Illustration pour l'article "The American City Night and Day by Dalí" du journal American Weekly du 31 mars 1935 (Illustration for the article "The American City Night and Day" by Dalí) in American Weekly March 31, 1935), 1935

A bearded man with downcast eyes forcibly clutches a grasshopper, squeezing its abdomen as its blood flows down his fingers. Dapperly dressed in a jacket and tie, he smiles menacingly as he inhales the insect’s carcass before presumably popping it into his mouth. His forehead is slit open, exposing a dark interior, held together by safety pins that cast delicate shadows upon his flesh, while his hair is rolled back upon two bones that uncannily appear as appendages.

The present work was executed in charcoal for the popular publication,The American Weekly, shortly after Dalí's arrival in New York. Commissioned by the newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, Dalí published seven illustrated articles between December 1934 and July 1935. He would continue to provide illustrations through 1938, as a record of his impressions of daily life in the United States. The characters who feature within the vignettes in the publication appear as stereotypes—the denizens of the city as Dalí both perceives and imagines them to be. These illustrations ultimately proved a critique of underlying social structures, at once both satirical and exactingly sharp.