The Ghost of Vermeer of Delft Which Can Be Used as a Table
The Ghost of Vermeer of Delft Which Can Be Used as a Table | |
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Artist | Salvador Dalí |
Year | 1934 |
Medium | Oil on panel |
Dimensions | 18.1 cm × 13.97 cm (7.13 in × 5.5 in) |
Location | Salvador Dalí Museum, St. Petersburg, Florida |
The Ghost of Vermeer of Delft Which Can Be Used as a Table is a small Surrealist oil painting by Salvador Dalí. Its full title is The Ghost of Vermeer of Delft Which Can Be Used as a Table (Phenomenologic Theory of Furniture-Nutrition).[1] It makes reference to The Art of Painting by Johannes Vermeer, a famous seventeenth-century work in which a painter, thought to be a self-portrait of Vermeer, is depicted with his back to the viewer, in distinctive costume.[2] It is one of a number of paintings expressive of Dalí's enormous admiration for Vermeer.
Vermeer is represented as a dark spindly figure in a kneeling position. The figure's outstretched leg serves as a tabletop surface, on which sits a bottle and a small glass. This leg tapers to a baluster-like stub; there is a shoe nearby. The walls and the distant views of the mountains are based on real views near Dalí's home in Port Lligat.[3] In Vermeer's painting the artist leans on a maulstick, and his hand is painted with an unusual blurriness, perhaps to indicate movement. In Dalí's painting Vermeer rests the same arm on a crutch.
It is unsigned and undated but known to have been completed c.1934.[4] It is currently on display at the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, on loan from the E. and A. Reynolds Morse collection.
Related works
Around 1934, Dalí produced several other works inspired by Vermeer's The Art of Painting:
- Masquerader, Intoxicated by the Limpid Atmosphere (private collection)
- The Ghost of Vermeer of Delft (private collection, Switzerland)
- Enigmatic Elements in a Landscape (Fundació Gala-Salvador Dalí, Figueres)
- Spectre of Vermeer's Chair (private collection)[5]
Dalí revered Vermeer, and also drew several times on his The Lacemaker, for instance in Paranoiac-Critical Study of Vermeer's Lacemaker.[6] Dali also painted a copy of The Lacemaker on commission from collector Robert Lehman. The Ghost of Vermeer should also be seen in the context of his other reworkings of historic paintings, such as several works inspired by Jean-François Millet's The Angelus. Images of anthropomorphic furniture as well as crutch-like objects are common in this period of his career.
See also
References
- ^ Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation, Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, 1910-1951 accessed 13 May 2013
- ^ The Essential Vermeer, The Art of Painting accessed 13 May 2013
- ^ The Salvador Dalí Society, Dalí’s ‘Ghost of Vermeer’ a Miniature ‘Huge’ in Importance Archived 2013-03-22 at the Wayback Machine accessed 13 May2013
- ^ Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation, Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, 1910–1951 accessed 13 May 2013
- ^ Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation, Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings, 1910-1951 accessed 13 May 2013
- ^ Pops, Martin (1979). "Preface: Vermeer 1632–1675". Salmagundi (44–45): 3–6.
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- List of works
- Landscape Near Figueras (1910)
- Vilabertran (1913)
- Cabaret Scene (1922)
- Portrait of My Father (1925)
- Young Woman at a Window (1925)
- The Basket of Bread (1926)
- Apparatus and Hand (1927)
- The Lugubrious Game (1929)
- The First Days of Spring (1929)
- The Accommodations of Desire (1929)
- The Great Masturbator (1929)
- The Invisible Man (1929–1932)
- The Persistence of Memory (1931)
- The Ghost of Vermeer of Delft Which Can Be Used as a Table (1934)
- Morphological Echo (1934–1936)
- A Chemist Lifting with Extreme Precaution the Cuticle of a Grand Piano (1936)
- Couple with Their Heads Full of Clouds (1936, 1937)
- Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War) (1936)
- The Burning Giraffe (1937)
- Metamorphosis of Narcissus (1937)
- Swans Reflecting Elephants (1937)
- Apparition of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach (1938)
- The Enigma of Hitler (1939)
- Shirley Temple, The Youngest, Most Sacred Monster of the Cinema in Her Time (1939)
- The Face of War (1940)
- Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire (1940)
- Geopoliticus Child Watching the Birth of the New Man (1943)
- The Seven Lively Arts (1944)
- Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening (1944)
- Basket of Bread (1945)
- The Apotheosis of Homer (1945)
- The Temptation of St. Anthony (1946)
- The Elephants (1948)
- Cartel de Don Juan Tenorio (1949)
- Leda Atomica (1949)
- The Madonna of Port Lligat (1949)
- Christ of Saint John of the Cross (1951)
- Galatea of the Spheres (1952)
- The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory (1952–1954)
- The Colossus of Rhodes (1954)
- Crucifixion (Corpus Hypercubus) (1954)
- Young Virgin Auto-Sodomized by the Horns of Her Own Chastity (1954)
- The Sacrament of the Last Supper (1955)
- Living Still Life (1956)
- The Seven Lively Arts (1957)
- The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus (1958–59)
- The Ecumenical Council (1959–60)
- Galacidalacidesoxyribonucleicacid (1963)
- La Gare de Perpignan (1965)
- Tuna Fishing (1966–67)
- The Hallucinogenic Toreador (1968–1970)
- La Toile Daligram (1972)
- Dalí Seen from the Back Painting Gala from the Back Eternalised by Six Virtual Corneas Provisionally Reflected by Six Real Mirrors (1972–1973)
- Lincoln in Dalivision (1977)
- The Swallow's Tail (1983)
- Lobster Telephone (1936)
- Lobster dress (1937)
- Mae West Lips Sofa (1937)
- Champagne Standard Lamps (1938)
- Rainy Taxi (1938)
- A Logician Devil (1951)
- Giraffes on Horseback Salad (1937)
- The Secret Life of Salvador Dalí (1942)
- Dali's Mustache (1954) (with Philippe Halsman)
- Être Dieu (1985)
- Un Chien Andalou (1929)
- L'Age d'Or (1930)
- Spellbound (1945, dream sequence)
- Destino (1946, completed 2003)
and costumes
- Mariana Pineda (1927 production)
- Gala Dalí (wife)
- Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation
- Paranoiac-critical method
- Salvador Dalí and dance
- Chupa Chups
- Dalí Atomicus (1948 photograph)
- Salvador Dalí (1966 film)
- The Death of Salvador Dali (2005 film)
- Little Ashes (2008 film)
- Midnight in Paris (2011 film)
- Dalíland (2022 film)
- "Salvador Dalí" (song)
- 2919 Dali (asteroid)
- Dali crater
- Salvador Dalí Desert
- Dalí cross