Debris of an Automobile Giving Birth to a Blind Horse Biting a Telephone 1938

Salvador Dalí conjured this strange world with paint, sometime around 1938. It’s all in the details, isn't it? Look at how he builds this scene, layer upon layer. The color palette? Dark and moody, with flickers of light that just barely illuminate the odd happenings. The texture is smooth, almost like a dream, but there’s a definite physicality to the medium. He uses the paint to create shadows and depth. And, oh, that horse! It's like Dali is playing a game of visual free association. It’s a horse, but also a car, but also…something else entirely. Like in the work of Francis Bacon, we see the grotesque but also the beautifully rendered. It’s unsettling, sure, but isn’t that kind of the point? Art doesn’t always have to be pretty. It can be weird, messy, and thought-provoking, all at the same time.