Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening
| Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening |
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| Artist | Salvador Dalí |
| Year | 1944 |
| Medium | Oil on wood |
| Dimensions | 51 cm × 40.5 cm (20 in × 15.9 in) |
| Location | Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid |
Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening (1944) is a surrealist painting by Salvador Dalí. A short, alternate title for the painting is Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee. It was painted in 1944, while Dalí and his wife, Gala, were living in America.
In this "hand-painted dream photograph", as Dalí generally called his paintings, there is a seascape of distant horizons and calm waters, perhaps Port Lligat, amidst which Gala is the subject of the scene. Next to the naked body of the sleeping woman, which levitates above a flat rock that floats above the sea, Dalí depicts two suspended droplets of water and a pomegranate, a Christian symbol of fertility and resurrection. Above the pomegranate flies a bee, an insect that traditionally symbolizes the Virgin.
In the upper left of the painting what seems to be a Yelloweye rockfish bursts out of the pomegranate, and in turn spews out a tiger that then spews out another tiger and a rifle with a bayonet that is about to sting Gala in the arm. Above them is Dalí's first use of an elephant with long flamingo legs, found in his later compositions such as The Temptation of St. Anthony. The elephant carries on its back an obelisk, inspired by Bernini’s Elephant and Obelisk in Rome's Piazza Santa Maria sopra Minerva.
The bayonet, as a symbol of the stinging bee, may represent the woman's abrupt awakening from her otherwise peaceful dream. This is an example of Sigmund Freud's influence on surrealist art and Dalí's attempts to explore the world of dreams in a dreamscape.
The elephant is a distorted version of the Piazza della Minerva sculpture Elephant and Obelisk by Gian Lorenzo Bernini facing the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome. The smaller pomegranate floating between two droplets of water may symbolize Venus, especially because of the heart-shaped shadow it casts. It may also be used as a Christian symbol of fertility and resurrection. This female symbolism may contrast with the phallic symbolism of the threatening creatures.
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