Salvador Dalí - New Now New York Tuesday, March 12, 2024 | Phillips

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  • Salvador Dalí’s Vénus de Milo aux tiroirs (Venus de Milo with Drawers) represents one of the most iconic images made by the famed Surrealist. The figure is immediately recognized as Aphrodite, a well-known subject frequently reproduced throughout art history, the 2nd century BCE Hellenistic marble Venus de Milo sculpture, housed in the Musée du Louvre in Paris. Immediately following this initial identification, though, there are unexpected modifications that elicit an entirely different, more innate response. With Dalí’s addition of drawers, piercing the goddess’s torso, limbs and face, he introduces an element of suggested viewer interaction—drawer handles almost beg to be opened, the shadowy caverns explored, and their viscerally imagined cold metallic solidity felt. The statue has an unapproachable air, a result of the goddess’s divine status as reflected in her super-human size and the artistically venerated status of the classical sculpture. Yet Dalí’s transformation reduces this powerful female figure to an inanimate piece of furniture made to be manipulated. This paradoxical coexistence of instinctual reactions is perplexing, epitomizing an uncanniness that Surrealists drew inspiration from and thus perpetuated through their creations.

     

    Alexandros of Antioch, Venus de Milo, 2nd century, Louvre, Paris. Image: Rafael de Lancer

    First created as a plaster cast commissioned by Marcel Duchamp in 1936, the motif of Venus with drawers reappears throughout Dalí’s career in works spanning media and decades, up until this late bronze edition, conceived in 1964 and cast in 1988. Vénus de Milo aux tiroirs elaborates on and heightens the effects of the earlier iterations, with the artist’s changes in scale and material. Standing over seven feet tall, almost twice the size of the 1936 plaster, this Venus more accurately recreates the original statue from antiquity, heightening the figure’s unapproachable divine nature. Cast in unpainted bronze, this example also returns to the more recognizably classical material of bronze, departing from the original casts disguised as plaster.

     

    This statue represents some of the primary concepts in Surrealism. The appropriation and subsequent reinterpretation of classical imagery in surprising ways was a frequent tool of Dalí and other modern artists, reflecting a desire to situate themselves opposite to tradition, aptly symbolized by the Venus de Milo, both due to the statue’s antique origins and its afterlife as a plaster cast in 19th century museums and artists’ studios. Using well-known visual sources also reflects the Surrealist interest in accessing the subconscious—with the process of modifying an expected Venus figure by adding drawers, Dalí mimics the dream-like tendency to unintentionally construct fantasies with famous images that live in our mind. In a more literal, physical sense, the drawers also refer to a quote by Surrealist influence Sigmund Freud who likened his method of psychoanalysis to opening drawers to one’s soul.i By puncturing the body of Venus de Milo to access her soul, Dalí was investigating the goddess’s subconscious.

     

    iRobert and Nicolas Descharnes, Dalí: Le dur et le mou, Sculptures & Objects, Paris, 2003, p. 32.

    • Provenance

      Gattlen-Galerie, Lausanne
      Private Collection, Europe
      Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York (acquired from the above in 1998)
      Acquired from the above by the present owner

    • Literature

      Robert and Nicolas Descharnes, Dalí: Le dur et le mou, Sculptures & Objects, Paris, 2003, no. 68, pp. 32, 37 (another cast illustrated, p. 37)

    • Artist Biography

      Salvador Dalí

      Spanish • 1904 - 1989

      Salvador Dalí was perhaps the most broadly known member of the Surrealist movement of the early twentieth century. Heavily influenced by Sigmund Freud, the avant-garde style explored consciousness and dream-like states through exaggerated landscapes and bizarre or grotesque imagery. Using the means of painting, sculpture, printmaking, film and literature, Dalí explored these ideas with a meticulous hand and inventive wit. 

      Although known for his role in Surrealism, Dalí was also a seminal example of celebrity showmanship and the cult of personality, a phenomenon that dominates popular culture today. Always a colorful and flamboyant presence with his signature cape, wide-eyed expression and trademark upturned waxed mustache, Dalí was a master of self-promotion and spectacle.

      View More Works

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Vénus de Milo aux tiroirs

incised with the artist’s signature and number “Salvador Dalí E.A. III/IV” upper center of the base; stamped with the foundry mark "C. Valsuani Cire Perdue" on the left side of the base
bronze
86 x 28 x 30 in. (218.4 x 71.1 x 76.2 cm)
Conceived in 1964 and cast in 1988, this work is artist’s proof EA 3 from an edition of 8 plus 4 artist's proofs marked EA, 2 non-commercial proofs marked HCM and 1 foundry proof marked HCF.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$180,000 - 250,000 

Sold for $127,000

Contact Specialist

Avery Semjen
Associate Specialist, Head of New Now Sale
T +1 212 940 1207
asemjen@phillips.com
 

New Now

New York Auction 12 March 2024