Apparition of a Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach
ArtistSalvador Dalí
Year1938
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions114.8 cm × 143.8 cm (45.2 in × 56.6 in)
LocationWadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut

Apparition of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach (1938) is a painting by the Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí. This work belongs to a group of paintings by Dalí that instantiate an optical illusion called the double, multiple, or ambiguous image.[1][2][3][4][5][6]

The painting is dominated by a depiction of a stemmed silver fruit bowl containing pears. A deliberately created optical illusion of the human face occupies the same space as the dish; the fruits suggest wavy hair, the dish's bowl becomes the forehead, the stem of the dish serves as the bridge of the nose, and the dish's foot doubles as the chin. The eyes of the large face, however, are formed by background objects lying on the sand at the edge of the strand — deeper in the image — rather than sharing form with the fruit dish. The face's right eye is what appears to be a clay vase lying on its side, and the face's left eye a sprawling child. A similar face reappears other paintings by Dalí, including The Endless Enigma.[7][8]

In the middle ground of the scene, where the sand of the beach appears to end, a small version of the fruit dish/face can be seen on the ground with a few pears scattered near it. Another face appears further back, just to the right of the elbow of the nude male figure. In the same area of the painting, two dogs are playing along a path in the distance. One of those dogs is itself an echo of the immense, illusionary figure of a dog which stretches from the left to the right margin of the painting, with the dog's collar formed by a multi-arched bridge or aqueduct in the landscape beyond. This repetition of shapes is a frequent motif in Dalí's surrealist works.[1]

Apparition of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach is part of the Ella Gallup Sumner and Mary Catlin Sumner Collection of the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut.[9]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Finkelstein, Haim (1983). "Salvador Dalí: Double and Multiple Images". American Imago. 40 (4): 311–335. ISSN 0065-860X. JSTOR 26303569.
  2. ^ Martinez-Conde, Susana; Conley, Dave; Hine, Hank; Kropf, Joan; Tush, Peter; Ayala, Andrea; Macknik, Stephen L. (2015). "Marvels of illusion: illusion and perception in the art of Salvador Dali". Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. 9: 496. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2015.00496. ISSN 1662-5161. PMC 4586274. PMID 26483651.
  3. ^ LaFountain, Marc J. (2016). Dali and Postmodernism : This Is Not an Essence. Ithaca: State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-1-4384-0989-4. OCLC 953656974.
  4. ^ Wolff, Theodore F. (1997). Art criticism and education. George Geahigan. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. pp. 166–67. ISBN 0-252-06614-6. OCLC 35397771.
  5. ^ Toyne, Jessica (2021-04-27). Dali: Essential Artists. Character-19.
  6. ^ Trumper, Mark Alan. Landscapes Unique: Manuscripts to Paranoics. [Master's thesis. Eastern Illinois University.] Booth Library of Eastern Illinois University. https://thekeep.eiu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4712&context=theses
  7. ^ Ades, Dawn (2000). Dalí's Optical Illusions. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. Hartford, Conn.: Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. ISBN 0-300-08177-4. OCLC 41834269.((cite book)): CS1 maint: date and year (link)
  8. ^ Seckel, Al (2004). Masters of deception : Escher, Dalí & the artists of optical illusion. Douglas R. Hofstadter. New York. p. 37. ISBN 1-4027-0577-8. OCLC 54677815.((cite book)): CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  9. ^ "Surreal Scenes". Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art. Retrieved 2021-11-02.

External links


Salvador Dalí
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