Salvador Dali (Spanish, 1904-1989)

Otorhinological Head of Venus de Milo by Salvador Dali (1964)

Bronze, 60cm x 27cm x 34cm

Literature: Robert & Nicolas Descharnes, Catalogue Raisonne “Le Dur et Le Mou”, pg. 35, Ref #64

Each example is accompanied by certification of authenticity from Fundacio Gala-Salvador Dali, Figueras, Spain.

Otorhinological Head of Venus (Wax model in the Van Beunnigue Museum in Rotterdam)- surrealistic

sculpture: With this metamorphosis of the head of Venus de Milo, Dali wants to create a new goddess of hearing, a sort of Mediterranean family monster. The sense of smell finds itself displaced to the left side. “It is a new anatomical gift whose practical function for a human being,” according to Professor Vilain, a celebrated surgeon and friend of Dali, “remains more problematic. Imagine a cold in the neck!” For the gods of mythology, nothing as such: symmetry, asymmetry, or the displacing of multiplication of the organs of the five senses are not difficult and have their value. Apart from a slight confusion of personages, Dali took up again and only changed the subject of the ear, as he told Robert Descharnes (notes for Dali de Gala): “Alchemy of the Rabelaisian ear through the birth through the ear (Pantagruel being born through the ear)”. It does not deal with the birth of Pantagruel but that of Gargantua: “He entered in a deep vein and climbing through the diaphragm just underneath the shoulders, at a place where the vein in question divides in two, he too made his way to the left and left the ear of the same side.” Luther confirms this Christ-like birth through the ear: “only the ears are the organs of the Christian. The Virgin conceived Christ through the ear.” (Robert Descharnes, Le Dur et le Mou, pg. 35)