The Accommodations of Desire

Dali made this small panel in the summer of 1929, the summer he fell for Gala, then married to the French poet Paul Eluard. She would become his wife and lifelong obsession, but at the start the affair terrified him, and this little picture is that fear spread out on a beach. Across it he scattered seven smooth pebbles, each printed with an image of what he dreaded the romance might bring, above all snarling lions' heads standing for desire itself. Look closely at those lions. Dali did not paint them. He cut them from an illustrated children's book and glued them down, then matched his own brush to their style until the seam almost vanishes. The whole thing is barely larger than a sheet of paper.