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Surrealist Object Functioning Symbolically
Shoe, marble, photographs, clay, hair, glass, wax, wood, and metal
1931/73
Salvador Dalí (1904–1989)
Spain

#surrealistobject #salvadordali #surrealism #surrealistart #surrealistsculpture #c1931 #shoe #warmmilk #sugar #pubichair #eroticism #fetishism #spain
During the year he created this work, Salvador Dalí wrote the foundational text, “Surrealist Objects” (1931), in which he described it at length: “A woman’s shoe, inside of which a glass of warm milk has been placed, in the center of a soft paste in the color of excrement. The mechanism consists of the dipping in the milk of a sugar lump, on which there is a drawing of a shoe, so that the dissolving of the sugar, and consequently of the image of the shoe, may be observed. Several accessories (pubic hairs glued to a sugar lump, an erotic little photograph) complete the object, which is accompanied by a box of spare sugar lumps and a special spoon used for stirring lead pellets inside the shoe.” Bringing together these ordinary and highly charged elements to illicit a psychological response, Dalí conjured Sigmund Freud’s theory of fetishism, which describes the unconscious impulse for sexual gratification fixating on a single body part or object, such as shoes. Throughout the 1930s, shoes continued to appear in the artist’s work, often serving as stand-ins for Gala, the woman who would become his muse, alter ego, and later, his wife.
March 26, 2026 at 3:06 PM