Monument à Kant
Monument to Kant
Cat. no. OE 27
Monument à Kant
Monument to Kant
Description
The catalogue of the Exposition surréaliste d’objets, held at the Charles Ratton Gallery in Paris in 1936, lists a Surrealist object by Dalí entitled Hommage à Kant, a title that can be linked to one of the works that appear in photographs of this exhibition. According to the catalogue of the 1936 Surrealism exhibition, held fifty years later at the Zabriskie Gallery in New York, the base of this object quotes an excerpt from the Prussian philosopher’s Critique of Pure Reason. In The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí, the artist remarks that during his adolescence, his favourite reading was Kant: ‘I felt that a man like Kant, who wrote such important and useless books, must be a real angel! My eagerness to read what I did not understand, stronger than my will, must have obeyed a violent necessity for spiritual nourishment of my soul, and just as a calcium deficiency in certain weakened organisms of children causes them blindly and irresistibly to break off and eat the lime and plaster on walls, so my spirit must have needed that categorical imperative, which I chewed and rechewed for two consecutive years without succeeding in swallowing it. But one day I did swallow it’.
Exhibitions
- 1936, Paris, Charles Ratton, Exposition Surréaliste d'Objets, 22/05/1936 - 29/05/1936, no reference
- 1986, New York, Zabriskie Gallery, 1936 Surrealism: objects, photographs, collages, documents, 18/02/1986 - 04/04/1986, no reference
- 1991, Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, André Breton, la beauté convulsive, 25/04/1991 - 26/08/1991
Bibliography
- Exposition Surréaliste d'Objets, Charles Ratton, Paris, 1936, p. [5]
- Carlton Lake, In quest of Dali, G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1969, p. 69
- Dawn Ades, Dada and surrealism reviewed, Arts Council of Great Britain, London, 1978, pp. 301, 322, ill., indirect image
- La Vie publique de Salvador Dalí, Centre Georges Pompidou, Musée National d'Art moderne, Paris, 1980, p. 55
- 400 obras de Salvador Dalí de 1914 a 1983, Obra Cultural de la Caixa de Pensions, [Madrid], 1983, p. 106
- 1936 Surrealism : objects, photographs, collages, documents, Zabriskie Gallery, New York, 1986, pp. 21-22, ill.
- Salvador Dalí, 1904-1989, Gerd Hatje, Stuttgart, 1989, p. XXVII, ill.
- Los Dalís de Dalí: colección del museo nacional centro de arte reina Sofía, Centro cultural, Arte contemporaneo, México D. F., 1990, p. 29, ill.
- El Objeto surrealista en España, Museo de Teruel, Fundació Caixa de Barcelona, Teruel, [Barcelona], 1990, p. 157, ill.
- L'Objecte surrealista a Espanya, Diputació Provincial de Teruel, Fundació Caixa de Barcelona, Teruel, Barcelona, 1990, p. 157, ill.
- André Breton, la beauté convulsive, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1991, pp. 304, 484, ill., detail
- André Breton y el surrealismo, Ministerio de Cultura, [Madrid], 1991, pp. 196, 264, ill., detail
- Meredith Etherington-Smith, The Persistence of memory : a biography of Dalí, Random House, New York, 1993, p. 203
- El Objeto surrealista, IVAM Centre Julio González, Generalitat Valenciana. Conselleria de Cultura, Educació i Ciència, [València], 1997, p. 122, ill., indirect image
- Gérard Durozoi, Histoire du mouvement surréaliste, Hazan, Paris, 1997, p. 228, ill., indirect image
- Gérard Durozoi, History of the surrealist movement, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, London, 2002, p. [224], ill., indirect image
- Joan R. Kropf, Dalí objects / Dalí fetishes, Salvador Dalí Museum, Florida, 2002, p. 24
- Robert Descharnes, Nicolas Descharnes, Dalí : le dur et le mou : sortilège et magie des formes, sculptures et objets, Eccart, [Azay le Rideau], 2003, pp. 46-47, ill.
- Francisco Javier San Martín, Dalí-Duchamp : una fraternidad oculta, Alianza, Madrid, 2004, p. 53
- Obra completa : Álbum, Destino, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Sociedad Estatal de Conmemoraciones Culturales, Barcelona, [Figueres], [Madrid], 2004, p. 110
- Salvador Dalí: an illustrated life, Tate Publishing, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Sociedad Estatal de Conmemoraciones Culturales - Ministerio de Cultura, London, [Figueres], [Madrid], 2007, p. 110
- L'Objecte català a la llum del surrealisme, Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, Barcelona, 2007, pp. 66, 131
- Ferran Aisa, Les Avantguardes : surrealisme i revolució, 1914-1939, Base, Barcelona, 2008, p. 302
- Salvador Dalí : a surrealist in Istanbul, Sabanci University - Sakip Sabanci Museum, Istanbul, 2008, p. 395
- Johanna Malt, Obscure objects of desire : surrealism, fetishism, and politics, Oxford University Press, New York, 2008, p. 116
- William Jeffett, Dalí doubled : from surrealism to the self : a new critical view of Dalí, The Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, 2010, pp. 98-99
- Carmen Fernández Aparicio, Adelina Moya, Josefina Alix, Forma, signo y realidad: escultura española 1900-1935 = Forma, zeinua eta errealitatea: espainiar eskultura 1900-1935, Fundación Museo Jorge Oteiza = Jorge Oteiza Fundazio Museoa, Alzuza, 2010, p. 82
- Didier Ottinger, Dictionnaire de l'objet surréaliste, Gallimard, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2013, p. 76, ill., indirect image
- Dalí / Duchamp, Royal Academy of Arts, The Dalí Museum, London, St. Petersburg, FL, 2017, pp. 30-31, 33, ill., indirect image
Reproduction Rights
The copyright on Salvador Dalí's works, included those that are reproduced in this Web page, is held by the Spanish State and has been granted in exclusivity to the Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí.
Pursuant to intellectual property laws in force, the total or partial reproduction, distribution, transformation, public communication, interactively making available to the public, as well as any other exploitation, by any means, of the works included in this Web page is prohibited.
Any exploitation of Salvador Dalí's works is subject to the prior application and clearance of the relevant licence issued by VEGAP (tel. 91 532 66 32 and 93 201 03 31 ; www.vegap.es). Copyright infringement will be prosecuted according to Laws.
