%3Ci%3ESkull%20with%20Its%20Lyric%20Appendage%20Leaning%20on%20a%20Night%20Table%20Which%20Should%20Have%20the%20Exact%20Temperature%20of%20a%20Cardinal%20Bird%27s%20Nest%3C%2Fi%3E
Skull with Its Lyric Appendage Leaning on a Night Table Which Should Have the Exact Temperature of a Cardinal Bird's Nest

Artwork Details

Title
Skull with Its Lyric Appendage Leaning on a Night Table Which Should Have the Exact Temperature of a Cardinal Bird's Nest

Maker
Salvador Dalí
Date Made
1934
Materials
Oil on panel
Dimensions
Image: 9 1/2 in x 7 1/2 in
Accession ID Number
2011.2
Credit Line
Collection of The Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, FL (USA); Gift of A. Reynolds & Eleanor Morse 2011.2
Location
ON VIEW
Copyright
In the USA ©Salvador Dalí Museum, Inc. St. Petersburg, FL 2023 / Worldwide rights ©Salvador Dalí. Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí (Artists Rights Society), 2023.

Supplemental material

Description

The image of the piano has numerous representations that stem from childhood memories of musical gatherings of family and friends. Dalí exploits a visual rhyme that morphologically equates teeth with the keys of a grand piano. In keeping with his theories of soft and hard matter, Dalí imagines a fluid world in which the animate is transposed into the inanimate, and vice versa.

"Skull with Lyric Appendage…" plays on this idea of anxiety and threat. Dalí depicts a tiny bird flying close to the ground in the lower right corner of the painting. The lyrical music of the cardinal contrasts sharply with the harsh, desert like conditions of the barren landscape and the terrifying scene of aggression that is figured in the central image.

This mature surrealist painting represents a strange phantom situated in a landscape identified as the fishing village of Port Lligat, where Dalí lived. And the disturbingly distorted, anamorphic skull is transformed into a soft grand piano propped up by a crutch. The skull itself is cantilevered against the bedside table which appears in other of Dalí's paintings of this period and point to childhood trauma in the Freudian sense of the term. The process of metamorphosis is emphasized in that the skull's teeth gradually become the keys of the piano, through which a crack intrudes. In this painting, Dalí demonstrates that high culture, as symbolized by the piano, is in a process of degradation. Further death is present not only in the phallically distorted skull, but Dalí reminds us that alongside the Freud's theory of the erotic drive there is the death drive, man's propensity towards self-destruction.

Exhibition History:
1934, New York, Julien Levy Gallery, “Dali”
1394, Paris, Galerie Jacques Bonjean, "Exposition Dali"
1936, London, Alex, Reid & Lefevre, Ltd., “Salvador Dali”
1939, San Francisco, San Francisco Golden Gate International Exposition, “Contemporary Art of 79 Countries”
1954, Roma, Sale dell'Aurora Pallavicini, “Mostra di quadri disegni ed oreficerie di Salvador Dalí”
1954, Venice, “Mostra di quadri disegni ed oreficerie di Salvador Dalí”
1954, Milan, “Mostra di quadri disegni ed oreficerie di Salvador Dalí”
1965, New York, Gallery of Modern Art, “Salvador Dalí, 1910-1965”
2000, Hartford, Connecticut, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, “Dalí's Optical Illusions”
2000, Washington, D.C., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, “Dalí's Optical Illusions”
2000, Edinburgh, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, “Dalí's Optical Illusions”
2007, St. Petersburg, Fl., Salvador Dalí Museum, “Dalí and the Spanish Baroque”
2016, Tokyo, National Art Center, “Salvador Dalí”
2016, Kyoto, Kyoto Municipal Museum, “Salvador Dalí”

Keywords