Vénus de Milo aux tiroirs (Venus de Milo with Drawers), 1936/64

Conceived in plaster in 1936 and cast in 1964 by Max Clarac, Paris. This work is number 0 from an edition of six numbered copies 0/0 to 0/5 plus four artist's proofs.

Conceived in 1936, the present work is one of the icons of Surrealism. Recasting the famed Venus de Milo statue as a “Surrealist object,” Dalí transformed the pinnacle of classicism into a modern masterwork. Key to the sculpture’s new meaning was Dalí’s addition of drawers throughout the body of the sculpture. One of the artist’s most enduring and evocative motifs, drawers represented for Dalí access to the subconscious. When speaking about his usage of them throughout his oeuvre, he explained, “In the Greek civilization, you see, there exists no introspection, no Freud, no Christianity. With the addition of drawers it is possible to look inside the body of the Venus de Milo to the soul: Thus Dalí creates a Freudian and Christian appearance in the Greek civilization... The only difference between immortal Greece and the modern era is Sigmund Freud who believed that the human body—purely Neoplatonic in the time of the Greeks—is now filled with secret drawers that only psychoanalysis can open.” [1] An earlier, plaster example was included in the seminal Salvador Dalí exhibition at Julien Levy Gallery in New York in 1939. This present 1964 edition demonstrates Dalí’s method of painting bronze to appear as marble—furthering the dialogue between the modern and antiquity.

[1] Salvador Dalí, quoted in Playboy, July 1964, 42–44.