Téléphone homard (Lobster Telephone), circa 1936/77

This work executed circa 1977 is a reconstruction of the surrealist object and shown at the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme, at the Galerie des Beaux-Arts, Paris in 1938. In 1973, Dalí entrusted Max Clarac-Sérou of the Galerie du Dragon, Paris, with producing re-editions of his iconic Surrealist objects and sculpture. Nicolas and Olivier Descharnes have confirmed the authenticity of this work.

I do not understand why, when I ask for a grilled lobster in a restaurant, I am never served a cooked telephone.
—Salvador Dalí [1]

In 1935, Salvador Dalí was asked by The American Weekly to make a series of drawings based on his impressions of New York. In one work, he inscribed a newsworthy headline reading, “New York Dream—Man Finds Lobster in Place of Phone.” The following year, Dalí, along with his friend and patron Edward James, created his first Téléphone homard, which was exhibited in 1938 at the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme, at the Galerie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Téléphone homard was one of several works meant to be included in James’s London home, which Dalí and James conceived as a single elaborate artwork that would transform the quotidian space into an evocative and eclectic environment. Téléphone homard furthered the Duchampian language of the readymade to what Dalí termed “the Surrealist object.” The artist believed that by combining the everyday in absurd juxtaposes, the true spectrum of human imagination could be uncovered.

[1] Salvador Dalí, The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, 1942, 271.