Description

Author:

Salvador Dalí i Domènech - Gyula Halász, alias Brassaï

Date:

ca. 1933

Technique:

Photograph and found object or object of automatic origin
Gelatin silver print

Dimensions:

23,2 x 16,4 cm
The dimensions correspond to the original print run of the photograph

Inscriptions:

Dalí's writing appears on the back: morço de coton roule instantanement et l'aisse / il se classe parmi les "otomatismes avortes"
On the back: Morceau de coton hydrophile / roulé instantanément et abandonné / (catégorie des "automatismes avortés)

Location:

Centre Pompidou - Musée national d'art moderne - Centre de création industrielle, Paris

Between 1932-1933, Dalí took on the artistic direction of a series of photographs made with Gyula Halász, alias Brassaï (1899-1984), in which certain objects, probably of automatic origin, acquire a new conceptual and artistic dimension, grounded in the essence of the photographic image. Several of these photographs were published anonymously in 1933 in the magazine Minotaure, under the heading ‘Sculptures involontaires’, each with a descriptive title drawing attention to details of the work. A number of these photographs that were not made public at the time constitute further examples of this type of creation. This is the case of this photograph, conserved in the Centre de création industrielle at the Pompidou Centre in Paris, with a handwritten note by Dalí on the back establishing the title of this creation.

Observations

Bibliography

1. Brassaï, Conversations avec Picasso, Gallimard, [Paris], 1964, p. 49
2. Brassaï, Picasso and company, Doubleday, New York, 1966, p. 36
3. Brassaï, Centre Pompidou, Seuil, Paris, 2000, pp. 134, 317, ill., indirect image
4. La Subversion des images : surrealisme, photographie, film, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2009, pp. 347, 461, ill., indirect image
5. Didier Ottinger, Dictionnaire de l'objet surréaliste, Gallimard, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2013, pp. [245], 246, [307], ill. (reversed image)
6. Anna Dezeuze, Julia Kelly, Found sculpture and photography from surrealism to contemporary art, Ashgate, Farnham, UK, Burlington, VT, 2013, pp. 5-9, [13]-18, 30, 99-102

Related works

• «Symmetrically» rolled-up bus ticket, forming a rare mechanism of automatism with evident germs of stereotypes 1932-1933
• Ornamental Modern Style bread escapes the soft stereotype 1932-1933
• Piece of soap presenting Modern Style automatic shapes, found in a washbasin 1932-1933
• The morphological accident of the squeezed toothpaste does not escape the fine ornamental stereotype 1932-1933
• Elementary rolling-up obtained from a «mental defective» 1932-1933
• Rolled-up bus ticket, found in the pocket of an average bureaucrat (Crédit Lyonnais); the most frequent characteristics of «Modern Style» 1932-1933
• The Envelope ca. 1933
• Untitled. Automatic object ca. 1933
• Untitled. Automatic object ca. 1933
• Shell ca. 1933

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