拍品專文
The sources from which Dal drew his imagery were manifold: psychoanalysis, Surrealist literature, obsessive private recollections and fetishes. During the period in which the present work was executed, Dal was championing his "paranoiac-critical method": the controlled use of freely-associated imagery and subjects derived from self-induced hallucinations. In discussing this theory, Dal stated, "I believe that the moment is near when, through a process of thought of a paranoiac and active character, it will be possible (simultaneously with automatism and other passive states) to systematize confusion and contribute to the total discrediting of the world of reality" (quoted in D. Ades, Dal, London, 1995, p. 121).
The subject of the present work, a piano with rushing water which supports a cypress tree, appears in other works from this period, and was probably inspired by Dal's visit to the painter Ramn Pichot's house in Cadaques. Dal's family had summered at Pichot's house, and the young Dal spent many hours in the garden, which contained a fountain and cypress trees. Not only does the piano imagery reoccur frequently in Dal's work of 1933-1934, but Dal and Buuel used the piano to symbolize "the whole weight of a decaying society chaining the free expression of the man's desire" in their 1929 film Un chien andalou (ibid, p. 53). The combination of the piano, cypress tree and gushing water take on sexual implications possibly related to fantasies the young Dal had while at Pichot's.
It is interesting to note that in 1933 Dal photographed himself draped in a fashion similiar to that of the figure in the present work.
The subject of the present work, a piano with rushing water which supports a cypress tree, appears in other works from this period, and was probably inspired by Dal's visit to the painter Ramn Pichot's house in Cadaques. Dal's family had summered at Pichot's house, and the young Dal spent many hours in the garden, which contained a fountain and cypress trees. Not only does the piano imagery reoccur frequently in Dal's work of 1933-1934, but Dal and Buuel used the piano to symbolize "the whole weight of a decaying society chaining the free expression of the man's desire" in their 1929 film Un chien andalou (ibid, p. 53). The combination of the piano, cypress tree and gushing water take on sexual implications possibly related to fantasies the young Dal had while at Pichot's.
It is interesting to note that in 1933 Dal photographed himself draped in a fashion similiar to that of the figure in the present work.