Salvador Dalí

A gift from the artist to the late owner and thence by descent

Tokyo, Prince Hotel Gallery; Nagoya, Nagoya Prefectural Museum of Art; Kyoto, Municipal Art Gallery, Salvador Dalí, 1964, no. 64
Charleroi, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Salvador Dalí, peintures, aquarelles, dessins, estampes, 1968, no. 18
Rio de Janeiro, Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, Dalí Monumental, 1998, no. 23

The canvas is not lined. The cork element of the work is secured to the canvas with rope, which penetrates the surface and is knotted on the reverse. There is some dust in the crevices of the element. There are two small losses along the upper edge of the cork element, and there are a few small surface stains visible on the canvas. Examination under UV light reveals a few small areas of fluorescence on the cork element, which may relate to early restorations. There are some fine lines of stable craquelure in the upper right quadrant of the canvas, and a minor spot of paint loss to the centre of the lower edge. There are two very small spots of surface dirt visible towards the centre of the upper edge. Otherwise, this work is in overall good condition.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

The concept of incorporating found objects in works of art first appeared in the art of Duchamp and Man Ray and was later employed by many Dada and Surrealist artists. Dalí, ever a champion of collage and multimedia constructions, utilised cork in the present image and at least one other cork assemblage of 1928, Plage Anthropomorphique, now in the Salvador Dalí Museum in St Petersburg, Florida. In both these works the artist asserts a strong correlation between the shape and textured surface of the cork with feminine sexuality, as underscored by the present title. Playing with these ideas of the ready-made and the trompe l'œil, he also painted an image of cork into the 1950 version of his major oil masterpiece The Madonna of Lligat (Fukuoka Art Museum, Japan).

A variation of the present work was initially executed in 1928, under whose cork element - and hidden from the viewer’s eye - was a painted image of a bather seated on a rock, evocative of the enigmatic and hidden image-within-image iconography that was so prevalent in Surrealist imagery. The cork component of this original work was lost however, and not knowing he would later have the opportunity rectify it in 1970, Dalí created this replacement version in 1964. The fact that Dalí felt the need to recreate this work, and everything it represented and stood for, is testament to the importance of it for him.