ANIMAL ATTRACTION
This surreal pop oil is a direct inspiration of Salvador’s Dali 1944 masterpiece “Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening”. As a very young child I had always remembered seeing this painting in art books. I somehow related it to the cover of The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus Programs that I would get every year with my Father upon leaving the show. As I later grew to love the works of Dali, it was clear that I wanted to mimic this image some day.I added the words DREAM, SOAR and BREATHE to create my own theme to the piece.
ANIMAL ATTRACTION .. Oil on canvas 60/48 2007 $3500 Limited Edition Giclees Available Upon Request
About Dali’s work “Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening”
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 rifle with fixed 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 Dalí’s The Temptations of St. Anthony, carries on its back an obelisk — like Bernini’s Elephant and Obeliskin the Piazza Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome.[4][5]
