beenexpelled from an open pomegranate. With this succession of dreamlike actions Dalí lets us seethat Surrealism and Freudian psychoanalysis are still present in the iconography of his work:the free association of images leads the unconscious to the conscious mind. In looking at thepainting we involuntarily become interpreters of dreams. With Dream Caused by the Flight of aBee… Dalí wants to share with the spectator-interpreter a moment from Gala’s subconscious asthis has been interpreted by him with his brushes.08Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee…,Dalí had always been fascinated by dreams, as the following entry in his adolescent diary attests:‘It is cloudy today like yesterday. But I feel fine and I get up. I had a delightfulnight. Dreams are something I love. I usually pass the nights in extraordinaryand delightful dreams, which I do not recount because all the details fly from mymemory.’ 8Long after the most Surrealist years (the 1930s), dreams continue to be a recurrent theme inthroughout Dalí’s career. Also in 1944, the year he painted Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee…,he was invited to design the dream scene for Alfred Hitchcock’s film Spellbound. Dalí told thepress at the time that he mostly dreamt in shades of grey, but that a few times each month,7. DALÍ, S. (1948), 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship. The Dial Press, New York, pp. 181-1868. DALÍ, S. (2003), ‘Un Diari 1919-1920: les meves impressions i records íntims’. In: Obra completa, Barcelona;[Figueres]: Ediciones Destino; Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, vol. 1, Escrits autobiogràfics, p. 196

although this was not a good sign, he dreamt in colour. And it was as a specialist in dreams thatLife magazine commissioned Dalí to write a piece about a nightmare. In ‘Nightmare Journey’ hetold the story of the train journey he made from New York to San Francisco, during which hewas assailed by fears and anxieties about confronting the practical aspects of everyday life. Dalístarts his account with a confession:‘At night I always dream of extremely agreeable things, and it is precisely when Iam perfectly wide-awake, in broad daylight and in contact with practical life, thatmy most hallucinatory nightmares have always occurred.’ 9099. DALÍ, S. ‘Nightmare Journey’, Life, 6 March 1944.

APPENDICEWorks Produced by Dalí in 1944February:Advertisement, ‘John Frederics Golden Arrow Toiletries’, in Vogue, 01/02/1944.Article, ‘Dream vs. Reality’, in Vogue, with drawings by Dalí advertising dresses by HenriBendel, Garfinckel’s and L. S. Ayres, 15/02/1944.March:Advertisement, ‘The 4 Oils of Schiaparelli Shocking Radiance’, in Harper’s Bazaar, 03/1944.Advertisement, ‘John Frederics Golden Arrow Toiletries’, in Harper’s Bazaar, 03/1944.Article, ‘Nightmare Journey’, by Salvador Dalí in Life, 06/03/1944.Article, ‘Uncovering Hidden Faces’, written and illustrated by Salvador Dalí in the magazineTown & Country, 03/1944.April:Design for the cover of Vogue, 01/04/1944.Advertisement, ‘John Frederics Golden Arrow Toiletries’ in Vogue, 01/04/1944.May:Advertisement, ‘Schiaparelli Red Shocking Radiance’ in Vogue, 15/05/1944.Advertisement, ‘Bryans Hosiery’ in Vogue, 15/05/1944.June:Publication of Hidden Faces, Salvador Dalí’s first and only novel, with a his own cover design.10July:Advertisement, ‘The 4 Oils of Schiaparelli Shocking Radiance’, in Harper’s Bazaar, 07/1944.August:Signing of the contract to create the dream scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s film Spellbound.September:Advertisement, Bryans Hosiery, in Vogue, 01/09/1944.Advertisement, ‘Give Ties With Personality’ of ties designed by Salvador Dalí, the TimesMagazine, 17/09/1944.Advertisement, ‘The 4 Oils of Schiaparelli Shocking Radiance’, in the magazine Art News,09/1944.October:Advertisement, ‘Men’s Ties by Salvador Dalí’, for ties designed by Salvador Dalí, in the dailyUnion Morning, 03/10/1944.Advertisement, Bryans Hosiery, in Vogue, 15/10/1944.Set designs for the ballet Sentimental Colloquy, premiered at the International Theater in NewYork, 30/10/1944.Advertisement, McCurrach Ties, for ties designed by Salvador Dalí in Esquire: The Magazine forMen, 10/1944.

November:Paints The Seven Lively Arts to a commission from Billy Rose for the Ziegfield Theater in NewYork.Advertisement, ‘A Red Heart Decorated by Dalí’, in Harper’s Bazaar, 11/1944.Designs a poster on syphilis, which is presented in an exhibition organized by Elsa Schiaparelliin the Wildestein Galleries in New York, 06/11/1944.Advertisement for Vogue in Women’s Wear, 16/11/1944.December:Set, costume and programme designs for the ballet Mad Tristan, which is premiered by the BalletInternational at the International Theater in New York, 15/12/1944.Article, ‘Crazy… Like a Fox’, by Mel Heimer, published in New York Journal American andillustrated with Salvador Dalí’s drawing ‘Hollywood’, 02.12.1944.Advertisement, Bryans Hosiery, in the magazine Art News Annual, 12/1944.Advertisement, ‘Salvador Dalí Designs Ties’, for ties designed by Salvador Dalí, in the daily TheNew York Sun, 06/12/1944.11

NOTES ON THE PRELIMINARY SKETCHES OF THE WORKIrene Civil, Conservation and Restoration Dept.of the Fundació Gala-Salvador DalíThe Dalí Foundation keeps a large number of drawings made in preparation for Dalí works,and they constitute an important source of information about the artist’s creative process andworking method, as well as the techniques and materials he used. In the case of Dream Caused bythe Flight of a Bee... the Foundation has in its collections a pencil and charcoal sketch on tracingpaper of the work’s central composition, in which Dalí emphasises the crossed diagonals thatform the figures (Fig. 1). Then again, the artist makes some tenuous schematic outlines in pencilof the rocks on the right-hand side of the painting and of the figure of Gala, using a page ofa book about geometry dating from 1938, Essai sur le rythme (Fig. 2). And on a sheet from adrawing pad we find the outline of Gala’s outstretched silhouette, sketched rapidly and easilyin pencil (Fig. 3). And finally there is a more complete preliminary study of the dreaming Galafigure, a pencil drawing on Fabriano paper, which is presented at the exhibition along with thefinal painting itself (Fig. 4). This preparatory drawing of the main image was in all likelihoodthe one used as the basis the artist transferred to the wood panel.In addition to his preparatory drawings, Dalí took up again motifs from previous paintingsor designs taken from magazines and other media from mass culture, such as the tiger from acircus advertising poster or the elephant in a photograph illustrating a book about the animalkingdom, which Dalí traced in ink (Fig. 6). Then, when he had the image defined — whetherfrom his preparatory drawing or from a poster photo — he had to transfer it to the final surfaceof the panel. Dalí explained his transfer method in his treatise on painting entitled 50 Secrets ofMagic Craftsmanship; the method basically consisted in utilisation of a transparent intermediateplastic sheet for tracing out and conveying the image to the panel. Two of these plastic sheetsare conserved at the Dalí Foundation: one with the image of the work’s central image of thetiger (Fig. 5) and the other with the image of the elephant (Fig. 7).12

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