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Venus with Drawers and Pompoms
Date: 1936
Material Used: Plaster cast
Size: 39 1/2 x 11 5/8 x 11 inches
As a child, Dali's first sculpture was a clay copy of the Venus de Milo. He later recalled, "My first experience as a sculptor gave me an unknown and delicious erotic joy." The original Venus de Milo, now on display at the Louvre Museum, is one of the most famous works of Greek antiquity, a marble sculpture of the goddess of love. This armless figure has become the icon of classical female beauty. The goddess Venus held a great attraction for Dali, who returned to her throughout his career. She is the focus of his 1939 Dream of Venus Pavilion at the World's Fair, where the viewer is invited to walk through her dreams. In The Hallucinogenic Toreador of 1969, shadows across her body become the source for an illusion of a bullfighter's face. In a 1973 hologram, she appears as musician Alice Cooper's microphone.
For this 1936 Surrealist object, Dali cuts six drawers into Venus, transforming the Greek goddess into a piece of living furniture, a visual pun on the phrase "chest" of drawers, also known as a bureau. Her simple, white surface, is complemented by elegant fur knobs, a tribute to her beauty and erotic potential. In addition, the drawers are a metaphor for the way Freudian psychoanalysis opens the hidden areas of the unconscious. In Dali's words, "Freud discovered the world of the subconscious on the tumid surfaces of ancient bodies, and Dali cut drawers into it."
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