L’oeil du peintre 1941

Salvador Dalí made this ink, watercolour and crayon drawing called L’oeil du peintre - or ‘The Eye of the Painter’ - sometime around 1944. It's full of hallucinatory images rendered with incredibly fine lines and delicate washes of colour. It feels like a kind of automatic drawing, a process of free association. The lines feel frantic, and the forms are always on the verge of dissolving. Look at the telephone receiver dangling from the tree, and the eye-like creature in the centre of the composition. These objects are being pulled apart by unseen forces. Dalí often used bizarre juxtapositions like this to create a dreamlike atmosphere. His work really speaks to the subconscious, and the endless possibilities of the imagination. There’s a clear debt to Surrealism in the way Dalí invites us to interpret these illogical scenes through our own personal experiences. You might find resonances with the work of artists like Giorgio de Chirico, or even later artists like Philip Guston, who both embrace a certain kind of absurdity. Ultimately, the meaning is open to interpretation, and that's what makes it so compelling.