Dalí Theatre-Museum. The Collection

Dalí i Domènech, Salvador

Phantom Cart

Date
1933
Technique
Oil on panel
Dimensions
19 x 24,1 cm
Location
Dalí Theatre-Museum

In Phantom Cart, we see, at the centre of a bright arid plain, a two-wheeled wagon heading towards a city. The shape of the cart seems to blend with the city, thus becoming its own destination. The effect is an illusion of perspective in which the painter uses his skill to try to confuse us once again. Where we expect to see the wheels, there are instead two stakes driven into the ground. The characters seen sitting in the wagon are identified with the architecture of the city in the background. In this painting, as in other optical illusions used by the painter, an important role is played by the technique Dalí named the paranoiac-critical method: "spontaneous method of irrational knowledge based on the critical and systematic objectivity of the associations and interpretations of delirious phenomena." We see a cart and a city or both elements at the same time.

© Salvador Dalí, Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres, 2014.

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  • Phantom Cart

    Phantom Cart