Vénus de Milo aux tiroirs

Author: Marijke Peyser

In the early 1920s Salvador Dalí discovered the writings of the Viennese psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. Traumdeutung (1899-1900), in particular, made an overwhelming impression on him: [the work] presented itself to me as one of the capital discoveries of my life, and I was seized with a real vice of self-interpretation, not only of my dreams but of everything that happened to me, however accidental it might seem at first glance.’^[1]

The classical statue of Venus appears to be made of plaster, but is actually bronze, painted white. Dalí made six openings in the trunk. In these rectangular voids he placed drawers with tufts of fur instead of knobs. In creating this alienating sculpture the artist had in mind ‘an allegory of psychoanalysis ... that shows the pleasure with which we embrace the many narcissistic smells that rise from all our drawers’.[2] Later Dalí added that the only difference between immortal Greece and our current age was Sigmund Freud. He had discovered that the human body ‘has countless secret drawers that can only be opened with the aid of psychoanalysis’.^[3] Secret drawers are places where dreams, desires and obsessions, often of a sexual nature, are cherished, but also hidden. ‘This sculpture could cure us from psychoanalysis,’ said the artist.^[4]

The subject of ‘woman with drawers’ recurs in many variations in his oeuvre. During a stay in London with his patron Edward James he drew and painted respectively City of Drawers and Le cabinet anthropomorphique (both in 1936).^[5] On the cover Dalí designed for the Surrealist magazine Minotaure. Revue artistique et littéraire the minotaur’s chest is a half-opened drawer.^[6] The figure on the cover of the catalogue for Dalí’s exhibition in the Julien Levy Gallery in New York (December 1936 – January 1937) has two breasts in the shape of concertinas with illustrations of the exhibited works. The two works on paper, Cannibalisme des tiroirs and Femmes aux tiroirs (both dating from 1937), are depictions of aggression and hate, against the background of the Spanish Civil War.

In 1929 André Breton asked his friends to think of ideas that could breathe new life into the group. Dalí’s suggestion, to make Surrealist objects, was published in Le Surréalisme au service de la révolution.^[7] In his short article Dalí described six different types of objects.^[8] In his autobiography he described how he devoted himself to the promotion of the Surrealist object, his weapon against the dreams (les récits de rêve) and to automatic writing, both spearheads of Breton’s outlook in the first years of Surrealism: ‘The Surrealist object must be totally impractical and irrational. These Surrealist objects compete with useful and practical objects. In this violent struggle, which looks like a cockfight, the normal object will often come off worSt’^[9] In May 1936 Breton put together Exposition surréaliste d’objets, a trail-blazing exhibition about Surrealist objects in Charles Ratton’s gallery in Paris. Dalí called it ‘the best Surrealist group manifestation ever’.^[10]